companies

SideChef

San Jose kitchen-assistant app with 18,000+ step-by-step smart recipes, hands-free voice guidance, and an AI photo-to-recipe generator.

SideChef was founded in San Jose, California in 2013 by Kevin Yu, who has described starting the company without knowing how to cook and wanting a more guided alternative to static recipe blogs. The app grew around interactive, step-by-step recipes with photos, video, and voice-guided instructions rather than a simple scrolling ingredient list, and it has raised more than $16 million across seed, Series A, and Series B rounds, with LG among its investors and smart-appliance partners. Beyond the consumer app, SideChef licenses its recipe and guided-cooking technology to appliance makers for connected ovens and cooktops, which has become a meaningful part of its business model alongside the free-to-download mobile app. In 2024 the company added RecipeGen AI, a feature that generates a recipe draft from a photo of a finished dish, extending the product from recipe delivery into recipe creation.

Founded

2013

Headquarters

San Jose, United States

Sector

consumer