The Kai. Toaster concept designed by Red Dot Award winner, George Gibbens for a client, reimagines the typical conveyor toaster found in many hotel buffets.
The main problem we aimed to address was that current solutions were very slow and caused confusion. The long waiting times resulted in guests leaving their toast unguarded, only to return to a pile of dry toast forced to play a game of 'who stole my toast?'.
The resulting design addressed these critical flaws in two ways.
Firstly, it reduced the time it took to toast bread by orientating the device vertically, creating a chimney-like heated chamber. The faster the device toasted the bread the less likely the user felt the urge to walk away.
Second, add a dividing tray so that guests can more easily keep track of their toast.
How it works is bread gets inserted at the opening on top of the device by the user which is then lowered down a vertical channel that reduces the amount of wasted heat thanks to a chimney effect. When the bread reaches the bottom, it is perfectly toasted and gets dropped in a divided tray for the user to collect.
