Editor note: In our 2022 Startups to Watch feature, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times present startups and founders doing unique things in the San Francisco Bay Area. Shef is one of 20 that we have profiled — to read more about our mission and the other startups we're featuring, click here.
Food is personal for Alvin Salehi and Joey Grassia. Both first-generation Americans, they wanted to build something that would have benefited their own immigrant parents.
State-level legislation has been slowly but steadily creating legal pathways for independent cooks to sell their goods.
California has allowed limited sales of things like baked goods and jam (i.e., food that's relatively shelf-stable) since 2013 and expanded that to include more items like hot meals a couple of years ago.
While the food delivery market is crowded with incumbents like DoorDash, GrubHub and Uber Eats, small-time cooks not affiliated with a restaurant haven't had access to delivery services until now. And creating more income-generating opportunities for immigrant communities through food also potentially increases the diversity of gastronomic options for consumers, as well.
Shef Inc.
- Founded: 2019
- Founders: Alvin Salehi and Joey Grassia
- What it does: Provides food delivery services for independent cooks
- HQ: San Francisco
- Employees: 80
- Total funding: $29 million
- Investors: Aarón Sánchez, Andre Iguodala, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Padma Lakshmi, Tiffany Haddish, Stacy Brown-Philpot, Y Combinator, a16z, M13, Craft Ventures, Max Mullen (Instacart), Brandon Leonardo (Instacart), Evan Sharp (Pinterest) and Naval Ravikant
How many cities do you currently operate in? Shef currently operates in San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Austin, Houston and Washington, D.C. (which includes Maryland and Northern Virginia).
How did you build out your team and what lessons did you learn? Shef’s growth has been centered around a few guiding principles. The first is that we’re bringing on individuals who are genuinely passionate about Shef’s underlying mission of empowering anyone to feed their neighbor. The second is that we’re prioritizing roles that will truly help us to best serve our Shef community and customers. For instance, our first hire wasn’t a head of engineering or business operations. It was a head of storytelling.
The life stories and experiences each cook brings to the platform drive everything we do, so it only made sense that storytelling take first priority for the company. From the beginning, each cook’s individual page has functioned as a lens into their personal stories and deep connections to the cuisine, complete with beautiful photos and descriptions of their dishes.
Who was the first person or organization you asked for money? Alvin and Joey’s first investor pitch was to the team at Y Combinator. They were asked what every investor asks — why now? Their answer sounded too good to be true.
It was that AB 626, the California Homemade Food Act, had just become law the day before. Passage of the law was a watershed moment for the home-cooking movement across the country. It was also representative of tireless advocacy efforts put in over many years by organizations like the COOK Alliance and others.
It helped Shef’s initial investors see the viability of the company vision and operating model, as well as the potential for nationwide expansion as policy change continues to take shape across other states.
How are your going to scale your business and grow over the next 12 months? In addition to expanding to new cities and regions, we’ll be working hard to foster community among cooks on the Shef platform and connect them with new customers across our existing markets.
Shef is also leading advocacy efforts to advance home cooking laws like California’s AB 626 across the country. In 2021 alone, 55 home-cooking bills were introduced in over 30 states, so we’re excited to continue working closely with legislators to help people gain access to a meaningful income from home.
We also recently launched an app and look forward to making the platform even more accessible and supportive for shefs and customers in the months to come.
