From the age of 3 until he left for college, Alvin Salehi lived in a Buena Park motel.
His parents, Iranian immigrants, invested in the Orange County motel and then had to move in to keep it afloat. Despite those hardships, there was one thing Salehi and his three siblings could always count on: his mother’s homemade Persian stew and saffron-tinged tahdeeg.
It is those delicious memories — and the goal of helping other immigrants and refugees make a meaningful income from home — that fuel Salehi’s San Francisco-based online marketplace, Shef.
Together with co-CEO Joey Grassia, a child of Italian immigrants, Salehi started Shef in 2019, connecting the hungry take-out crowd with home chefs cooking everything from Armenian dolma to Indonesian beef soup. (Shef launched that January, the same month that AB-626 made it legal for Californians to cook and sell food from the comfort of their home kitchens).
While laws and implementation still vary by county, the home-cooking industry has grown rapidly during the pandemic. Shef has facilitated sales of more than 1 million meals across its eight markets, which include the Bay Area and Los Angeles. There are currently thousands of “shefs” selling more than a dozen types of cuisine. Another 16,000 are on the platform’s waiting list.
To date, the startup has raised $20 million in funding and is backed by a bevy of celebrities, including Padma Lakshmi and Katy Perry. Salehi, who worked as White House Senior Tech Advisor under President Barack Obama, is currently waiving all fees associated with becoming a cook on the platform for Afghan refugees resettling in America. We spoke with him about that initiative, Washington D.C. days and how Shef works.
Q: What made you want to start Shef?
A: My parents came to the United States from Iran in the 1970s. Like most immigrants, they fell on some hard times. They had to rebuild from scratch. One of the things they did was open a restaurant in Anaheim. It was so much fun working there. But statistically most restaurants fail. On a good day, they were barely breaking even. It is very clear in hindsight that if Shef had existed back then it could have made all the difference for them. We built this for people like our parents. It’s an homage to my mom and Joey’s mom and all the other parents like them.
Q: What does the onboarding process at Shef look like? How do you handle food safety?
A: Food safety is our No. 1 priority. All Shefs go through a 150-step onboarding process, which includes a food safety certification exam and food quality assessment. They are required to comply with all local laws and regulations. In regions that have not yet implemented home cooking laws, shefs are required to cook out of commercial kitchens or other legally permissible facilities.
Q: What is Shef’s cut?
A: Shef collects a 15 percent transaction fee on each order to help cover the cost of operations, marketing and support services for our shefs. Delivery fees are calculated separately based on region. One hundred percent of all tips go directly to the shef.
Q: How did your time in Washington, D.C. help with developing Shef?
A: What I learned there was how to work on regulations and effect meaningful progress in government. That experience has helped us build a lot of goodwill with regulators in states across the country. The entire reason we launched our company in January 2019 was because we were waiting for that legislature, AB-626, the California HomeMade Food Act, to pass.
Q: How did COVID affect your business?
A: COVID has disproportionately affected people of color. Eight-five percent of people on the platform are people of color, and 81 percent are women. Our entire mission expanded to help them bounce back from the pandemic. And frankly, a lot of it was organic. During the pandemic, we saw a huge increase in people who, out of necessity, were beginning to cook and sell food from home. All of a sudden regulators and legislators started reaching out to us to do right by their constituents. It was a big flexion point in the home cooking movement.
Q: Why is this type of marketplace a particularly good fit for refugees?
A: When I was at the White House, I took a trip to the border of Syria, and it was an absolutely heartbreaking experience. Once I came back to the states, I felt very compelled to do something to help refugees. I went to Meetups around the country talking to immigrant and refugee moms. And I heard the same thing over and over: “I have three kids, and I’m stuck at home. I have a spouse who works two jobs to put food on the table.” So I asked them what they did while they were at home. They said, “We watch the kids and we cook.”
A light went off. What can we do to make that transition to this country a little easier? We are setting aside $3,500 for any refugee who wants to get started on Shef. This is a time of crisis. We are expediting the onboarding process. And we are working with local groups to provide support services and help them purchase any cooking equipment they need. Shef is also partnering with local chapters of the Afghan Coalition to donate homemade meals directly to refugee families.
ALVIN SALEHI
Title: Co-Chief Executive Officer, Shef
Age: 31
Education: Juris Doctorate, Master’s Degree in Management, Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and Bachelors Degree in Political Science, all from the University of Southern California
Professional background: Senior technology advisor, The White House; co-founder, Code.gov; research affiliate, Harvard Law School; venture partner, NextGen VP; foreign affairs officer, U.S. State Department.
Residence: Pacifica
Family: Unmarried. Father, Mohsen; mother: Shahla
FIVE THINGS ABOUT ALVIN SALEHI
— Salehi once stopped a robbery near the White House. A few days later, President Obama made a joke about it at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
— Under Obama, Salehi authored the country’s first Federal Source Code Policy and spearheaded its regulatory enforcement.
— He is more of an eater than a cook, but is known to make a tasty bowl of Persian spaghetti with a side of Shirazi salad.
— The first time Salehi ordered from Shef, it was a beef and yellow split pea stew called khoresh gheymeh. He thought no version could ever compare to his mom’s. Until he tasted it: “I was transported straight back to my mom’s kitchen table and being 7 years old. I was emotional.”
— He is currently binge-watching “Salt Fat Acid Heat” on Netflix. He loves Samin Nosrat.