By Will Novosedlik

Toronto is the most culturally diverse city in the world. And before you think New York or London, there are over 250 ethnicities and 170 languages represented in the Toronto region. Over 51% of its population is foreign-born. In fact, there are more Asian-born people in Toronto than in San Francisco or Dallas, and more Greeks than on the island of Santorini.

Of all the benefits this diverse population has bestowed, one of the most exciting is the cuisine. Toronto is a culinary joy ride. You name it, you can find it somewhere in this city of six million souls. And while half the fun lies in seeking it out, there’s an app that will bring it to your door, homemade.

Cookin is not just another delivery app. Most of the apps that exist prioritize speed over selection, limiting your choices to standard restaurant fare. Cookin allows customers to order meals made by home cooks, delivered ready-to-eat with all the individual touches that make cooking at home so special. But how do they stand out in a pretty saturated market, enough to start expanding further through the GTA?

Matt Rice, director of growth at Cookin, says, “After speaking with hundreds of cooks and customers, we believe there is a gap in the market. The existing infrastructure of food delivery feels a little impersonal, so we have positioned ourselves around the idea that in an increasingly impersonal world, we deliver a very personal home-cooked experience.”

The brand is benefiting from the behavioural shifts created by the pandemic. The lockdowns saw over 200,000 restaurant and hospitality workers across Canada lose their jobs. While some restaurants were able to pivot from eat-in to home delivery, a lot of displaced cooks in that cohort were forced to figure out how to work from home. And, of course, customers very quickly learned to rely on home delivery. Cookin’s sweet spot lies at the intersection of those two trends.

The marketing strategy is aimed at the cooks themselves and their potential customers. Rice parses the cooks into three segments, from those who want to build community by sharing their passion, to those who want to build a career, to those who are just looking for a side hustle. As for customers, Cookin is focused on people who crave culinary adventure and discovery.

Over 4,000 talented food creators have applied to build their small businesses on the Cookin platform. One of the home cooks who has embraced the platform – and has become one of the brand’s media ambassadors – is former Momofuku line cook Sunta Sem, founder of Soup & Hustle. Her specialty is Cambodian cuisine, and Cookin has given her a low-risk way to build a business around the foods and flavours she grew up with and loves the most. In a recent Breakfast Television interview, Sem pointed out that there are a lot of under-represented communities in the food market, but it’s not always easy to access their cuisine at a brick-and-mortar restaurant, store or even a ghost kitchen. The beauty of the Cookin platform for her is that it takes care of everything from packaging to delivery to customer support, allowing her to focus on what she does best: making the food.

While most of the cooks cook from home, whether they be professionals or just passionate and talented amateurs, Cookin also provides access to a full industrial kitchen for those whose living spaces may be too small to allow them to operate at sufficient scale.

The brand has reached out to both groups with a multi-channel approach. Says Rice, “We’ve experimented with lots of different channels. In the early days we got a lot of word-of-mouth referrals. When we launched the platform in October, we signed up 30 cooks. Now we’ve got about 100. And those cooks each have their own communities and networks. Earned media began to pick up on traditional channels like Breakfast Television, CityTV, Global News, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Elle Gourmet and Yahoo Finance. Lots of folks are learning about us through TikTok, Instagram, out-of-home digital media and partnerships like the one we recently did with American Express.”

At the moment, the only truly competitive brands in the space are south of the border. While Cookin is currently focused on the GTA, their sights are set on expansion to four other cities in Canada and one in the U.S. by end of the year.