About us
Our vision:
Personalized and nutritious homemade meals for everyone, every day.
We want to transform the way we eat at home: we aim to make a better nutrition compatible with our hectic lifestyles, leveraging the human factor.
How? Making everyday private cooking
convenient and affordable!
The problem
Poor nutrition and stress, and the effects of both on our health, are well known societal problems nowadays. Our hectic lifestyles make it very difficult for many families and individuals to follow good nutrition patterns on a daily basis, for example eating regularly home-made food. The lack of cooking skills as well as bad meal planning lead to significant food waste in households (they being accountable for more than 50% of the food waste generated in the European Union!).
On the other hand, many people passionate about food and cooking, either with or without formal training as a chef, are willing to offer their private cooking services, or are maybe already doing it in the informal economy, yet do not have the knowledge and network to start their own business. The bureaucracy and digitalization burdens, and even language barriers are sometimes simply too high for some people, especially for those with a migration background living in a new country (as we also know from our own experience)
So we asked ourselves:
Can we find a way to enable cooks and digitalize and simplify processes, to facilitate a smart and convenient interaction between these two groups and foster the consumption of real, homemade food?
Indeed we can!
Joy and Meal enables hobby cooks and professional chefs to build up their private cooking business. We provide them with food manipulation trainings, guidance in all formalities including business registration, and help them bridge the digitalisation gap through our platform. We significantly reduce the bureaucracy burdens for the cooks and enable them to earn a living with their cooking skills, offering their very own and authentic recipes.
Through our platform, customers can connect with local hobby cooks and professional chefs from very different origins in a very easy and convenient way. In just a couple of clicks and with little effort, all arrangements for a cooking service are done, be it meal-prep for several days or a special event with friends, family, or colleagues. Through our matching and booking process we make sure that all details and expectations are clear and understandable for both sides, ensuring a seamless private cooking experience that can be enjoyed regularly!
Our customers get freshly cooked, authentic, and personalized meals prepared in their own kitchen by the cooks, who take care of the cooking process as a whole: planning the menus, shopping the groceries, cooking, preserving, and cleaning. This is a true relieve for busy families and individuals in their daily lives, improving their nutrition and helping them gain quality time for themselves, their families, or their social lives!
Our aim for impact
- Better nutrition and improved quality of life for customers (including less invisible mental load for the person responsible for the household)
- Contribution to the reduction of the shadow economy in the food sector / household activities. We enable hobby cooks and also professional chefs to build their own cooking business and earn money completely legally and in a transparent way.
- Less food waste due to better planning and preparation of food at home, and therefore in the long-term contributing to less carbon emissions. Households generate 47 million tons of food waste yearly in Europe, which is more than half of the total food waste each year!
We’re a highly dynamic, young yet very experienced team, coming together to make a positive impact in this world.
Get to know us:
Our Mission
We strive for better nutrition, increased well-being and social welfare, and more sustainability in the food sector.
We have created an inclusive and safe space where people with varied backgrounds but sharing the same passion for cooking and eating authentic food can connect and enjoy the experience in the way they prefer!
We offer a platform for all of those who want make a living by sharing their outstanding cooking skills. We guide your way, we make your life easier.
This is us
We act people-focused and believe in the power of enablement through technology and human-centered design.
We strive to go above and beyond for our passion no matter the challenge.
We deeply appreciate the diversity of our world.
We love real and authentic food.
"I don´t like gourmet cooking or “this” cooking or “that” cooking. I like good cooking"
James Beard
We are supported by:
Winner of Start?Zuschuss! business plan competition 2022
BMWK – we are BAFA-INVEST eligible 2023
Startup incubator
11th EEX Journey
GlobalFoodTech-Accelerator 2022
Participant MGIS 2021/2022