We all know that New York City is one of the food capitals of the world, but these entrepreneurs are serving up something a bit different. From all the ingredients to make home cooked meals or smoothies, to technology that helps you make healthier purchasing choices, to apps that make it easier to dine out – or order in.
But there’s a lot more than that on the menu. Read on and find out who’s disrupting the food chain and what they are doing to do it.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE 28 NYC FOODTECH ENTREPRENEURS YOU MUST KNOW
Founder’s note: AlleyWatch does not have a financial relationship with any of those included. This list is in no particular order nor is it a ranking. In fact, the =RAND() function on excel was used to determine order.
Yuni Sameshima
Chicory
You have the option to find the recipes you want to make. Chicory not only automatically generates a shopping list: the app also instantly finds the best prices and the perfect products, and work directly with online grocers to deliver all the ingredients you need.
Yuni Sameshima is the cofounder and CEO of Chicory, an ERA-accelerated company that makes recipe ingredients easy to shop for by integrating their technology onto recipe webpages. You find the recipes for the dishes you want to prepare. Chicory automatically generates a shopping list, then finds the best prices and the perfect products, and works directly with online grocers to deliver all the ingredients you need.
Keep up with Yuni:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Blog
Image Credit: Twitter
Greg Hong
Reserve
Greg Hong, a recovering finance and marketing and operations guy (and a total foodie), is the CEO and Cofounder of Reserve, your personal digital dining concierge that enables a more seamless experience, from getting the table you want to paying effortlessly at the end of the meal. All, with just a few taps. Talk about service at your fingertips…
And the company recently closed $15M in Series A funding.
Keep up with Greg:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: 33 Voices
Benzi Ronen
Farmigo
Benzi Ronen is the founder and CEO of Farmigo, a farm-to-table food delivery service based on group purchasing, that’s benefiting local farmers, bypassing supermarkets and bringing neighbors together.
He also organizes the Food Hackers Meetup, a monthly series for guest speakers to discuss how they are hacking our food system for a better future, and featuring local food entrepreneurs who tell personal stories of starting and growing businesses in New York.
Keep up with Benzi:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: You Tube
Ben Leventhal
Resy
Ben Leventhal is the cofounder and CEO of Resy, a mobile app for people who love eating at great restaurants (and who doesn’t?) but hate getting into a hassle about reservations.
His cofounders include AJ and Gary Vaynerchuk.
In fact, Vayner RSE is incubating the company, with additional investment from Lerer Ventures, TomsCapital/Panarea Capital, A-GRade Holdings (Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary), Slow Ventures (Dave Morin and Kevin Colleran) et al.
Leventhal is definitely the Food Guy. He was cofounder of Eater, the national food blog network acquired by Vox Media, and has worked with food, tech and media companies like Food Network, Kitchensurfing, and Cover. He is also on the board of directors of Hot Bread Kitchen, an organization that prepares minority women for careers in the culinary industry, and is on the James Beard Awards restaurant voting committee.
Keep up with Ben:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: Twitter
Kendra Kuppin
Spice and Spoon
A former research analyst, Kendra Kuppin is the cofounder of Spice and Spoon, a marketplace for cooking classes that take place in home kitchens. You can hire a chef to come to your home and teach you how to make anything from pasta to cake pops to Indian food. Or you can also go to a local chef’s home to learn how to cook there. You can even include friends and make it a (dinner) party.
Kuppin and Co are making learning to cook a laid back experience that friends can enjoy together. Now you’re cooking! (Or, at least, learning.)
Keep up with Kendra:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: LinkedIn
Matt Salzberg
Blue Apron
A former private equity analyst for the Blackstone Group, Matt Salzberg is the founder and CEO of Blue Apron, a company that delivers a weekly subscription box filled with everything you need to make your own meals at home – and all of the ingredients are fresh, properly proportioned and recipes are included. No subscription fee required.
Founded in NYC, the company is now national, and is serving over a million meals per month. And people keep coming back for more!
Speaking of coming back for more, Salzberg is also the founder of petridish.org, the largest crowdfunding website dedicated to science and research projects.
Keep up with Matt:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: Twitter
Josh Hix
Plated
An entrepreneur, engineer (Georgia Tech) and an MBA (HBS), Josh Hix is the cofounder of Plated, which is redefining dinner by delivering chef-designed menus, and fresh ingredients and recipes delivered each week, which can be turned into healthy meals in one’s home kitchen in a mere 30 minutes.
Hix is also co-founder of ZeeWise, a software tool for retail businesses (Hix now sits on the board) and PlusScrn, a media ad-building platform for mobile (acquired by Phluant Mobile). And has a good tale to tell about the founding of Plated.
Keep up with Josh:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit:Twitter
Danielle Gould
Food+Tech Connect
Danielle Gould is the Founder and CEO of Food+Tech Connect, the site of record connecting food and technology innovators with the information and people they need to help transform the food industry. She believes that technology, collaboration and innovative business models are key to creating a better future for food.
She started Food+Tech Connect in 2009 to help innovators get the information and connections they need to re-engineer the food system. In 2010, she hosted the first food hackathon, and continues to work with game-changing companies like Applegate, Google and Chipotle, to build a community of innovators tackling big challenges through hackathons and meetups.
She recently launched Food+Tech Ed, a learning community dedicated to helping food entrepreneurs build and grow successful businesses.
She is a founding member of the Culinary Institute of America’s Business Leadership Council, a member of the Google Innovation Lab For Food Experiences and a mentor for Accel Foods and Food-X.
Keep up with Danielle:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: Twitter
Chris Muscarella
Kitchensurfing
Chris Muscarella is the founder and Executive Chairman of Kitchensurfing, an online marketplace for chefs, connecting them with people who love food all over the world.
You book a chef, invite him or her into your home to teach you, your friends and your family their tricks in the kitchen. You will find chefs who have worked in high-end professional kitchens, chefs who have been to culinary school, and chefs who have mastered one amazing family recipe and want to share it with the world.
Chefs are available for events, too, and it’s a lot more interesting than eating out all the time.
FYI – Chefs have been background checked – and taste tested!
Keep up with Chris:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: Twitter
Carly Chamberlain
CaterCow
Anyone who has ever had to organize an event knows what a nightmare finding the right caterer – at the right price – can be. CaterCow is an online marketplace to find and book catering alternatives, and makes the whole process turn-key, thanks to cofounder Carly Chamberlain, an early Airbnb employee who knows how to keep things organized.
Order hors d’oeuvres from a local restaurant or an artisanal lunch for the office; rent a food truck for the day or bring in an oyster shucker for your next event. Packages are priced fairly, booked online easily, and save you a lot of time, considering the usual(frustrating) back and forth one can go through when trying to sort out traditional catering.
Keep up with Carly:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: LinkedIn
Wendy Nguyen
HealthyOut
HealthyOut– and the company’s CEO/cofounder and healthy foodie Wendy Nguyen are changing the way users discover healthy restaurant dishes. Users can search by calories and points, nutrition tags, like heart healthy and paleo, cuisines and more, and have them delivered to their homes or offices all over the country, in over 500 cities.
Talk about delivering!
The company was a Techcrunch Disrupt finalist and participated in Blueprint Health Accelerator and it’s no wonder: we spend one-third of our lives on diets, and billions of dollars treating chronic diseases that are a result of how we eat. And people do like to eat out – or order in.
HealthyOut is mobile only and a top-rated app in iTunes Food & Drink
Keep up with Wendy:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: LinkedIn
Evelyne White
Bookalokal
Bookalokal is a social dining platform that connects hosts and guests through food events in 35+ countries, and founder Evelyne White has a foot in two different cities – NY and Brussels. She’s an adventurer (and former harpist), and that’s what Bookalokal is all about – having dining and eating experiences and adventures all around the world, by connecting with local people and sharing an authentic meal.
And isn’t food preparation a performance art, after all? With Bookalokal, it can be!
Keep up with Evelyne:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: Meetup
Alexander Gillett
HowGood
Named one of this year’s NY Venture Fellows, Alexander Gillett is the founder and CEO of HowGood, a site (and an app) that tells you how good the groceries that you’re buying really are for you. HowGood rates grocery products for the greater good, covering everything related to sustainability and social responsibility, from carbon emissions to labor relations. So consumers get the goods on their nutritional content and how sustainably the foods were created.
A serial entrepreneur, Gillett started with a classic childhood lemonade stand. His first startup was Virage, and his next a painting company which he sold to a competitor, and was eventually hired to run half the company.
During the earliest startup phase of HowGood, Gillett had a technical support company, a rooftop farm, and a couple of other gigs. That’s what you do when you’re working on getting your true passion – in this case, HowGood – from concept to game changer.
Keep up with Alexander:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: Twitter
Matt Stanfield
BagIQ
What if your grocery bag could help you make smarter food and ingredient choices while you’re doing your online shopping? BagIQ instantly syncs user purchases made at 100+ grocery chains, including Walmart, Amazon, Target, Walgreens, Safeway, Stop & Shop, Instacart, Fresh Direct, as well as online food delivery services such as Seamless and Grubhub, and gives you the nutritional values. BagIQ can even make suggestions for healthier alternatives.
For purchases made at stores and restaurants outside the network, a single-click photo of a paper receipt captures and imports all the data required for BagIQ analysis.
In other words, founder and CEO Matt Stanfield helps consumers make healthier choices, all through a small change that can have a big impact to eaters everywhere, by helping people to make better informed decisions on purchases that impact their health, budget, and lifestyle.
Keep up with Matt:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: LinkedIn
Dominik S. Richter
HelloFresh
HelloFresh is one of the darlings of the online ingredients delivery world. In fact, the company recently secured $126 million in Series E funding. The company delivers a weekly box filled with recipes and all of the ingredients one needs to prepare the dishes – no subscription required – to make meal preparation at home simple. Or, as we like to say, it’s an out of the box solution. Dominik Richter is the founder & Global CEO who seems to have whet the world’s appetite for home cooked meals.
Keep up with Dominik:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: LinkedIn
Amanda Hesser
Food52
Before she and cofounder Merrill Stubbs started Food52, a site for foodies, complete with recipes, columns, contests, cookbooks and an online store stocked with the provisions you need to get cooking (called Provisions), Amanda Hesser, was a reporter at the New York Times, the food editor at the Times Magazine, wrote the award-winning books Cooking for Mr. Latte and The Cook and the Gardener, and edited the essay collection Eat, Memory. Her last book, a Times bestseller and the winner of a James Beard award, is The Essential New York Times Cookbook.
She was also named one of the 50 most influential women in food by Gourmet, and appeared in the movie, Julie & Julia, playing herself.
The Food52 Manifesto:
If you cook, your family will eat dinner together.
If you cook, you will naturally have a more sustainable household.
If you cook, you’ll set a lifelong example for your children.
If you cook, you’ll understand what goes into food and will eat more healthily.
If you cook, you’ll make your home an important place in your life.
If you cook, you’ll make others happy.
If you cook, people will remember you.
So get cooking!
Keep up with Amanda:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: Food Tech Connect
Gilad Rotem
CUPS
Meet the king of CUPS. Gilad Rotem is the cofounder and the marketing guy, and one of the reasons why NYC-based caffeine aficionados are enjoying their favorite cuppas all over town at discounted prices. CUPS is an app that offers prepaid plans for delicious discounted beverages at independent coffee shops in NYC. And to some New Yorkers, it’s as indispensible as their Metro cards.
Keep up with Gilad:
Twitter
Image Credit: Twitter
Jordan Gaspar
Accel Foods Accelerator
Jordan Gaspar is Managing Director of Accel Foods Accelerator, a national packaged food and beverage accelerator with a dedicated investment fund. And in a foodie town like New York City, a food accelerator makes absolute sense, and Gaspar makes sure it all runs smoothly.
A food enthusiast at heart, she left her legal career behind to found and run a New York City based catering company, Flatiron Kitchen, where she oversaw all aspects of operations, including vendor and strategic partnerships, accounting/finance, sales, marketing and regulatory compliance.
She’s also a former Managing Director of Golden Seeds, the angel network that invests in women-run companies. Now she’s back in the food business – or making sure that food entrepreneurs get that leg up to get their foods and beverages off the ground and into stomachs everywhere.
Keep up with Jordan:
Twitter
Image Credit: Google Plus
Tong Shen
Food X Accelerator
A serial entrepreneur, angel investor, foodie, social activist, writer/poet, and film buff, Tong Shen is the founder of the Food X Accelerator, the first international business accelerator program focused on launching food-related ventures, with a multi-stage evergreen fund, SOSventures, where Shen is also an investor.
Shen was also an organizer of the democracy movement in 1989 that occupied Tiananmen Square while he was at Beijing University, and one of Newsweek’s People of the Year in 1989.
Shen also founded or co-founded B&B Media and VFinity, among other ventures in the past two decades.
Keep up with Shen:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: Twitter
Stefanos Missailidis
Fiestah
Stefanos Missailidis is the cofounder and CEO of Fiestah, an online marketplace for planning events, bringing together event organizer and vendors of every stripe, from the food to the flowers, and everything in between. They also provide event planning tools, and help organizers – whether they’re professionals or not – to stay on budget, and get all of the vendors paid, all from one secure platform.
Fiestah came out of a Startup Weekend in 2012, and were later accepted into the DreamItNY Accelerator, and Startup Chile, all of which not only helped the company to take off, but to expand internationally. In fact, Cofounder and COO Nurul Yahya is spearheading the Chilean expansion, while Missailidis is in NYC helping to serve up chili, or whatever else the occasion calls for.
Keep up with Stefanos:
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LinkedIn
Image Credit: You Tube
Oge Akyil
Foodie For All
Sadly, not all restaurants in NYC deliver, but thanks to FoodieForAll founder Oge Akyll, problem solved. The service delivers the top dishes from NYC’s most popular restaurants for lunch and/or dinner. And they are the only platform that allows customers to choose different dishes from different restaurants to create their perfect meal.
But then, you know New Yorkers: we want what we want, when we want it, and that especially applies to food.
Keep up with Oge:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: Twitter
Catherine Cuello
Greenhopping
You’re trying to be healthy and conscious of what you’re eating, and frankly, you want to go green. But it’s not always easy to find healthy plant-based eateries. Greenhopping founder Catherine Cuello knows that from experience, and that’s what the app is all about: it makes finding juice bar and restaurants that serve natural, organic, farm-to-table ingredients easy, and they’re now serving 14 cities, including New York City, Jersey City, Hoboken, The Hamptons, Long Island, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Dallas, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Miami.
Here’s to your health!
Keep up with Catherine:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: LinkedIn
Joshua Cook
Nextdoorganics
Nextdoorganics is a product of the FoodX Accelerator – and a triple bottom line local food distribution company working to replace the industrial food system by sourcing from new, young, urban, and activist farmers and food makers to curate weekly grocery orders, which members get via pick up or cargo-bike delivery in New York City.
It’s sustainable and hyper-local foods for the city dweller, who can choose from a small, medium or large package size, for $20 to $50 per package.
Founder and CEO Joshua Cook started his service in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn – a veritable food desert – and now he’s expanding to Manhattan and throughout to Northeast.
Keep up with Josh:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image Credit: LinkedIn
Alain Bankier
New York Angels
What’s a food+tech list without a food+tech investor, and that’s Alain Bankier through and through. Bankier cofounded the angel investor activity of the New York New Media Association (NYNMA), which was the precursor of the New York Angels. He is currently a New York Angels member and was Co-President and CEO of The Manischewitz Company.
He is also an early stage investor interested in the food tech space, meaning, the use of technology to disrupt the existing food industry at any part of the “farm to fork” chain. He is currently an investor in two leading New York based food tech companies: Mouth.com and Plated.com. And he’s always open to hearing about others.
Keep up with Alain:
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LinkedIn
Image Credit: LinkedIn
Craig Kanarick
Mouth
Mouth is all about food. Indie food. Artisanal food. Tasty gifts. Mouth – and founder and CEO Craig Kanarick – want to help you discover and get the best, most delicious and most interesting indie food products available, and to help indie makers grow their businesses. To do this, they search the country for the best products, buy in bulk, then photograph, warehouse, market, package and ship them directly to customers.
Kanarick was also cofounder and Chief Strategic Officer of the seminal digital agency, Razorfish. Seems like he’s always got something cooking!
Keep up with Craig:
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LinkedIn
Image Credit: LinkedIn
Greg Levitt
Farmivore
There is certainly no shortage of services that will deliver ingredients so that you can prepare healthy dishes at home. Well, what if you want a healthy glass of something, like a smoothie? That’s where Farmivore comes in, delivering 100% organic produce for juicing, weekly. In fact, they’re the leading subscription commerce service for the at-home juicing and smoothie market, pre-portioned ingredient kits that make nutritious, great-tasting juices and smoothies. They also help subscribers discover new recipes, and eliminate the time required to plan, shop and prepare ingredients.
Cofounder and CEO Greg Levittis a serial entrepreneur (cofounder and board member, 33Across), Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator alum and a mentor at both ER Accelerator and Techstars NY. The boxes also include unusual ingredients – because what successful serial entrepreneur doesn’t like to shake things up a bit!
Keep up with Greg:
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LinkedIn
Image Credit: Radaris
Gabi Lewis
Exo
Exo makes protein bars made from…crickets. From the exoskeletons, at least, hence the name.
For the record, crickets need a lot less feed than cattle, sheep and pigs to produce the same amount of protein – and they don’t emit methane gas, for the environmentally-concerned.
For the ‘health conscious,’ cricket flour happens to be gluten-free (and paleo approved), good for you and once you taste them, you’d have to believe that it’s just not cricket. Not that you’d notice, that is.
The company graduated from AccelFoods Accelerator’s inaugural class and also mounted a very successful Kickstarter campaign. They’ve also raised $1M+ in funding, and how many tech companies can say that about a product this buggy?
OK, let’s not go there.
You have to hand it to cofounder Gabi Lewis and the team for having come up with such an unusual recipe for success.
Keep up with Gabi:
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LinkedIn
Image Credit: Twitter
John Mascari
Bundle Organics
We’ve been drinking juice since we were kids, but Bundle Organics is something else. Think of it as an extra bundle of nutrients. It’s the first and only line of organic, non-GMO juices made especially for expecting and new moms. Unlike traditional juices, all of the fruits and vegetables in Bundle Organics juices were chosen for their particular benefits, when it comes to supporting healthy fetal development and easing common pregnancy discomfort.
They also happen to taste good and they’re filled with folic acid, calcium, Vitamin D, Omega 3, and iron – all the good things that everybody needs, in three tasty flavor: Kale Apple Lemon Ginger, Orange Carrot Berry, and Dark Berry and Veggies, all OB-GYN-approved.
Founder John Mascari delivers. Literally.
Keep up with John:
LinkedIn
Image Credit: LinkedIn
