Cookonnect

Cookonnect, which operates its consumer service under the name Livin, is an Atlanta-based marketplace that sends vetted local professional chefs into customers' homes to cook a week of meals in a single session. A chef shops for fresh groceries, cooks in the customer's own kitchen, stocks the refrigerator with portioned meals and heating notes, and cleans up. The company distinguishes the service from meal kits, catering and delivery apps: there is no commissary or ghost kitchen, and meals are cooked fresh on site and tailored to a household's tastes, allergies and nutrition goals.

Customers complete a household profile covering allergies, picky eaters and schedules before service begins. Each week the company proposes a menu that the customer can keep, swap or modify, and feedback is used to update the profile and adjust subsequent weeks, sometimes including a change of chef. Menu categories include high-protein, GLP-1 friendly, anti-inflammatory, prenatal and gluten-free options, drawn from a rotating set of more than 50 dishes. The company also offers a guarantee that a meal that misses is free.

Chefs are professional cooks drawn from restaurants and catering kitchens in and around Atlanta. Onboarding requires multiple interviews, reference and background checks and current food safety certification. Chefs typically bring only their knives and use the equipment in the customer's kitchen. Recipes and client management are handled centrally by the company, and the menu has been curated through a partnership with a culinary school, with chefs trained to cook with substitute ingredients so dishes can be adapted to dietary restrictions.

Founding story

Founder Erica Tuggle is a Harvard MBA graduate who spent years in consumer packaged goods roles at General Mills and Coca-Cola, including as Brand Director leading food strategy at Coca-Cola. While balancing that corporate career with raising a toddler and an infant, she struggled to provide homemade meals in the way her own mother had. Conversations with other working parents facing the same constraint, and her observation at Coca-Cola that busy families wanted a convenient meal experience that did not exist in the market, led her to launch Cookonnect in early 2022 as a first-time founder.

Business model

Customers become members and book a chef who shops for groceries, cooks a week of meals in the customer's kitchen and cleans up afterward. Bookings are made online, where customers select two or four meals per person, choose dishes from a company-created menu and specify customizations; chefs are notified of jobs and can pick them up, while subscribers can request a specific chef. Memberships can be paused or cancelled at any time without penalty. The company creates the recipes and manages the client relationship, leaving chefs to shop and cook, and it positions the chef side of the marketplace as a source of more flexible and lucrative culinary work.

Revenue comes from paid in-home chef services sold on a membership or subscription basis as well as one-off bookings. Reported pricing ranges from $20 to $37 per meal depending on whether the service is one-off or part of a package, with the fee covering ingredient purchase, cooking and cleanup; one profiled household paid $684 per month for weekly two-meal service.

Traction

As of April 2024 the platform had more than 30 chefs and served the Atlanta metro within a 38-mile radius of the city center. The company's site reports more than 35,000 meals prepared and a 4.9 chef rating, a menu of over 50 dishes, and operations in both Atlanta and Los Angeles.

Latest developments

The company's consumer-facing site now operates under the Livin brand and lists service in both Atlanta and Los Angeles, with a menu organized around dietary goals such as high protein, GLP-1 friendly, anti-inflammatory, prenatal and gluten free, and a stated cumulative total of more than 35,000 meals prepared at a 4.9 chef rating.