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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Shef

An Airbnb for Air Fryers? How the Sharing Economy is Slowly Coming to Home Appliances

Back in 2016, the CEO of Swedish appliance company Electrolux floated the idea of possibly using a sharing economy model for washing machines.

“We have a few fun ideas we are testing, like: how about a laundry Uber, where people share their unused laundry time?” Jonas Samuelson said at the time.

While Electrolux never did launch an Uber-for-laundry service, it did eventually launch a subscription vacuum-as-a-service business in Europe for its robotic vacuum. Even so, the idea of sharing economy meets home appliances really hasn’t gotten much traction.

Until now. Kinda.

That’s because Tulu, an Israel/NY startup is bringing a version of the appliance-as-a-service concept to apartments and condos in the United States, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Israel. The company, which just raised a $20 million Series A funding round, offers short-term rentals on everyday household items like air fryers, printers, micro-mobility products (e-scooters), and more. They also power small shops for consumables like food.

The company, which started its shops in 2019, sees its concept of household goods-as-a-service as being in line with the mindset of everyday consumers who have gotten accustomed to sharing economy models.

“So I think that the best way to capture what Tulu is is that we’re part of a fundamental shift in consumption paradigms that are moving from this equation of ‘I want something, so, I buy it,’ into the equation of ‘I need something, therefore, I use it,” Yishai Lehavi, CEO and co-founder of Tulu, told Techcrunch. “We’re accelerating this already existing mindset and saying that everything in our daily life can become such a service.”

While I do think he’s right and the idea of short-term rentals for home goods is a perfect fit for those living in multi-family housing, it’s worth noting that Tulu isn’t a true two-sided peer-to-peer marketplace like Uber or Airbnb. It’s closer to a Lime e-bike model, where the supplier of the goods is the platform owner, while the other side is the consumer. This might be a small distinction and ultimately one that doesn’t matter to customers of Tulu (and future services like it), since in the end they still get the benefit of temporary ownership & usage no matter if the appliance is rented from a company or a private owner.

Where we are seeing true peer-to-peer sharing economy models in kitchens is via home cook marketplaces like Dishdivvy and Shef. These platforms give those with a kitchen and a little cooking capability an opportunity to monetize their ability and appliances, while also giving buyers a faster way to get what they want: finished meals.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see companies like Tulu, cottage food marketplaces, and even surplus food sharing services like Olio continue to gain traction in coming years. Inflation, increased urban density, and acceptance of new sharing models will continue to push many consumers to reject ownership as the default model when it comes to home appliances.

Shef Raises $20M for Home Cooked Meal Delivery

Shef, a startup that enables home cooks to sell their food for delivery, announced today that it has raised a $20 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Craft Ventures, Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, M13 and a bunch of celebrities including Padma Lakshmi, Tiffany Haddish, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, chef Aarón Sánchez and NBA player Andre Iguodala. This brings the total amount raised by Shef to $28.8 million.

Currently available in seven markets, including the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Seattle, Chicago, Houston, and Austin, Shef’s online platform is a marketplace of independent cooks and chefs who either make meals out of their home or in a commercial kitchen. Shef has a rigorous application process that includes a food safety exam, food quality assessment, as well as standard sanitation practices such as hairnets and gloves.

Customers plug in their zip code on Shef’s website to peruse cuisine and cook options available in their area. Shef, however, doesn’t facilitate on-demand, hot food delivery. Meals must be ordered two days in advance and arrive cold for people to re-heat at home, so the service is more akin to a meal planning-type service. Since the cooks on Shef’s platform aren’t professional restauranteurs, this type of advanced ordering system allows them to better prepare inventories and schedules, rather than trying to anticipate demand on any given night. The advanced ordering also makes it easier for Shef to facilitate deliveries.

The legality of selling home cooked meals is still a bit of a grey area from state to state. In 2018, California signed AB-626 into law, making it legal to start a home-based food business in the state. Alvin Salehi, co-founder and co-CEO at Shef told me by video chat last week that there were 44 home cooking bills introduced during the last legistlative session across 29 different states. As part of today’s news, Shef also announced that it has hired Danielle Merida as its general counsel to collaborate with policy makers and advocate for the expansion of home cooking laws across the US.

The home cooking space has been relatively quiet since DishDivvy launched its service in California in 2018, but perhaps the pandemic will shift activity in the sector. The allure of the side hustle plus a reluctance to go back to an office could spur a wave of would-be cooking entrepreneurs to make meals out of their kitchen. Salehi said that the waitlist to be a cook on Shef swelled to more than 12,000 people.

Shef says that more than 85 percent of the cooks on its platform identify as a person of color. With its new funding, Shef will expand both the number of cooks on its platform, as well as the number of cities it serves.

Homemade Food Delivery Service WoodSpoon Raises $2M

WoodSpoon, an NYC-based service that delivers meals made by home chefs, announced today it has raised $2 million in seed funding. The round was led by World Trade Ventures with participation from Silvertech Ventures. 

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the funding round will help WoodSpoon expand both in the New York area and into other states in the future. The company’s platform connects home chefs — both professionals and hobbyists — with local customers who can purchase available meals in their area via a mobile app. WoodSpoon, which launched this year, says it now has about 100 chefs on its platform, including those who have worked at Nobu, Cipriani, The Modern, and other notable restaurants. 

The legality of meal services for home chefs varies from state to state in the U.S., largely due to safety concerns. Speaking to the safety issue, WoodSpoon CEO and cofounder Oren Saar told me earlier this year that his company conducts a rigorous vetting process that includes interviews, evaluation of the food itself, and kitchen inspections. All chefs also have to be in compliance with NYC’s regulations and permit requirements, which vary depending on the type of food the chef plans to make from their home. Saar said many of WoodSpoon’s chefs, which include a number of individuals out of work because of the pandemic, will often use their own commercial facilities to fulfill orders.

The business for homemade delivery meals isn’t widespread in the U.S. yet, for the aforementioned legality issues. California is another state where it’s possible to make money as a home chef. To that end, a company called Shef, based in the San Francisco area, also recently raised a seed round of funding. 

Back east, WoodSpoon is currently available in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island City, Hoboken, and Jersey City. The service will soon expand to Queens and The Bronx.

Home Food Marketplace Shef Raises $8.8M Seed Round

Homemade food marketplace Shef announced today it has raised $8.8 million in seed funding. The round included participation from Y Combinator, Craft Ventures, and M13 with participation from founders and executives from Instacart, TaskRabbit, StubHub, AngelList, Lyft, Airbnb, and Yelp.

Shef says that right now, it is focused on expanding its service, which is available in various regions around the U.S., to provide opportunities for chefs and other restaurant workers that are indefinitely out of a job because of COVID-19 and independent restaurant shutdowns. “Our mission has always been to help immigrants and refugees make a meaningful income. We’ve now expanded that mission to include feeding frontline healthcare workers and putting laid-off restaurant cooks back to work,” Shef cofounder Alvin Salehi said in a statement.

Salehi, a former White House tech advisor, and food entrepreneur Joey Grassia founded the service in 2018.

Via the Shef website, home chefs can post menus as well as designate which days of the week meals are available for delivery. All “shefs” undergo an application process as well as food safety certification training. 

Shef said in today’s press release that it has about 4,000 applicants on its waitlist at the moment, and that the popularity of the service has “skyrocketed” since the start of the pandemic.

Meal-sharing marketplaces are a relatively new concept in the U.S., where they’ve only recently become legal. In California, where Shef is based, AB626 was signed into law in 2018. Glendale, CA-based DishDivvy offers a similar service via its mobile app, and NYC-based WoodSpoon has a marketplace connecting home chefs with consumers on the East Coast.

However, in other states, the practice of selling meals out of your own kitchen remains illegal, which makes these services spotty in terms of availability. Whether the shutdown of many restaurant dining rooms and the accompanying loss of jobs changes that remains to be seen.