Imagine craving your grandmother’s adobo or a fragrant bowl of Ethiopian shiro, and finding it served fresh by a neighbor down the street. What if your weekend takeout came from around the world — not from a chain, but from someone’s home kitchen?
That’s the revolution Shef has sparked. Launched in 2019 by friends Alvin Salehi and Joey Grassia (both sons of immigrants), Shef is an online marketplace connecting talented home cooks with hungry customers. Its mission? To rebuild the food system from scratch, put Mom-and-Pop chefs in the driver’s seat, and bring “there’s no taste like home” to your doorstepblog.shef.com.
“We’re not trying to build a successful business ourselves — we’re trying to help millions of other people build successful businesses,”
says Salehi. Shef’s founders aren’t selling cuisine; they’re selling opportunity. Both grew up watching their immigrant parents struggle: Salehi’s family restaurant in California brimmed with customers, but crushing overhead eventually forced it to closesmithsonianmag.com.
That pain planted a seed: “I realized how important health is,” recalls Grassia, and together they hatched a plan. Travel to refugee camps and immigrant meetups showed them a hidden talent pool: stay-at-home parents and displaced cooks were home-bound for childcare or job hurdles, but were already great at cookingsmithsonianmag.com. Shef gave them a platform. As Salehi puts it, “The food is ten times better than restaurants!” smithsonianmag.com.
Since its founding in the Bay Area in 2019, Shef’s story has been meteoric. It’s a recipe of timing, technology and tenacity. In 2020, aided by California’s new home-cooking laws, Shef raised $8.8 million in seed funding.
By June 2021 it landed a $20 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz grocerydive.com. Then in 2022 a $73.5 million Series B (with CRV, Amex, and celebrity investors) vaulted total funding past $100 million grocerydive.com. As of early 2023, Shef operates in 11 states + DC, reaching 70 million potential diners techcrunch.com. Behind the scenes, tens of thousands of cooks (16,000+ on the waitlist) are ready to join.
2019: Shef founded in San Francisco (under California’s new homemade-food law).
2020: $8.8M seed round; expansion beyond Bay Area begins.
2021 (June): $20M Series A led by A16Z grocerydive.com; 12 metro areas served.
2022 (June): $73.5M Series B (CRV, Andreessen, Amex, et al.) grocerydive.com; laws pass in all 50 states allowing certain homemade meals.
2023: Operating in 11 states + D.C.; 3 million dishes served and growing techcrunch.com.
This explosive growth happened partly due to the pandemic. When restaurants shuttered, Shef became a lifeline: applicants spiked tenfold as furloughed chefs and displaced workers flocked to cook on the platform inc.com. Shef’s founders kept expansion measured – “we’re determined to keep growth in check,” they say inc.com – but also relentless. In rural and suburban areas now opening up, 12,000 people sit on Shef’s waitlist, hungry to start selling techcrunch.com.
Think of Shef less like UberEats and more like Airbnb for dinner. It’s a commission-based marketplace for home cooks, not a restaurant chain. Chefs sign up (for free) and list their menus. Shef vets them through food safety training and certification – many have never sold food before, so kitchens and hygiene are top prioritiestechcrunch.com.
Once approved, these “shefs” upload their menus, set their own prices, and pick days they’re cooking. Customers browse the app by cuisine or neighborhood, then place orders a few days in advance (no instant gratification — think freshly made not fast-food)businessinsider.comsmithsonianmag.com.
The payments and delivery logistics are Shef’s job. When a customer orders, the shef packages up the meal in her home kitchen (or sometimes a partner commissary) for pickup/delivery. Shef takes a cut – about 15% commission on each saleinc.com – and provides end-to-end support.
That means professional food photography of each dish, pricing and menu guidance, and marketing help so every busy cook can feel like a pro cheftechcrunch.cominc.com. Chefs see orders on their phones (the app notifies them) and get paid per order; some work part-time evenings, others scale up to full kitchens. There are no quotas or obligations – one Shef might just do weekend batches for extra cash, while another earned nearly $400,000 last year through the platformtechcrunch.com.
Meanwhile, customers enjoy a user-friendly experience: filter by chicken, vegan, or Mexican; read a cook’s bio and reviews; order family-size dinner kits; even subscribe to weekly meal plans. (Ordering.co – a turnkey marketplace platform – offers every ingredient of this tech stack: branded website and app builders, delivery tracking, customer loyalty tools and moreordering.coordering.co.)
In short, Shef lets you skip the mall’s one-size-fits-all menu: you can find real cultural dishes (Sri Lankan, Salvadoran, Nigerian!) cooked by real neighbors.
The heart of Shef’s appeal is authenticity. Ever wanted to try Korean kongguksu (soybean noodle soup) or Peruvian arroz con pato? Chances are a Shef offers it. As the Smithsonian noted, Shef lists “dozens of cuisines and hundreds of dishes” – from Ethiopian shiro to Bangladeshi egg curry – that you won’t find in any restaurant chain smithsonianmag.com. Every meal comes with a story and culture behind it.
This richness isn’t just tasty; it’s transformational for the cooks. The numbers speak volumes: 85% of Shefs are women and 80% are people of color, many of them immigrants or refugeestechcrunch.com grocerydive.com. For these entrepreneurs, Shef isn’t just a side hustle – it’s a path to financial independence.
The platform has already funneled “tens of millions of dollars” in net income to home chefs techcrunch.com. Some busy cooks now earn six-figure incomes entirely from their kitchens techcrunch.com. One Puerto Rican mom turned shef kept food on her family’s table during the pandemic; another Afghan refugee now feeds hundreds of local families every week through the platform.
Shef calls itself a movement toward a “more inclusive food system”blog.shef.com. By turning each member of the community into a potential restaurateur, it builds economic resilience from the ground up.
“With the expansion, more people who need income opportunities can join Shef,”
CEO Joey Grassia explains, while local diners gain access to “healthy, high-quality, affordable meals” that suburban areas often lack techcrunch.com. In short, every order supports cultural heritage and social good: you’re not just ordering dinner, you’re lifting up a neighbor and tasting their world.
This juggernaut wasn’t built overnight. Selling homemade meals legally across America meant navigating a patchwork of food laws. Before 2019, most states only allowed the sale of baked goods; hot meals from home were largely banned.
Shef’s co-founders knew this firsthand: one early competitor, Josephine (in Oakland), was shut down by regulators in 2018. But that battle succeeded in expanding California’s Homemade Food Act to include cooked meals. In January 2019, “new regulations went into effect...paving the way for Shef’s California operations” smithsonianmag.com.
Even today, rules vary by county and state. Where home-cooked sales aren’t yet legal, Shef partners with commercial kitchen facilities, letting cooks make meals on certified premises at no extra fee inc.com. The platform also insists on strict safety standards: every Shef must pass certification and training, and Shef’s team audits menus for hygiene.
This decentralized model – many homes, one brand – is complex. But Shef is growing its engineering and operations teams to build tracking and compliance tools. (Their recent financing explicitly funds “meal preference and customization features” – think allergy filters and personalized menus – which also help match customers to safe, suitable meals techcrunch.com.)
No review system is perfect, but Shef’s close-knit community does much of the policing: diners leave ratings, neighbors report problems, and the company can suspend cooks who slip up. Ultimately, the goal is to blend the charm of grandma’s kitchen with the trust mechanisms of modern tech. As Grassia says, every new law passed (50 states and counting) is another ingredient in creating a national ecosystem where your auntie’s lasagna can be just a click away grocerydive.comtechcrunch.com.
Make no mistake: Shef isn’t trying to be the next UberEats or Grubhub. In fact, the founders often say, “don’t call it a food-delivery service,” but rather a “home-chef outfitter.” It’s about people, not franchises.
Unlike traditional delivery, Shef doesn’t promise dinner in 30 minutes – it offers anticipation and uniqueness. You can’t call at 7 PM for sushi tomorrow; you order by Monday for Wednesday pickup, giving cooks time to gather ingredients. This may be less instant, but the payoff is huge variety and quality.
Think of it this way: traditional restaurant delivery is a one-way street funneling money into corporate coffers. Shef’s model is a two-way connection that builds community wealth. “We now have ‘shefs’ earning six figures... Their businesses continue to grow,” beams Grassia techcrunch.com.
The Inc.com profile puts it bluntly: Shef’s goal “is not to be a competitor to restaurants or even to food-delivery services like DoorDash or Grubhub. It’s to incubate potential future restaurant owners and provide a meaningful income to home cooks” inc.com.
In other words, ordering homemade eats is a movement as much as a meal. In the era of Airbnb and Etsy connecting buyers directly to makers, it’s “an obvious win” for all parties smithsonianmag.com. Customers get real home-style food (not factory production), cooks keep control of their craft (no corporate menu), and local culture stays alive. As one food critic put it, “A home-cooked meal doesn't have to be cooked in your home” – with Shef, anyone’s kitchen becomes your dinner table shef.com.
The Shef story shows how a smart platform + passionate people can turn a simple idea (community cooking) into nationwide impact. What if you want to be the next Shef, empowering cooks in your city or country? The tech is ready: modern marketplace platforms do the heavy lifting of ordering, payment, delivery logistics, and marketing.
For example, Ordering.co offers “everything you need to launch a scalable, automated marketplace — without needing developers”ordering.co. Its turnkey solution includes online ordering apps, driver dispatch, loyalty rewards, AI-powered promotions, and all the tools for running a multi-vendor food marketplace ordering.coordering.co. In short, founders can focus on the flavor and the mission, while the platform runs the kitchen.
Shef has turned home cooks into heroes and rewrite rules in the food business. And it’s only getting started. If you’re an aspiring founder hungry to build a platform like Shef in your own town or for your own cuisine, consider Ordering.co to power your project. With the infrastructure handled, you can spend your time cooking up great ideas – literally – knowing you have the full menu of tech support behind you.
Bold enough to follow Shef’s recipe for change? Gather your community, set your table, and cook up the next big thing. The kitchen’s open – let’s make “no taste like home” a reality, everywhere.
Sources: Official reports and interviews in TechCrunch, Inc, Smithsonian Magazine, Business Insider and Shef press materials techcrunch.com techcrunch.cominc.com smithsonianmag.comordering.co. (All facts and quotes are drawn from these publications.)