Homemade Food Marketplace Shef Raises $8.8M

Homemade food marketplace Shef has raised $8.8 million in seed funding from such investors as Y Combinator, Craft Ventures and M13, as well as founders and executives from Instacart, TaskRabbit, StubHub, AngelList, Lyft, Airbnb and Yelp.

Shef enables cooks to sell meals in their local communities, the company said. With 60% of restaurants affected by COVID-19 no longer expected to reopen, many of the 11 million people employed by independent restaurants in the United States are out of work indefinitely. Shef is now expanding its service to help create opportunities for these individuals, many of whom do not have the resources necessary to launch their own restaurant businesses.

Founded in 2018 by Alvin Salehi (former White House technology advisor under President Barack Obama and founder of Code.gov) and Joey Grassia (former Facebook employee and two-time food startup entrepreneur), San Francisco-based Shef combines the convenience and variety of takeout with the quality, nutrition and freshness of a homemade meal. These types of businesses are being enabled by new home-cooking laws such as California's Homemade Food Operations Act. 

"Our priority right now is to ease hardship, both for those in need of food and for those in need of opportunity," said Salehi, the son of refugees who used to own a restaurant in California. "Our mission has always been to help immigrants and refugees make a meaningful income. We've now expanded that mission to include feeding front-line health care workers and putting laid-off restaurant cooks back to work."

Shef's service has skyrocketed in popularity since the start of the pandemic: It has already served more than 200,000 meals across the United States. More than 4,000 applicants have now joined the wait list to cook and sell food.

"Shef has uncovered a compelling opportunity to help people build their own businesses through home cooking," said Jeff Fluhr, founder and former CEO of StubHub, and now general partner at Craft Ventures. "Shef's mission has become even more urgent because of the economic impact of COVID-19, and we are excited to support them as they expand to new markets: Chefs across the nation will soon be able to prepare healthy and nutritious food for their communities."