Inside the app that connects mom-made meals with hungry users

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what foods feel like a warm hug for me. And while there’s a list of foods that I enjoy eating (I’ll never say no to a spam musubi or a warm bowl of chana masala), there’s only one meal that evokes that special feeling for me: my mother’s homemade lamb biryani. There’s something about the way she cooks her biryani that makes it superior to any restaurant-made biryani I’ve ever eaten. Call it her secret sauce. Maybe it’s the specific spices she uses? Or, maybe it’s the specific cut of lamb she uses? I’d like to think that it’s the love she pours into the meal that makes it taste all the more better.

That’s the greatest joy of enjoying your mom’s home cooking. Not only is it a sensory experience, it’s an emotional one too, whether it makes you incredibly nostalgic or cry tears of joy. But being able to enjoy your mother’s home-cooked foods may not be a regular possibility, be it distance or loss. However, it’s certainly not impossible, courtesy of Shef, a chef-to-consumer online marketplace that brings home cooked meals straight to their customers’ doorsteps.

Launched in the Bay Area in 2019 by Joey Grassia and Alvin Salehi, Shef connects local, food safety certified cooks with customers in their community who are craving their favorite childhood meals and dishes. At its heart is the “shefs,” a portmanteau of “she” and “chef,” who are the mothers, stay-at-home parents and aspiring chefs behind each and every tasty recipe.

“This whole platform was built really in honor of our moms,” said Salehi. “And the whole reason we have the platform Shef was because we wanted the worksheet to be a tribute to our moms and frankly as a tribute to all the incredible parents and caretakers out there who work so hard to support their family members every single day.”

Both Grassia and Salehi, two sons of immigrants from Italy and Iran, cherish the relationships they have with their respective childhood foods — Braciole for Grassia and Gheimeh stew for Salehi — which continue to hold nothing but good memories:

“Food was definitely one of the best parts of growing up and despite anything that was going on, and regardless of the tough times that we went through as an immigrant household, food was definitely the thing that brought us together every day,” Grassia said. “I often tell the story of my favorite dish growing up, which was an Italian dish called braciole. It is a very authentic Italian dish that you really can’t find in any restaurants. You probably have never seen it on a menu but in my household, it was something that was really special and we would cook it around the holidays.”

As for Salehi, some of his favorite memories from childhood revolved around the dinner table at his family’s motel residence.        

“I still remember coming home from school and driving to the motel parking lot. And frankly, just walking through the door to the most inviting scene. The smell of a deliciously savory simmering stew, freshly baked crackling Persian bread, beautifully fragrant basmati rice. It was just absolute heaven.”

He continued, “And frankly, it’s only now in hindsight that I realized that it was actually never about the food. My mom wouldn’t spend so much time every day sourcing ingredients and slow cooking every aspect of every meal, just so we can eat something. She’d do it so that we felt loved, we felt protected, we felt safe. And that’s what a homemade meal is all about. It’s about the emotions that it evokes, and the memories and that’s what we’re trying to recreate.”

Today, Shef represents over 85 countries. An astounding 85% of shefs are women while 80% of shefs are people of color. Per Grassia, Shefs are chosen through a rigorous onboarding process that spans across two to three weeks. Once they’re approved to cook, certified shefs then pick their own schedule, prepare their orders and menus and, ultimately, serve their customers.

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The marketplace’s mission to promote home-cooked comfort meals is what makes it stand out from other popular food delivery companies, like HelloFresh, Blue Apron, Sunbasket and Purple Carrot. Consumers are looking to enjoy foods that quite literally feel like home. And Shef is delivering, all while humanizing the experience and eliminating the transactional aspect of most meal companies. 

Back in March, Shef announced plans to expand nationwide, particularly in smaller cities across the United States. Shef currently operates in 11 states plus Washington, D.C., reaching 70 million people. The ongoing expansion will hopefully make the platform more accessible, to both consumers and aspiring shefs.

“Beyond just having a meal, you’re really partaking in a piece of someone’s history and story when you’re enjoying their food,” said Grassia. “And so by being able to open up this opportunity, we hope to empower a lot of these individuals and actually enable them to take what is otherwise just a dream and the wish of being able to share that food and turn it into a successful business.”