A food preparation appliance and associated components and methods. The food preparation appliance is configured to support transmission of operations updates and other data to/from a local or remote computer. In some embodiments, the food preparation appliance provides a virtual data bus for transmission of the updates or data. The virtual data bus may be bridged to a physical data bus of the food preparation appliance. The food preparation appliance can be configured to receive operations updates regardless of an operational mode of the food preparation appliance.