Introducing cookitup.io:
Help people eat healthy, home cooked, vegetarian meals at the tap of a button.
The aha! moment
Last December 2015 I was in India for my sister’s wedding. My mom hired a professional chef named Raju. He cooked all kinds of cuisine and served breakfast, lunch and dinner for about 25 people for 5 days. I had several conversations with Raju and found out that there was a huge community of cooks that would cook at three to four homes on an average per day. This is when my spouse/Co-founder Pedro Baires and I started working on cookitup.io as a side-project in early 2016.
Back Story
Like air, food is the most important thing for a human being
We struggle with cooking food everyday. As a child growing up I disliked eating food and never learnt to cook. Growing up, we had a cook who would come prepare meals for my family of ten. I now live in San Francisco and cooking is my biggest challenge.
I hit a shit storm with my health some time in 2013 which required multiple surgeries. My diet had to change completely. Pedro did not know how to cook and I had no luck finding cooks on sulekha.com to come home and cook meals every week. After a lot of recommendations I hired a family friend Sushila, who was in need of a part time job. She came home weekly, cooked batch meals and left the kitchen spotless.
My challenge
- Tons of recipe books, hand-written recipes from my mom and online recipes. Yet I still can’t cook.
- Food delivery options like GrubHub, Postmates, UberEats, Sprig, Caviar and Munchery provide expensive meals.
- Eating at restaurants is costly
The Customer's Needs
- Want variety of vegetarian food
- Not enough time to cook healthy food
- After cleaning is frustrating
- Thinking about what to cook everyday is tedious
The Cook’s Needs
- Flexible working hours
- A place to showcase their recipes
- More independent work
- Time and place to develop their cooking style
Coming soon. www.cookitup.io solves your daily food needs!
Our Product
The Mobile App matches people with local cooks that prepare home cooked vegetarian meals in the comfort of your home. This service helps people with everyday cooking.
For safety of both parties; cooks and customers sign agreements when signing up on the CookItUp App. Background checks are conducted for cooks before any cookups through the app.
The Customer
Whenever you’re hungry, find Local Cooks around you. Get high quality vegetarian food cooked by locals at your home.
Joyce wants to request a cookup with Cook Parisa so that she can eat healthy meals during her busy accounting season. Parisa’s price is affordable and she cooks at my house.
Find… Request… Cook Arrives… Eat
The Cook
The cooks at cookitup focus on casual cooking that most people do every day. In two hours the cooks will prepare you dinner and lunch for the next day saving you time and money.
Cook Parisa wants to accept Joyce’s request for a cookup so that she can make some extra cash for her Hawaii trip. Joyce has great reviews and she offers homemade tea to cooks.
Accept Request… Arrives at your home… Cooks
Conclusion
It’s hard for vegetarians (or other people with custom dietary restrictions) to get affordable meals without cooking it themselves, because not everyone has the time — interest — physical ability to do so. On demand food is very common in SF so I want to tackle this problem by combining the on-demand model with my experience from childhood of having a cook in my home.
I see an opportunity to create a community to help people eat healthy, home cooked, vegetarian meals at the tap of a button. At CookItUp our vision is simple, get vegetarian meals cooked by local cooks in your neighborhood. Every successful meal cooked through the app CookItUp, you can donate $1 towards feeding people all over the world. Our first humanitarian cause we will support; Shrimadrajchandra Mission Dharumpur
CookItUp is piloting an option in San Francisco that involves local cooks and customers to schedule cookups. Request your cookup now! Click Here
We are ready to learn, make, test and iterate.
Special Credits: Parisa Khodabakhsh, Pedro Baires, Bernadette Cay, Carly Moore, Alana Aquil, Maria Malfino, Mo Kudeki and Maria Gonzalez, Ran Liu, Neha Kothari, Womo Iyegha and Aby Nimbalkar. Special thank you note to users that participated in user research and user testing.
