Chef'd

Chef’d provides branded, premium meal kits delivered directly to its customers nationwide. It partners with renowned celebrity chefs, recipe publishers, lifestyle bloggers and restaurants to select easy to prepare, gourmet quality recipes. It then handpicks premium ingredients, adds in a simple-to-read recipe card and ships it in a cold pack box direct to a customer’s door.

Chef’d has signed over 50 partners, with a combined reach of 29 million consumers. Partners make their recipes available to Chef’d and, in return, receive a $0.50 royalty fee per kit sold. The Chef’d box and website also acts as a marketing platform for these partners. The company claims that these partnerships lower customer acquisition costs and bring in more qualified traffic compared to its competitors.

Chef’d currently offers over 70 recipes with plans to grow them by 30/month. It also allows customers to reorder favorite meals and delivers 5 days a week vs. 3 (compared to Blue Apron and Plated). It is also the only brand in the category that does not require a customer to commit to a subscription.

Sales launched in late March 2015 and the meals are distributed from a facility in El Segundo, CA . Chef’d has also secured a facility in Philadelphia which should be online in fall 2015. Chef’d anticipates a margin of 30% initially, with the goal of 40%. It envisions several revenue streams: the meals/boxes themselves, product placement (from partners) and slotting fees (from suppliers).

Proceeds from this round will be used for marketing, expanding their operations and as a general reserve. The founders expect to close a Series B by the end of 2015 but also have the personal finances to fund the company themselves.

Team Background

Jesse Langley - President

Jesse manages Business Development at Chef’d.

Most recently, Jesse was the Senior Program Manager for Southern California Edison, where he developed and executed strategies with over 100 local governments to advance their data enterprises and climate change mitigation efforts. Prior to that, he was a Partner at Cardinal Investments, where he led the development of a 180 room resort. He also developed a beachfront resort in Fiji, increasing the property from 87 acres to 1000 acres through acquisitions. Jesse began his career as a Special Operations Officer in the US Navy.

Jesse holds a BBA from the University of Southern California.

Kyle Ransford - Founder & CEO

Prior to founding Chef’d, Kyle was the founder and Chairman of the Bank of Manhattan, a publicly traded bank which provides deposits and credit primarily to small and medium sized businesses, as well as individuals located in and around Los Angeles County.

Previously, he served as a General Partner and the CIO of Real Estate for Halcyon Asset Management, a multi-strategy hedge fund. Kyle began his career as an investment banker with Houlihan, Lokey, Howard & Zukin (a subsidiary of Houlihan Lokey), where he executed more than $1 billion in M&A. He then founded Cardinal Investments in 2001, a residential and commercial real estate investment firm.

Kyle holds a BBA from Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business and an MBA in Finance from the University of Southern California.

Co-Investors