The emergence of COVID-19 upped the ante for chefs, which is how OrderShef — founded in the Bay Area in 2019 — became more relevant. “This is a way to inspire creatives looking to share their craft through food.'
Making it in the restaurant industry has never been easy. For chefs, hard work is met by long hours and brutal competition. There’s also the harsh reality of San Francisco's restaurant survival rate; with each restaurant that opened during the pandemic, The City’s Department of Public Health data shows two restaurants closed. Just months before the world shutdown, San Francisco’s opening to closing rate was 1-to-1.4.
Daly City chef Crystle Gonzales joined the app last year with her husband, Ronald, when she wanted to find additional income and maintain flexibility to care for her daughter. After finding out about Shef from an Instagram ad, the couple decided to take the food they’d been feeding happy friends and family to the masses.
“This is a way to inspire creatives looking to share their craft through food,” Crystle Gonzales said. “I think that in the time we are living in, so many people are trying to find their route into entrepreneurship, so Shef provides that and then some.” The fact that registered “shefs” can set their own hours and prices saved North Beach’s Wayne Xavier. Xavier, a chef originally from Mumbai, is a fan of the website and app in part because of where he started: He had two food carts in downtown San Francisco that were profitable for only two weeks — the two weeks before lockdown.
“Very honestly, for me, I think there’s been nothing better,” said Xavier, who has been a trained chef for years. “The next step for me is a restaurant.” The sons of families from Iran and Italy, Salehi and Grassia met at a conference in 2018 and bonded over their similar backgrounds. Just months later, Grassia was crashing at Salehi’s home and saw the initial vision of Shef detailed on a whiteboard, a Shef spokesperson told the Examiner. Grassia and Salehi soon filmed a pitch for Y Combinator and were accepted in the 2019 startup incubator program.
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