Meez Raises $11.5M in Digital Receipt Management Platform for Chefs – AlleyWatch

For casual cooks who prepare meals, recipes serve as a guide for creating a dish. For chefs, recipes are valuable intellectual assets that have a great impact not only on the products (dishes) of restaurants, but also on their operations. Until now, there has been no effective way for culinary professionals to manage their recipes. mees is a digital recipe management platform founded by chefs that goes beyond ingredients and instructions. Digitizing recipe books will enable chefs, for the first time, to effectively manage staff training, costing, nutritional data, conception, and execution across multiple kitchens and markets. The platform has already been deployed in his 1,200 kitchens across the country and in a variety of settings including fine dining, fast casual, ghost kitchens and catering businesses. Chefs can gain a detailed understanding of how minute recipe choices affect bottom line, which is not realistic for traditional restaurant management platforms. Meez is available on a freemium basis, with a premium package starting at $79/month.

AlleyWatch interviews the founder and CEO of meez Josh Sharkey details the business, the company’s strategic plans, the latest funding round that brings the total raised to $18 million, and more.
Who are your investors and how much did you raise?
Series A led the way in this current round. craft ventures with participation from Struck Capital, FJ Labs, AME Cloud Ventures, Moving Capital, Max Mullen, Lenny Rachitsky, Mike Montero, Bobby Law, Austin Leaf, Lewis Berrill, James BesharaWhen Allison Pickens and the Todd & Rahul Foundation.

Please tell me about the products and services that meez offers.

meez is a recipe management platform designed by chefs for the entire culinary workflow, from recipe creation, iteration, training, production, collaboration, organization, costing, nutrition and allergen analysis to content sharing and distribution. The technology features yields and dynamic unit conversions for chef-tested ingredients, plus an embedded database of allergen and nutrition data and beautifully designed recipes that mimic the way chefs already experience recipe management offline. Take advantage of our unique magical recipe capture feature all housed in an intuitive UI. today.

What made you start meez?

Well, the first insight that led to something new was something quite novel many years ago. I lost the notebook that contained everything. I needed a way to store these digitally so I never lost the recipe again. (That was before Evernote and cloud apps). This idea grew over time as I became a cook, oversaw the kitchen as a chef, and eventually owned and operated my own restaurant. As chef/kitchen professionals, I was frustrated that the only technology available for our recipes was ERP systems and inventory software. It did not solve the problems associated with the process of execution and organization. We ultimately decided that if we could create a tool like meez, we could have a bigger impact in this industry.

How are the mees different?

meez is a brand new technology category for food professionals, a professional recipe workflow tool and platform for managing IP. Unlike ERPs and inventory systems, which may include reporting-oriented “recipe modules” built for operations teams, meez is designed for content authors, operations teams, as well as kitchen cooks on a daily basis. Built for use. Plus, unlike other recipe tools, meez has built-in metadata for all the ingredients you need, allowing chefs to do the tedious and time-consuming work of getting accurate food cost, nutrition, and allergen data. No need to get it.

What is meez’s target market and size?

meez is for all food professionals working in kitchens and cocktail bars. Worldwide he has over 5 million chefs and he has 20 million professional kitchens.

what is your business model?

meez is a SaaS business with several price points and freemium. Edison. We also provide ancillary services such as recipe uploading services, consulting, invoice OCR processing, and EDI feeds.

How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?

We are focused on having the lowest possible burn multiple, making sure that our current customers are incredibly satisfied and all new customers generally have a magical first experience. Ultimately, we believe that if we continue to serve our industry well and keep our customers happy, we will stay healthy. We are acutely aware of the thresholds that must be crossed to sustain our model, and we make adjustments as soon as we fall below that threshold.

What was the fundraising process like?

meez’s initial fundraising process was undoubtedly arduous as it faced the challenge of proving there was room for an entirely new tech stack for restaurants and food businesses with a deep focus on the process of cooking and execution. was. ERP and inventory software, the supposed solution for managing recipes, flooded in. It was an uphill battle. I made a conscious decision to focus on the bottom line early in the process and hope culinary professionals are willing to pay for recipe solutions that were sorely lacking in digital tools. proved. Luckily, this went pretty quickly after our initial launch, allowing us to grow revenue more than 25x in 1-12 months. The latest funding round hits certain milestones set out in the Series A and is a large partnership requiring more resources for the company, both of which helped preempt investment from Craft Ventures. rice field. We were very fortunate to have investors like Craft, Struck Capital and Relish Works follow us from seed to Series A.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in raising capital?

The biggest challenge we faced in raising capital was creating an entirely new category of technology. As such, there are no direct comparisons to benchmarks. This has resulted in biased comparisons to solutions such as inventory systems and his POS system, and generally flawed comparisons. Considering amplifying rather than replacing back-office solutions like this, the TAM is actually much larger. This was to convince investors of the concept.

What factors in your business are driving investors to write you checks?

The three main factors that drove investors to write checks were 1) speed of growth, 2) low CAC/excellent sales efficiency (we are product driven, don’t leverage our sales team, Considering that, I think it is. Organically and given that he is 3) building solutions to my own problems as a chef and restaurant owner/operator, deep knowledge of the domain.

What milestones do you plan to achieve in the next six months?

The next six months will be focused on creating v2 of the great self-onboarding experience and launching a groundbreaking new way to manage menus. From a growth perspective, we plan to continue to grow threefold year-on-year.

What advice can you give to New York companies that haven’t injected fresh capital into their banks?

We encourage you to focus feverishly on your ideal customer, make sure you’re solving a big problem for them, and stay focused on the one thing you believe will have the greatest impact. This, coupled with very clear goals and KPIs to measure success, not only keeps the team focused, but also prioritizes only what matters most, before reaching the next milestone. Protect valuable resources by removing initiatives that can waste resources.

Where do you see the company going now in the near future?

In the short term, we’re still staying in our lane and creating a universal recipe medium to make meez more accessible and adoptable by all culinary professionals around the world.

What is your favorite restaurant in the city?

I love many of them, and many of my closest friends are chefs in the city, so that’s a tough question. A friend of mine and one of my favorite chefs just opened a restaurant called Coroman at the Ace Hotel and you should check it out.

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