What’s in your kitchen? Probably a stove, sink, running water, oven, refrigerator, cutlery and other utensils, sometimes a microwave oven. Precisely the same things as every commercial restaurant kitchen. Every kitchen is indeed an ad hoc restaurant waiting to happen. What do you do in your kitchen? Do you cook or express yourself? Probably a combination of both; and sometimes you don’t feel like doing either. At the same time, most chefs have few outlets for expression outside of working in a restaurant. And very few of those restaurant cooks are able to create their own singular platforms.
Of course, this is the kind of mismatch that the Internet – which enables frictionless discovery and sharing of information – was made for. And Kitchensurfing was developed to fill this gap. The service allows anyone to find and book a chef (in an environment you control) whose expertise is varied and diverse, professional and amateur, at prices that are competitive with restaurants. Ranging from Alexander T (the Breakfast Bachelor), who just does brunches, Melissa Danielle (Badass Blender Woman) who makes drinks using only a Vitamix blender, to Retno Pratiwi, Indonesian street food. Closer to home, if you have specific food restrictions in your life like my family does, you might find the whole food business to be intimidating and impenetrable. Or, using Kitchensurfing you can find a “renegade” cook named Dan who can handle any kind of food allergy and create an incredible safe meal.
Kitchensurfing’s managed to create a peer Internet marketplace and a community that unbundles and redefines the very idea of eating local. Chris, Lars and Bo have built a simple to use solution that, like themselves, reflects the diversity of what it means to cook. Available in three cities now (New York, Boston and Berlin) with more (Chicago, Washington, DC) coming online in the next few weeks, Kitchensurfing is making it far easier for cooks to be entrepreneurs by matching them with people and homes. It empowers chefs to create the life they want to lead freed from the constraints of a restaurant. There are now thousands of cooks on the platform and this unique and varied marketplace has tripled in size since the end of last year.
We are pleased to be investors in Kitchensurfing. Kitchensurfing is giving people amazing meals and experiences in their homes, thereby democratizing the business of restaurants and changing their definition.