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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

CookUnity

CookUnity Acquires Cookin to Accelerate Growth As it Nears $500 Million in Annual Revenue

CookUnity has acquired Cookin, an online chef culinary commerce platform based in Toronto, the two companies announced this week. CookUnity, a New York City-based platform that delivers chef-created meals to consumers, will integrate Cookin’s 1,500 creators—ranging from home cooks to restaurant chefs—operating across 40 U.S. states and 10 Canadian provinces into their network of chef creators to power the company’s delivery service.

The deal will also bring Cookin’s SaaS technology to CookUnity’s chefs, providing a turnkey storefront that enables home cooks and chefs to create “Drops”—essentially short-term pop-ups without a big capital investment—as well as sell à la carte meals.

According to Cookin CEO Morley Ivers, the seeds for the deal were planted last summer when he met CookUnity founder and CEO Mateo Marietti.

“We immediately recognized the powerful synergy between our visions and the vast potential of combining our strengths,” wrote Ivers in a post on LinkedIn. “Together, we represent an unparalleled ecosystem that will make the food industry better, forever.”

While Cookin launched with a focus on smaller culinary creators, such as home cooks making meals out of their home kitchens (in this way, it was similar to the now-defunct Josephine or the Cook Alliance, a non-profit that launched last year to act as a marketplace for home cooks to sell meals), CookUnity focuses on chefs looking to launch an online business from their commercial kitchens. CookUnity’s expertise in logistics, ingredient sourcing, packaging, and delivery will bring additional services to the home chef community currently operating on Cookin’s platform.

On the ingredient side, the newly combined entity is launching the Ingredients Club, which will provide home chefs with access to wholesale food supplies. According to Ivers, CookUnity is responsible for spending around $100 million annually on ingredients for its chefs.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Ivers says all 52 Cookin shareholders approved the agreement, giving them equity in CookUnity. According to CookUnity, prior to the deal, they were approaching half a billion dollars in annual revenue and growing at 80% year over year.

CookUnity Raises $15.5M to Expand ‘Chef-to-Consumer’ Meal Service

Meal subscription service CookUnity announced today it has raised $15.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Fuel Venture Capital with participation from new and existing investors, including IDC Ventures, which led CookUnity’s seed round of funding. The Series A round brings CookUnity’s total funding to date to $23 million. 

The Brooklyn, NY-based company said it plans to use the new funds to expand its service across North America, grow its marketing efforts, and open two new kitchens, in California and Texas, to support the expansion.

CookUnity bills itself as a “chef-to-consumer platform.” Its subscription service, which currently serves New York City, offers users weekly choices of meals made by a wide range of local chefs, from those with Michelin stars to up-and-coming ones. Pricing starts at $10.49 per meal, with food options serving a fairly wide range of dietary needs and preferences. Meals arrive fully prepared, with instructions for heating and plating. 

For chefs, both established and up and coming, CookUnity’s platform provides another way to reach potential customers. This is especially important at a time when most restaurants are still operating under capacity restrictions. Consumers over the last several months have turned to other means of getting dinner on the table. One of those ways has been meal kits and subscription services, a sector that’s seen something of a resurgence in recent months. Bringing chefs, many of which have been out of work because of the pandemic, to the meal kit sector seems an obvious way to create new food options for consumers and opportunities for those making the food.

To that end, CookUnity says it plans to expand its roster of chefs in the coming months. The company currently has 32 chefs participating and says it will aggressively expand that number to around 150 by mid-2022. The new kitchen locations opening in Los Angeles and Texas will also expand CookUnity’s chef roster beyond local NYC chefs.