When Sam Nasserian went out to restaurants in the San Francisco area, he had one main complaint. Every restaurant was so damn loud he could never hold a conversation with friends. Was he the only person not enjoy his dining experience because of the ear-popping noise? Sam is a problem solver.
Cozymeal – A Culinary Journey
His frequent frustration led him to start CozyMeal, a chef on demand app for cooking classes and in-home, quiet dining experiences.
His thought was that if you could find a fabulous chef to cook for you at home, why go out to a loud restaurant? He knew he’d need to carefully vet each chef to manage the quality of the experience. In less than five years, he has expanded from two to twenty-six cities with fifty more markets planned for 2019. Today his company has more than twelve hundred classes.
You can book chefs for any dietary requirement or cuisine with options to go to their kitchen or have the classes in the home or cater a small and intimate dinner party. A course costs about $65 per person. Having a fantastic chef teach a lesson in your home allows you to enjoy a casual (cozy) meal with a reimagined food dining experience.
There have been other companies that tried this approach, but Nasserian believes that if you carefully screen the chefs and give them marketing tools to succeed, his model will work nationally. Many of his chefs have worked at top restaurants and are burned out from the restaurant business. Several are cookbook authors too, so there is some celebrity element to his offering.
More than half of his customers are millennials and women represent 65% of those making the arrangements to hire the chef. Often, Cozymeal is being used to celebrate a big event in a home like anniversaries, date nights and female gatherings. Even businesses are booking Cozymeal for team building activities.
The business model is simple. Like Airbnb, he takes a percentage (roughly 20%) of the fees charged. He provides the platform and makes ordering a chef to cook at home, as easy as ordering an Uber.
Successful entrepreneurs who observe problems, try to find solutions that offer alternatives approaches. Instead of creating quiet restaurants (something I have written about in the past), his strategy was to bring the chef to your home. An informal cooking class where you can taste and learn changes the idea of dining. And it is no surprise that this appeals to millennials, who value experiences as part of a new form of status.
Be a Problem Solver and Three Questions for Startups
- Are you solving a problem conventionally, or seeing the challenge with fresh eyes? How could you achieve your objective but in a counterintuitive way? Like a charity disguised as a restaurant, how can you find an unexpected solution?
- If everyone is lining up to solve a problem with the same approach, why not focus on a small and different idea. Solve the issue in a way that others are ignoring. Don’t make a quieter restaurant, move the restaurant experience and bring it to your home. Design thinking is the key to success.
- Word of mouth is the most powerful way to grow a business. As Jay Baer writes in his book “Talk Triggers” how will you let your customers help do your marketing by telling your simple story to their friends?
If you still have reservations, maybe it is time to cozy up to a different type of culinary journey that gives you a chance to explore a choice to a noisy restaurant.
Need help solving a marketing problem with a fresh pair of eyes? You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Try my new chat feature on my site if you have a quick question.
Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash
