Like many startups, Homemade came to life in a garage.
“We put up some phones and some webcams, duct taped it together and just opened it up,” said founder Joel Gamoran. “At first there were 10 people. Then 30.”
Two and a half years later, Gamoran has left the garage for a waterfront studio in Seattle and his livestreaming platform for cooking classes has attracted 3.5 million attendees who have watched 50 million minutes of instruction.
Gamoran is a celebrated chef who has worked in restaurants, hosted a TV series, written a book and traveled the country leading classes for Sur La Table. But when the pandemic hit and shut everything down, he said it was difficult to live out his purpose. He just wanted to inspire people to cook.
In an age of remote everything, Homemade was the answer.
The startup has helped take Gamoran’s jovial personality and cooking skills to a wider, global audience.
The idea has been a hit with viewers, as well as the sponsor brands that enable Gamoran to keep the content free. A recent class on cheesesteak sandwiches, for instance, was sponsored by Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner, the national marketing and research program funded by U.S. cattle farmers and ranchers.
The 45-minute classes are streamed on Zoom twice a week, teaching home cooks how to make a variety of dishes. The interactivity is what fuels Gamoran, who considers the format more personal than a YouTube video, MasterClass or Instagram Reel. He likes to encourage viewers who are trying a new recipe, answer their questions about dietary needs, critique someone’s technique, and so on.
“It’s different than turning on Food Network,” Gamoran said. “With Homemade it’s kind of a lean-in experience.”
Sponsors like the idea of having their product or ingredient go beyond a static web page on Amazon, he said. If someone is considering buying a $450 mixer or blender, they want to see it used, ask questions and have a chef endorse it. It’s demoing in an engaging way, at scale.
By partnering with a brand such as Crate & Barrel, Homemade can also draft off a huge email subscriber list and gain followers of its own.
And beyond an olive oil company paying to have its product used in a salad class, Homemade helps organizations such as the American Diabetes Association teach people how to eat better. Gamoran sees a huge opportunity in preventative health, perhaps creating cooking content for a health care provider or insurer.
In the beginning, the classes were intimate and small. But the first 1,000-person class opened Gamoran’s eyes about the potential — and exposed the need for better technology. They’ve had to deal with bad actors in classes and the stream can be spotty when that many people are on trying to interact.
Homemade is piloting with another streaming platform to improve quality and another chef acts as moderator to quickly answer questions in a chat. It has ideas for features like clickable shopping to increase engagement.
‘It’s different than turning on Food Network. With Homemade it’s kind of a lean-in experience.’
— Joel Gamoran
Gamoran hopes that in 10 years augmented or virtual reality will work well enough to make people feel like they’re actually in his studio taking a class. For now, he’s thinking about a hybrid format where people take classes in person in Seattle while others around the world watch the stream.
Beyond the classes, Homemade is offering its space for side business opportunities: Venue and Studio. Gamoran views Venue as a way for remote teams to gather. Studio is aimed at creative types such as food photographers who could use the setup for their own projects.
Gamoran is CEO and he employs a head of operations, along with a team of freelancers, chefs, production and sales people. He calls his startup “scrappy” in the truest sense of the word — or perhaps it’s because the sustainably minded chef’s TV show and book, in which he promotes reducing food waste, both played off the term.
The company has raised about $500,000 from friends and family, and more ingredients are being assembled by the chef to boost future success.
In a nod to Gamoran’s TV chops, Homemade is teaming with PBS on a cooking show that will be shot with a live audience in the startup’s studio, airing this October to January.
“We know this show is going to put us in a different stratosphere,” he said.
