Foody cooks up marketplace for culinary creators

Husband-and-wife co-founders Daniel and Brenna Stitzel are developing a way for foodies to monetize their culinary creations and closed on a round of $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to officially launch Foody.

The investment was led by Serena Ventures, with Goodwater Capital and a group of angel investors joining, including Patreon’s Jack Conte, former Postmates exec Vivek Patel, Greenoaks Capital’s Neil Mehta and KeepTruckin’s Shoaib Makani.

Most Americans — 98% of them — cook at home at least once a week, but finding recipes means long internet searches and wading through food blog stories and ads to get to the recipe.

Foody enables users to buy recipes, or upload their own, and keep them in one ad-free place. It also is partnering with Michelin-star chefs, like Jeremiah Tower, and food bloggers to monetize their recipes and other content while building relationships with fans.

Foody app. Image Credits: Foody

The idea for the company came about when Brenna Stitzel decided to go to culinary school in 2020 after a career in banking. When the global pandemic shut down her school and available food items on store shelves dwindled, Stitzel began getting inquiries from friends about what they could make with the pantry staples on hand.

“People were looking for content, so I started putting out recipes, but I wasn’t satisfied with the tools available,” she added. “There was not one great software to help food creators of all kinds, from restaurants to authors, to monetize their content and get it out there, nor was there one central place for home chefs to save, share and store their recipes.”

The Stitzels then set out to build a tool for creators to publish and share recipes that they can push out to fans with QR codes and URLs. Foodies can sign up for free to use the site, and then be able to put together a collection of recipes for a small fee.

Foody is launching with over 30 creators, including a curated list of a dozen featured creators, including Tower, Brandon Jew (Mister Jiu’s), Evan and Sarah Rich (Rich Table), Harold Villarosa, Gaby Dalkin, Amanda Frederickson, Amanda Haas, Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz, A16 Restaurant and Tu David Phu.

In Serena Ventures, the Stitzels said they found partners “who share our vision for building amazing software that empowers creators and improves the day to day lives of home cooks.”

“Food and cooking are such big parts of my life, both for my profession and with my family,” Serena Williams, founder and managing partner of Serena Ventures, said in a written statement. “I’m so excited to try new recipes on Foody, and I believe it’s time culinary creators from every culture and background have an opportunity to turn their creativity into income.

The company intends to use the new funding to grow its team of 10 in engineering and development to build out new products and features, Dan Stitzel said.

“We have a big vision for what amazing kitchen software could be that includes planning weekly meals and integrating with grocery delivery services,” he added.