It’s a familiar scenario: You’re stuck in traffic after a long day at work. You’re tired, you’re frustrated, you’re worried about how long it will take you to get home, and dreading the extra hour or so it will take you to make dinner when you finally do.
But here’s where it becomes unfamiliar: You remember you have a robot chef at home that can cook dinner for you, and ensure your meal is hot and ready when you walk in the door.
Three local college friends-turned-business partners are working to turn that futuristic daydream into reality.
Maxwell Wieder said he and his fellow Johns Hopkins alumni, Edward Holzinger and Clayton James, had always toyed with the idea of starting a business together. When they were younger, they mulled opening a bar together, he said, but that idea was replaced by others as they all got older and had kids. One day, when James’ oven died and he told his friends about struggling to find a replacement with all the features he wanted, they finally found the right basis for their business.
“It was kind of an ah-ha moment. Like ‘We should just make that product we want,’” Wieder recalled. “We got together that weekend and wrote out our ideas on a whiteboard.”
That whiteboard session gave birth to the concept of the SueChef, a countertop robotic appliance, about the size of a large microwave, that can keep up to five frozen premade meals stored in a built-in freezer, and transfer them into the convection oven portion of the device on command. Using an app, users can direct the SueChef to do anything from browning a meal to fully baking it, and can control the timing of the cooking remotely. Wieder said the partners hope their device will allow people to eat more healthy meals at home, and also save time and money.
“Based on our research, we found the average person spends about 17 days a year doing meal prep and cooking,” Wieder said. “[SueChef] could give people a whole workday per week of free time back.”
He added that the tech could also help consumers save money because they may not have to eat out or use food delivery services as often.
Wieder, who has a background in aerospace systems engineering, and his partners have been developing and testing the SueChef for about three years. They have launched a startup company around it, called Counter-Intuitive Cooking Inc. (CICI), and have already secured nearly $60,000 through crowdfunding on the WeFunder platform. That fundraise, in combination with a recent $25,000 investment from Maryland Technology Development Corp. (TEDCO) and a new relationship with Baltimore’s W Ventures, has provided the conviction and resources needed to be “ready to take off,” Wieder said.
The CICI team is using the TEDCO funding to invest in standing up initial production for the SueChef. The company is also beginning to raise a larger round of outside funding to invest in customer food testing, and a marketing and sales push. Wieder said the team is targeting the launch of pre-sales within the next six to eight months. He did not disclose the goal of the funding round.
CICI ultimately hopes to secure partnerships with food companies of various sizes that can create meals that can be cooked by SueChef. Wieder said the company wants SueChef users to be able to enjoy foods they love from brands they trust, and to be able to worry less about cooking and eating them.
“We really want to take the approach of becoming like the Keurig of food,” Wieder said.
