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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Yummly

Yummly Gets A New CEO

Yummly, the food and recipe discovery site and app with over 20 million visitors a month, has promoted its COO Brian Witlin to CEO while the company’s former CEO and co-founder, David Feller, has stepped back from day-to-day management while remaining an advisor and board member.

The transition, which was not formally announced, took place in November of last year. When I reached out to David to ask about the change, he indicated the move was for personal reasons and “had nothing to do with Yummly.”  Witlin, who has been with Yummly since 2012, previously was CEO at personal nutrition app company ShopWell.

The transition to a new CEO came within the same three month span that saw the company’s Chief Revenue Officer, Santiago Merea, leave to start a baby-food delivery startup and the company’s head of product, Ankit Brahmbhatt, depart for smart kitchen platform company Innit. The departure of Merea came just a little over a year after Yummly acquired Merea’s startup, Orange Chef. At the time of the acquisition, the combined company signaled an increased focus on more data-centric, personalized food recommendations. Not included in the sale to Yummly were Orange Chef’s intellectual property, which Merea sold to Perfect Company in December.

With the departure of Merea and Brahmbhatt (who also came over from Orange Chef), it’s unclear if Yummly still has intentions of expanding their focus.

 

Perfect Company Buys Prep Pad IP From Orange Chef Founder

Perfect Company, a company specializing in smart devices for cooking and preparing food in the kitchen announced today that they have acquired the IP for the Orange Chef Prep Pad. Orange Chef, founded by Santiago Merea started out in 2011 as an iPad kitchen accessory brand. Merea recognized early on that consumers were bringing their phones and tablets into the kitchen to follow recipe videos and instructions and started by making a sleeve for iPads to help the device stay clean. Orange Chef demoed the Prep Pad at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2013, introducing the concept of a connected scale with a companion app to make cooking and following a recipe even easier.

The company has experienced a lot of change since that launch three years ago, including an acquisition by recipe discovery platform Yummly at the end of last year. After struggling to launch a line of new countertop products, 60% of Orange Chef staff joined Yummly including Merea himself, as chief revenue officer. Prior to the Yummly acquisition, Orange Chef had also faced challenges with the Prep Pad, dealing with many user complaints around app support.

Merea has since left Yummly to become a startup founder once again, this time to start a baby food company which The Spoon reported in October of this year. The company details are vague, but based on the website will likely “offer an ingredient delivery service and 10-minute prep time for fresh-from-scratch baby food at home.” Despite leaving Yummly, Merea retained the Prep Pad’s related IP including its patented technology and app. So how will Perfect Co use the acquired assets? Automated food tracking, for one.

Mike Wallace, CEO of Perfect Co responded in an email to The Spoon: “As you know we entered the health and nutrition space in 2016 with the launch of Perfect Blend™, which tracks nutrition as the user makes a blended recipe.  Food tracking is the most challenging part of using any diet solution, and we see a huge opportunity in automating this process. The Orange Chef’s patented IoT technology, which not only measures nutrition of the food you prepare, but also records the recipes you make for next time, fits in nicely.”

Perfect Company’s acquisition of the brand makes sense; the company currently offers several different versions of the connected scale and app solution, including one to prepare alcoholic beverages, one to help with blended drinks and another to assist with baking. In a market where several of the popular connected scale hardware brands have abandoned their plans, including Orange Chef and Drop Kitchen, Perfect Co seems to have figured out how to make products that thrive.

Wallace explained, “A lot of Perfect Company’s success can be attributed to the company’s DNA. Prior to entering the connected scale space, the Perfect team had successfully designed, developed and delivered to market multiple technology products in the toy industry (accounting for over $500MM in retail sales)….The ability to execute is also what is propelling Perfect’s next phase of growth.  Having successfully established a retail presence, the company is now aggressively extending its market footprint through partnerships with leading brands.”

We’ll keep an eye out in 2017 to see what becomes of the Prep Pad assets and how Perfect Company leverages them in new product offerings and partnerships.

Q&A With Raised Real’s Santiago Merea

When we broke the news this weekend that Santiago Merea had left Yummly to start a new baby food startup called Raised Real, details were a little scant, so we decided to ask the former Orange Chef CEO a few questions about his new company.

While he is still keeping some of the details of his new company under wraps, we got a few more details about his vision for the startup.

Wolf: What is the idea behind Raised Real?

Merea: We know that parents want to make their own baby food. As a matter of fact, a recent study shows that 1 in 3 parents want to make their own baby food (up from 1 in 10 only 5 years ago) and escape the processed, shelf stable alternatives. But most fail, because it takes so much time and work. We want to make a hard task, easy.

Wolf: Is it a delivery service? Does it have any connected tech?

Merea: Delivery service with a very particular supply chain. No connected tech, but there will be a baby food machine to make things easier. More details to come.

Wolf: Why baby food?

Merea: Baby food is a $55 billion global market with 3% annual growth. However, we are not planning to stop with baby food. For us, it is all about empowering parents and the relationship we build with them. On top of a baby food delivery service we are building a new digital channel that can be used to offer other products and/or services. But first things first, we are starting with the best baby food you can give your baby, the food that you make.

Yummly CRO Merea Leaves To Launch Baby Food Startup

At last year’s Smart Kitchen Summit, Santiago Merea found a suitor for his struggling startup Orange Chef. A week after this year’s Summit, he’s left to start a new startup focused on reinventing baby food.

According to Merea’s Linkedin profile, he’s left Yummly, the company where he was Chief Revenue Officer and which had acquired his former startup. His new job? The founder of Raised Real, a company which, according to its Linkedin description, aims to re-invent “the process of making baby food at home.”

What does that mean? It’s too soon to tell, but what I can glean from the company’s website is that it will offer an ingredient delivery service and 10-minute prep time for fresh-from-scratch baby food at home.

What’s unclear is if the at-home food assembly it will involve any home or kitchen technology. Given that Merea retained the rights to his Prep Pad, I’m intrigued to see if he applies any of the Orange Chef intellectual property towards baby food.

I’ve reached out to Merea and will update this post with info once I have it.