Bon Appétit!
Katy Perry and fiancé Orlando Bloom— along with fellow stars Padma Lakshmi, Tiffany Haddish, chef Aarón Sanchez and more industry heavyweights — have invested a total of $20 million inShef, a platform that enables home cooks to sell meals in their communities, PEOPLE confirms.
According to the company, more than 85 percent of their home cooks — who offer customers authentic ethnic foods like freshly wrapped dumplings, coconut curry, jerk chicken, enfriladas de pollo and more — identify as people of color.
Katy Perry (L) and Orlando Bloom.Steve Granitz/WireImage
Throughout the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the restaurant industry has been especially hard hit, with more thaneight million restaurant employees laid offor furloughed, according to the National Restaurant Association.
Joey Grassia (left) and Alvin Salehi (right) with several home Shefs.Shef
“We’ve had the privilege of partnering with lawmakers across the United States to introduce well-informed legislation that will put people back to work and revitalize our local economies,” says co-founder Salehi in a statement. “We will continue advocating for the safe expansion of home cooking laws to help underrepresented communities land on their feetafter the pandemic.”
RELATED VIDEO: Gavin Rossdale Invites Us Into His Kitchen For A Vegan Twist On A Classic Italian Dish!
Grassia adds that the company currently has a waitlist of more than 12,000 home chefs hoping to join the platform. “This funding will allow us to expand access to our platform so we can create meaningful opportunities for these talented cooks,” he says.
Currently available in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Seattle, Chicago, Houston, Austin and Boston, Shef announced last August it had raised $8.8 million in seed funding and had already served over 200,000 meals.
source: people.com
