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- home-cooking is resonating amongst New Yorkers for a few reasons, mainly loneliness and a craving for personal connection, exacerbated by getting “sucked into your phone watching other people’s experiences.”
- “I believe a meal cooked in small batches, with a high level of care, delivered with a handwritten note gives it a feeling of intention, that something was done for you.
The co-founders of Umi: Khalil Tawil, Derek Gottfrid and Hallie Meyer (Photo courtesy of Umi)
Would you eat a meal cooked by your neighbor?
Hallie Meyer, Khalil Tawil, and former Tumblr VP Derek Gottfrid are empowering a handful of New Yorkers to share their home-cooked grub with hungry urbanites through their newly launched company, Umi Kitchen. It works like this: vetted and trained home cooks design a menu each week. Through the Umi app, patrons can log in, see what’s cooking (literally) and place their Umi order. The meal—often an appetizer, entree, and dessert—is then delivered via Postmates in a compostable container, with a handwritten note from the Umi (Arabic for “mother”). The goal, says Hallie, is simple: home cooking, delivered.
The concept emerged at Yale University when Khalil, then a first-year law student, yearned for his mother’s cooking. Khalil posted an ad on Craigslist writing: "Craving a home-cooked meal. Sick of getting take out." People in New Haven responded, telling him about the meals they could offer, such as chilaquiles that one woman would make for her son when he was home from school. Others said they were empty nesters, missed cooking for their kids and would be happy to provide Khalil a home-cooked meal.
Around the same time, Khalil met Hallie, then a second-semester senior at Yale. Hallie was invited to partake in Khalil's first "umi" meal and soon after the company's concept was born. With Khalil's insights, Hallie's deep food industry knowledge (she's the daughter of acclaimed restaurateur, Danny Meyer), and eventually Gottfrid's startup know-how, they hit the ground running. Beginning in early 2016, Umi rolled out deliveries in Brooklyn’s Park Slope and Sunset Park neighborhoods. The Umi team recently announced their delivery expansion from 116th Street down to Houston, from 5th Avenue to the East River in Manhattan.
Like many startups and trends today, Umi harks back to a simpler time—pre-Internet, pre-Paleo, pre-Goop—when good food simply meant good ingredients cooked with love.
Hallie, now co-running a business at the ripe age of 23, believes the concept of home-cooking is resonating amongst New Yorkers for a few reasons, mainly loneliness and a craving for personal connection, exacerbated by getting “sucked into your phone watching other people’s experiences.”
An Umi chef. (Image courtesy of Umi Kitchen)
“I believe a meal cooked in small batches, with a high level of care, delivered with a handwritten note gives it a feeling of intention, that something was done for you. It’s a true gesture of hospitality,” she says, noting that the purpose of the meal is not to just bring joy to the diners but also to the cooks.
“On the customer side,” Hallie says, “the concern is: how can you recreate the feeling that dinner is taken care of and will be so good? On the Umi side, it’s: how can we recreate the feeling for them of taking something out of the oven, and showing it to someone and saying ‘this is for you’?”
Ultimately, it’s about setting Umi as far apart as possible from the usual Seamless experience.
“I get all these amazing notes from my Umi,” an Umi user told me, who has ordered from the same Umi five times. “There’s that trust level—I know who’s making my food and I can talk to her and she can talk to me. She asks what I like about the meal, what she could change. Now going to a restaurant feels weird. I trust my Umi."
Want to learn more about the startup life at Umi? Check out Forbes' podcast First 200 Days featuring Umi Kitchen.
