Shef doing things that don't scale

In the bustling food delivery landscape dominated by restaurant aggregators and professional kitchens, Shef carved out a unique niche by focusing on a segment of the market that had been largely overlooked: home cooks from immigrant communities. Founded in 2019 by Alvin Salehi and Joey Grassia, both first-generation Americans, Shef’s journey demonstrates how a deeply personal mission combined with a highly targeted, unscalable early growth strategy can lay the foundation for a successful marketplace platform.

The Personal Mission Behind Shef

The story of Shef begins with the personal experiences of its founders. Alvin Salehi, the son of Iranian immigrants, and Joey Grassia, whose parents came from Italy, grew up in households where food was more than just sustenance—it was a connection to cultural heritage and a potential livelihood.

“We started Shef to help immigrants like our parents earn a living,” Salehi has explained in interviews. Both founders had witnessed firsthand how their parents and other immigrants in their communities possessed incredible culinary skills but often lacked accessible pathways to monetize these talents in the traditional food industry.

The name “Shef” itself contains the word “she” as an homage to the founders’ mothers, both of whom were talented home cooks. This personal connection to the mission gave the founders an authentic understanding of both sides of the marketplace they were building—the home cooks (supply side) and the customers seeking authentic, homemade ethnic cuisine (demand side).

The Challenge of Building a Two-Sided Marketplace

Like all marketplace platforms, Shef faced the classic chicken-and-egg problem: they needed cooks to attract customers, but they also needed customers to attract cooks. This challenge is particularly acute for food marketplaces, where quality, trust, and consistency are paramount.

Rather than taking a broad approach and trying to build both sides of the marketplace simultaneously across a wide geographic area, Salehi and Grassia made a strategic decision that couldn’t possibly scale in the long term but proved crucial for their early growth: they would focus intensely on immigrant communities in the Bay Area.

This decision was based on a key insight: within these communities, informal food economies already existed. People were already cooking for their neighbors and community members; they just weren’t doing it through a formal platform.

Tapping Into Existing Informal Networks

Instead of trying to create a market from scratch, Shef’s founders recognized they could tap into existing informal networks of home cooks who were already serving their communities. Their approach was methodical yet highly personal and labor-intensive—a perfect example of doing things that don’t scale.

“We began by serving immigrant communities in the Bay Area—allowing them to easily share extremely authentic dishes that couldn’t be found at local restaurants,” the founders have explained. But how exactly did they find these home cooks?

The process started with their own personal networks. “We found our first shefs by asking where our friends were purchasing their authentic dishes, then onboarded those shefs,” they revealed. This simple yet effective approach leveraged existing relationships and word-of-mouth recommendations to identify talented home cooks who were already preparing food for others.

What they discovered was a vibrant underground economy of home cooking that operated largely through messaging apps and social media groups. “They had their favorite neighborhood cooks who they were already ordering from (usually using WhatsApp or WeChat), and many of these folks were also on FB Groups (of that specific immigrant community).”

This insight was gold. Rather than trying to convince people to start cooking or to try a new platform, they could onboard cooks who already had customers and cooking operations, just without the formal structure, food safety certifications, and broader reach that Shef could provide.

The Unscalable Onboarding Process

Armed with this knowledge, the Shef team took a hands-on approach to onboarding their first cooks. They asked for introductions to these neighborhood cooks and joined Facebook Groups specific to various immigrant communities. This wasn’t a mass marketing campaign or digital outreach strategy; it was personal, one-on-one relationship building.

This approach required significant time and effort from the founding team. They couldn’t automate this process or outsource it to a growth team. They needed to be personally involved in identifying, vetting, and onboarding each cook. They needed to understand the specific needs, challenges, and cooking styles of each immigrant community they worked with.

For each potential “shef,” the team would explain the concept, help with the onboarding process, ensure compliance with local cottage food laws, and provide guidance on how to use the platform. This high-touch approach meant they could only add a limited number of cooks at a time, but it ensured quality and built trust within the communities they were serving.

Building Community Trust

For Shef to succeed, they needed to build trust not just with individual cooks but with entire immigrant communities. This required cultural sensitivity and a genuine appreciation for the traditions and values of each community they worked with.

By starting with introductions from trusted community members and joining community-specific Facebook Groups, Shef positioned themselves not as outsiders trying to profit from these communities, but as enablers helping community members share their culinary heritage and earn income.

This approach was particularly important given the sensitive nature of home cooking businesses. In many jurisdictions, selling homemade food operated in a legal gray area until relatively recently. By helping cooks navigate these regulations and obtain proper certifications, Shef provided value beyond just a technology platform.

The Virtuous Cycle of Authentic Cuisine

As Shef onboarded more cooks from specific immigrant communities, they began to see a virtuous cycle emerge. The authentic dishes prepared by these home cooks attracted customers who were seeking genuine ethnic cuisine that wasn’t available in restaurants. These customers, satisfied with the quality and authenticity of the food, would spread the word within their networks.

This word-of-mouth growth was particularly powerful within immigrant communities, where recommendations from community members carried significant weight. As one community member put it, “If you want authentic Iranian food, you don’t go to Yelp—you ask your Iranian friends where they get their food.”

By focusing on authenticity and cultural specificity rather than broad appeal, Shef created a unique value proposition that resonated deeply with both cooks and customers. They weren’t trying to be everything to everyone; they were being something very specific to communities that were underserved by existing food delivery options.

Expanding Beyond the Initial Communities

While Shef’s initial focus on specific immigrant communities in the Bay Area was intentionally narrow, it provided them with a solid foundation from which to expand. As they established a reputation for quality and authenticity within these communities, they were able to gradually broaden their reach.

The lessons learned from their early, high-touch approach informed their expansion strategy. They understood the importance of community connections, the value of authentic cuisine, and the specific needs of home cooks. This knowledge allowed them to replicate their success in new communities and regions, even as they developed more scalable processes.

By 2021, Shef had expanded to multiple cities across the United States and raised significant venture capital funding, including a $20 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. This growth was built on the foundation of their early, unscalable approach to targeting immigrant communities.

The Impact on Immigrant Livelihoods

Beyond building a successful business, Shef’s approach has had a meaningful impact on the livelihoods of immigrant home cooks. By providing a legitimate platform for these cooks to share their culinary heritage and earn income, Shef has created economic opportunities for people who might otherwise struggle to enter the traditional food industry.

This impact became particularly apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many immigrants lost their jobs and turned to home cooking as a source of income. Shef provided a ready-made platform for these individuals to monetize their cooking skills, with some cooks reportedly earning up to $1,000 per week through the platform.

The company has also expanded its mission to support refugees, partnering with organizations to help Afghan refugees earn income through home cooking after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Lessons for Startups

Shef’s approach to targeting immigrant communities offers several valuable lessons for startups:

1. Start with Communities You Understand: Salehi and Grassia’s personal connections to immigrant communities gave them insights that would have been difficult for outsiders to obtain. Their authentic understanding of these communities informed their approach and helped build trust.
2. Look for Existing Behaviors: Rather than trying to create new behaviors, Shef identified existing patterns (home cooks already selling to their communities) and built a platform to formalize and expand these activities.
3. Embrace High-Touch Processes Early On: Shef’s hands-on approach to onboarding cooks couldn’t scale indefinitely, but it was crucial for establishing quality standards and building community trust in the early stages.
4. Focus on Underserved Niches: By targeting immigrant communities that were underserved by mainstream food delivery platforms, Shef created a unique value proposition that resonated deeply with their target users.
5. Build on Cultural Authenticity: Shef’s emphasis on authentic, traditional cuisine created a differentiated offering that couldn’t easily be replicated by generic food delivery services.

The Future of Home Cooking

As Shef continues to grow, they face the challenge of maintaining the authenticity and community connections that defined their early approach while scaling to serve more cooks and customers. Their journey from a highly targeted, community-specific platform to a broader marketplace for home cooking illustrates the power of starting small and focused before expanding.

By beginning with immigrant communities in the Bay Area and taking a high-touch, unscalable approach to onboarding their first cooks, Shef built a foundation of quality, trust, and authenticity that has supported their subsequent growth. Their story demonstrates that sometimes, the best way to build a large-scale platform is to start by doing things that don’t scale at all.