Oren Saar and Merav Kalish Rozengarten are two Israelis living in New York, who longed for the homemade food they could get in their home country. Then an idea hit them.
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Sparked by the idea of e-commerce marketplaces, they started WoodSpoon last year to offer on-demand, crafted foods made by home chefs and delivered to the diner. Lee Reshef joined the pair in November as the third co-founder.
“We connect home chefs with diners, bringing cultural and unique food items,” Saar, CEO, told Crunchbase News. “We take care of everything for them from the deliveries to the packaging to the payments.”
WoodSpoon has now raised its first institutional round of $2 million in seed funding led by World Trade Ventures, with Silvertech Ventures participating. The cash infusion will enable the company to hire new talent, product development and to grow within New York and beyond, Saar said. WoodSpoon is currently available in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island City, Hoboken and Jersey City, as well as nationwide shipping for baked goods.
The company’s marketplace officially went live via a free mobile app in March after a five-month beta period. Since then, it has amassed more than 8,000 users and does more than $15,000 in sales month over month. It works with over 100 chefs–Saar included–many of whom were chefs at notable restaurants within the city, but may be out of work due to the global pandemic.
Next up, WoodSpoon will focus on marketing, hiring and bringing in more chefs.
Charlie Federman, a partner at Silvertech, said in an interview that in Woodspoon he saw a team with quantitative and brand-building skills, as well as a real partnership. In addition, his firm is associated with real estate developer Silverstein Properties, which, especially during the pandemic, saw tenants begin asking for amenities like WoodSpoon.
“The health of neighborhoods is important, and there was a real drive for this among tenants and residents, as well as a push for people wanting to support local (businesses),” Federman said. “We are not the only developer seeing that–our brethren were seeing the same phenomenon. When WoodSpoon came to us, it was exactly what we were discussing.”
Hummus meal courtesy of WoodSpoon
Blogroll illustration: Li-Anne Dias
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