From restaurant discovery to on-demand chefs and a calorie controlled food subscription, there are a growing number of interesting, mouth-watering tech startups out to change the way South Africans eat. It’s interesting to see how many of these foodie startups have grown alongside popular lifestyle trends such as the surge in craft beers, specific health diets and freshly brewed flat whites.
InChef SA
InChef is like the Uber of chefs, because we’re too lazy to cook ourselves. Pricing starts at R4 000 per month for four meals a week, and you’ll get your personal chef come to the comfort of your home and do what he does best. “Private chefs are assumed to be the domain of the affluent, but with our pricing model, we can bring this experience to a much larger audience,” the company says.
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ServdFresh
Healthy food subscription at its best. Healthy fresh food gets delivered to your front door each Friday. A 20-day calorie controlled package by ServdFresh will put you back R3 680, which includes three meals and two snacks a day. Excluding the snacks, this means that a meal costs R61 which isn’t too steep for a calorie controlled meal that’s fresh and easy to prepare.
DailyDish
The service delivers fresh ingredients and step-by-step recipe cards for four meals every week. The Daily Dish‘s Classic Menu option puts you back R670 per week which serves two people. That equates to R84 a meal.
It also has a Low Carb and a Vegetarian plan of which the food looks very, very good. Think Almond Veg Stirfries and Halloumi Burgers with Harissa Relish.
Read more: What’s for dinner? Decide with Daily Dish, the service that shops for you
Wild Organics
Wild Organics delivers fresh produce — fruit, veg, cheese and meats — at collection points scattered all over the Western Cape. The goods come in a variety of grocery bags with the Standard Bag option (11-12 types of fruit and veg) going for R160. It’s ecommerce shop is also open from Wednesday to Saturday afternoon.
Zomato
Most of you Ventureburn readers have heard of Zomato before. The restaurant discovery service was founded in India in 2008 and provides up-to-date information, menus and photos of the more than 300 000 restaurants. It operates in 18 countries and is — the last time we checked — valued at around US$660-million.
It’s like TripAdvisor for restaurants which means that you won’t grow hungry for options of where to get your next meal from.
Sideways
Now, if you’re specifically looking for wine, Sideways is probably the app for you.
Read more: Sideways wine farm app launches to make our summer more tipsy
The service which launched last week helps you find your favourite wine farms, routes and flavours around the Cape’s Winelands. After only being a few days old, it already lists over 500 farms.
CyberCellar
Backed by Silvertree Capital and having been on the scene for over a decade, CyberCellar features over 3 000 different wines to choose from online. The ecommerce shop has a monthly Mixed Wine option which goes for R500 for six different wines. You can also buy liquor and beer on the site.
League of Beers
Founded by Rob Heynes, League of Beers — together with its badass name — has managed to garner a strong community of support, with people all over the country turing to its online storefront for their favourite craft beers. Most notably is the ecommerce site’s Beer of the Month Club which caters a mixed case of 12 interesting beers for R400 a month.
It’s product range also makes for great gifts. Hint hint.
Cape Coffee Beans
Now to round things off, what better way to do it than with a cup of freshly brewed coffee?
As the case with micro breweries and wine farms, coffee roasteries have taken South Africans’ daily lifestyles by storm. Besides the cappuccinos and the flat whites, people also love their special roasts and exotic blends. To capitalise on this, Cape Coffee Beans is making roasteries’ coffee beans available online for the whole country to enjoy. It offers free courier delivery with every purchase over R300.
And that’s it! Let us know which are your favourites or which ones we’ve missed. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna go make me a grilled cheese sandwich.
