Tre’dish receives $10 million investment as home-to-home food economy grows

Home-to-Home food technology platform and community marketplace Tre’dish has today announced a $10m seed funding round as it commercializes and scales operations across the U.S. and Canada.

The funding round was led by Tre’dish Founding Team Members; Peter Hwang, Jay Wilgar, Srin Sridharan and lead investor Wes Hall. The group of marquee investors with their past experiences in the round include:

• Wes Hall – Founder of BlackNorth Initiative, Dragons Den, Kingsdale Advisors, KSS Group of Companies
• Luis Javier Castro - Founder of Mesoamerica and Alejandria
• JP Rangaswami - Chief Scientist at Salesforce and British Telecom. Previously Chief Data Officer, Deutsche Bank. 
• Steve Smith – CEO of Recipe Unlimited (Formerly Cara Operations). EVP - Loblaw
• Andrea DelZotto – Founder of Concrete Cardinal and Director, Tridel Group of Companies 
• Qamar Qureshi – President and CBO - Knowledgehook

Tre’dish has created a food tech marketplace platform that focuses on bringing the home-to-home food sharing economy together. Home Chefs have the opportunity to sell to consumers right in their own community, a diverse selection of authentic meals prepared by the person who makes it best. With the home-to-home market growing significantly during the pandemic, home chefs have been selling their meals through social media platforms in an unstructured grey market without proper processes to instil trust for the consumer.

Furthermore, other platforms that are coming into the market have simply created a marketplace where Home Chefs meet Consumers, and no support is provided for the Chefs to build a sustainable business.

Embedded in the Tre’dish technology is our Chef Education Platform and Chef Portal that allows Home Chefs access to some of the most innovative tools in the hospitality space. Our EdTech platform provides a Home Restauranteur guidance and support to build a business right from their own home kitchen safely and profitably with little to no investment required.  

The success of the Tre’dish model has been driven by two central trends. Firstly, the hospitality industry for small owner-operated restaurants has been at a breaking point for several years with high overhead running costs (i.e. rent, labour, marketing and delivery) and very low margins making it difficult to sustain a profitable operation.

Moreover, to make a living they must sacrifice everything with zero work-life balance. Secondly, the pandemic brought into sharp focus the reality facing 3 million hospitality industry workers in the US and Canada when over 130,000 restaurants were closed disproportionally impacting the BIPOC community. For some, this provided the impetus to take to social media and sell food prepared from their home kitchens. For others, Tre’dish will now provide a new path for opportunity, employment and entrepreneurship. 

Peter Hwang, CEO and Co-Founder at Tre’dish, commented, “The pandemic was very difficult on small businesses especially owner operated restaurants. Tre’dish was built to level the playing field providing equal access and opportunity for all individuals to once again flourish in the hospitality industry regardless of their cultural background, gender, experience, or financial ability. The only thing anyone requires is an amazing recipe and the desire to share their food with the world” 

Tre’dish aims to build a global, impact-focused, food tech unicorn by providing equal opportunities for all cultural groups and new immigrants through access to a platform for any food entrepreneur to grow their presence and start a profitable business. Currently, 4 of the 5 largest shareholders represent BIPOC standing as it seeks to elevate a minority owned entrepreneurial movement. Tre’dish has built a bona fide business model, that authentically and organically creates a movement to empower and encourage historically underserved and underprivileged communities to become burgeoning food entrepreneurs and social media food influencers. 

“Tre’dish is redefining what it means to be a professional chef by taking the hospitality industry beyond its historical confines of bricks and mortar restaurants,” said Wes Hall, Executive Chairman and Founder of KSS Group of Companies Inc. “I am proud to back such an innovative business model not only because of the tremendous future potential this company has but because of the thousands of jobs and opportunity Tre’dish will create for minority and BIPOC community members who have too often been left behind. Tre’dish will connect talented chefs with customers but also provide them with business knowledge and skills that will help them be successful for the long term.” 

Tre’dish is not only a marketplace for home chefs and consumers but has set out to create a platform which empowers them to create successful businesses and have choice in what they eat respectively.  

For Home Chefs, Tre’dish is a technology portal that offers: 

• Home restaurant consulting and business optimization technology tools such as, Menu Card Development, SKU Optimization, Consolidated Group Ordering and Geo-Targeted Data Tracking so they can build efficient and profitable businesses from day one. 
• A real time food and safety platform with digital check-in, check-out processes which provides transparency on how a home chef prepares their food daily ensuring compliant health and safety protocols each and every time. 
• A media content platform and technology training system which teaches home chefs how to become food influencers and content creators. Helping them build user created content and dissemination strategies to maximize engagement and views of their social posts.  

For Consumers, Tre’dish provides:

• A marketplace platform allowing individuals to support their local home chefs knowing they are preparing their meals safely with the highest quality restaurant standards that are digitally documented. 
• An amazing culinary experience in your community. The ability to support local chefs and try their authentic, healthy, and home cooked meals delivered conveniently to your door.
• A technology and data platform that remembers your personalized food preferences to create the best experience possible – dietary, fitness, allergen and personalized meal customization that is geo-targeted in your area.
• A food content and media platform allowing users to view content from Tre’dish Home Chefs across the globe including Chefs in their own geo-targeted Virtual Food Court.  

Peter Hwang concluded, “As we launch our commercial operations, we see a massive opportunity to become thought leaders in the growing home-to-home food sharing economy. We are not only creating a disruptive technology, but we are creating a mainstream platform that can positively impact cultural diversity, mass job creation and entrepreneurial growth for generations for the foreseeable future”