Nearly three years after launching, Toronto-based Cookin has been wholly acquired by another larger player in the chef-made meal delivery space in New York’s CookUnity.
Founded in early 2022 by CEO Morley Ivers and president Michael Baruch, Cookin has built a homemade food delivery marketplace in Toronto and software to help food entrepreneurs across North America launch, operate, and grow online food businesses.
“We realized that one plus one equals three or more.”
Morley Ivers,
Cookin
In an interview with BetaKit, Ivers said he got connected with CookUnity co-founder and CEO Mateo Marietti last year when Cookin had begun raising a Series A round. Ivers said he learned that the two food tech entrepreneurs had the same vision for uniting people through food but a different—and complementary—go-to-market strategy.
Cookin’s platform helps individual chefs set up and run their own businesses. “It’s almost like Shopify, but for the food industry,” Ivers said. CookUnity’s model entails enabling chefs to offer meal delivery subscriptions via large-scale commercial kitchens.
“We were tackling the micro-enterprise market, and [CookUnity] was tackling [the] large-scale, national, commercial kitchen side of the market,” Ivers said. “It was just one of these situations where I think we realized that one plus one equals three or more, and by joining forces, we had the potential to drive much more value for chefs.”
The all-stock transaction closed last month. Cookin’s entire 20-person team has stayed on as part of the deal, including Ivers and Baruch, who remain in their current roles, where they will focus on growing Cookin while also spearheading CookUnity’s expansion into Canada.
Ivers declined to disclose the acquisition price but claimed that Cookin’s 52 shareholders unanimously approved the deal, which gives them equity stakes in CookUnity. Ivers confirmed that CookUnity is profitable, approaching $500 million USD in revenue, and will have grown about 80 percent this year.
Prior to this deal, Cookin had raised $14.8 million in total pre-seed and seed funding from a group that included Relay Ventures, Mistral Ventures, Sobeys, and angels like Wealthsimple co-founder and CEO Michael Kitchen, Eater and Resy founder Ben Leventhal, and Michelin Star chef and Alo Group owner Patrick Kriss, among others.
“This [transaction] catapulted [Cookin] forward in terms of where we stood as a seed-stage business into a much later stage, growth-stage company that is very, very well-positioned for the future,” Ivers said.
Image courtesy Morley Ivers via LinkedIn.
Cookin, which caters to cooks ranging from home chefs to small restaurants, has grown to serve 1,500 food creators across 40 United States (US) states and 10 Canadian provinces.
CookUnity manages logistics, packaging, and delivery for chefs. The company, which was founded in 2015, most recently closed a $47-million Series B round in 2021.
Ivers confirmed that the merged entity plans to seek several hundred million dollars in strategic funding over the next two years to invest in its tech offerings.
The Cookin CEO claimed that CookUnity has chefs on its platform currently making millions of dollars annually without the conventional overhead associated with running a restaurant. According to Ivers, CookUnity is responsible for buying the ingredients chefs require to make meals and spends approximately $100 million per year on ingredients.
RELATED: Fresh Prep acquires fellow Vancouver food delivery startup Peko
The Cookin CEO said that chefs can expect to see some integration between Cookin and CookUnity going forward, including through the launch of Ingredients Club, a new program that will leverage the buying power of CookUnity to help Cookin chefs access wholesale prices.
CookUnity said that Cookin’s focus on professional home chefs and hyperlocal approach presents new opportunities for the company and its customers. Going forward, chefs using CookUnity can diversify via Cookin’s à la carte and limited-time “drop” models, while successful Cookin’s chefs can graduate to CookUnity’s subscription model. Customers of both stand to benefit from more variety and buying options.
Cookin marks CookUnity’s second acquisition to date following its purchase of San Francisco-based MobyDish earlier this year. Through the Cookin deal, CookUnity plans to expand into Canada—its first market outside of the US—where it plans to open a large-scale commercial kitchen in the Greater Toronto Area that will allow Torontonians to order meals from celebrity chefs.
“The restaurant industry is deeply inequitable [and] both CookUnity and Cookin are two platforms that allow chefs to earn a greater piece of the pie by selling their meals directly to consumers,” a CookUnity spokesperson told BetaKit.
Now, Ivers said, “[chefs] can become entrepreneurs right out of their home kitchens, or they can build scalable operations for food delivery out of our commercial kitchens.”
Feature image courtesy Cookin.