Kitchenful combines meal planning with a grocery concierge service

Meet Kitchenful, a new German startup backed by Y Combinator that wants to make it easier to cook at home by taking care of menu ideas and grocery shopping. The service is currently available in early access in Germany with a focus on Berlin and Munich.

When you sign up to Kitchenful, you first have to set your preferences and goals. You can choose vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free and gluten-free options, but you can also focus on slow carbs recipes, a diet focused on healthy fats, etc.

After that, you get a meal plan for the coming week. You can review and customize each meal. For instance, if you plan to have guests, you can add a couple of persons to your Tuesday dinner. You can also remove vegetables if you usually buy your vegetables at a farmers market.

Once you’re ready to order, a virtual grocery basket is automatically generated for the user. You can review, add something that isn’t on the list, such as household items, and confirm.

Kitchenful then transfers your list of items to a major supermarket near you. The startup doesn’t fulfill orders directly — they rely on partners for that part of the process. That’s why Kitchenful describes itself as a grocery concierge service.

“Our main revenue stream is a concierge fee which we collect directly from our users for creating personalized weekly menus, handling the basket creation process, providing personalized cooking instructions for the recipes as well as leftover ideas. Additionally, we receive a commission from our supermarket partners per generated order,” Kitchenful co-founder and CEO Christian Schiller told me.

This isn’t Schiller’s first experience in food delivery. He previously spent four years as Vice President of Product at HelloFresh, a popular meal-kit company.

Kitchenful is just getting started. It has raised $1 million from Y Combinator, N26 co-founder and CEO Valentin Stalf, Souq co-founder Samih Toukan, HighSnobiety’s David Fischer, DurstExpress MD Maik Ludewig, and Mendeley co-founder Victor Henning.

The company has already established partnerships with REWE in Germany, Walmart and Kroger in the U.S. By partnering with supermarkets, Kitchenful can offer a great variety of products at supermarket prices.

It’s a different take on meal kits with a different approach to logistics, so it’s going to be interesting to see if Kitchenful becomes a popular alternative to both grocery delivery and meal-kit services.