There is no denying that Chicago is a foodie town. But in the quest for exploring good food, looking for information can sometimes lead to roadblocks -- for example, landing on a crowdsourced review with an unsatisfactory explanation, or lack of awareness around trusted sources of information (beyond recognized names like Bon Appetit or the Michelin Guide).
Now, a Chicago startup is hoping to bridge that information gap with direct recommendations from top chefs, and has created a social network for what it hopes will be embraced by -- and turn anyone into -- a “True Foodie”.
Joanne Carter, a Canada native, previously worked for McDonald’s as a Marketing Director across Europe and North America, and met her husband (and eventual co-founder) Ted Kolodziejczyk, a professional chef trained at Le Cordon Bleu, in Paris. They both noticed a reverence for top chefs wherever they lived, including after moving to Chicago. But they also found a lack of connection between these chefs and their fans looking for recipes and recommendations.
So, despite no personal experience in software development, they decided to create an app allowing for easy engagement between chefs and foodies -- one that they hoped would build a trusted community and make interactions beneficial for all those involved. Along with development outsourced from India and two UI/UX designers in Los Angeles, Carter and Kolodziejczyk assembled a small team to work out of 1871 in Chicago, began building their database and started reaching out to chefs in their network.
The app (currently only on iOS) has a fairly intuitive user interface, and combines elements of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. After downloading the app, users can start exploring restaurants on a geocoded map right away and connect to their existing social channels. This allows them to find foodie friends, post articles or videos, follow chefs, live stream cooking adventures, and publish photos of their meals. The app also sifts through a custom database, curated by Kolodziejczyk, and offers recommendations of a selection of wines to pair with food.
There is no cost to restaurants or to users to be included—the app is free. Because of this, the company’s revenue model is based on advertising and sales -- chefs can sell their recipes, and, similar to the iTunes model, users can buy a single recipe if they don’t want the entire cookbook. There are competitors in the market, of course, but Kolodziejczyk maintains that True Foodies has the most exclusive chefs on their platform, because they can only be nominated by existing chefs in the app. Kolodziejczyk personally vets them using their submitted professional identity and qualifications.
Chefs can sell their recipes, and, similar to the iTunes model, users can buy a single recipe if they don’t want the entire cookbook.
Since the end of January when their app went live, they have seen over 2,000 user downloads (averaging 100 a day) and signups from over 3,000 restaurants, 150 notable chefs and individuals from 15 countries (the app supports 8 languages).
The company remains bootstrapped till date and the founders echoed some sentiments we’ve seen in the past to having proactively avoided VC funding.
Chicago Inno also learned that True Foodies will be moving operations and headquarters from Chicago to Paris later this year. Partly, this is due to uncertainty around immigration policies -- the founders said they’d have certainly considered staying if the ‘startup visa’ wasn’t put on freeze by the new administration. But the larger reason for leaving, the founders admitted, was that when it comes to being a culinary destination with access to top chefs, Paris is … well, Paris -- second to none.
