In the high-stakes world of culinary arts, chefs are often seen as artists, meticulously crafting signature dishes that tantalize taste buds and elevate dining experiences.
However, behind the scenes, these culinary artisans face a myriad of challenges that extend well beyond the kitchen.
The struggle to balance creativity with profitability can be a daunting task, leaving many chefs feeling overwhelmed and unsupported.
For those in the bustling culinary landscape of New York City, these frustrations can be particularly acute, as the pressure to innovate while maintaining a healthy bottom line intensifies.
Recognizing the need for a solution, one visionary chef made a career change in search of a solution to bridge this gap, creating a platform that empowers fellow culinary professionals to thrive.
In 2020, Josh Sharkey, a seasoned professional chef, set out to address a fundamental issue that had long plagued the culinary world: the lack of a dedicated, intuitive tool for managing recipes.
Sharkey, having spent years in the fast-paced environment of professional kitchens, recognized that the existing solutions—often skewed towards ERP systems or rudimentary inventory management tools—failed to meet the nuanced needs of chefs and restaurateurs.
Thus, meez was born, a platform designed to revolutionize how recipes are managed, shared, and leveraged in the modern culinary landscape.
meez’s journey began with a simple yet powerful offering: a free recipe storage platform.
This was not just a basic digital tool, but a thoughtfully designed solution that allowed chefs to store, organize, and access their recipes from anywhere.
For many chefs, this was a game-changer. No longer did they need to rely on outdated notebooks, scattered spreadsheets, or clunky software. meez provided a centralized, intuitive platform that could be accessed at any time, from any device.
“When I was working online, I often found myself frustrated with the tools available,” Sharkey recalled.
“There wasn’t anything out there that truly understood how chefs think and work. Imagine a software tailored for chefs, combining dependability with creativity. meez seamlessly integrates with kitchen operations, while ensuring efficiency and cultivating culinary innovation.”
The free version of meez continues to offer essential features that quickly became indispensable to culinary professionals:
- Recipe Creation and Organization: Chefs can easily input their recipes, categorize them, and access them from anywhere, ensuring that their culinary creations were always at their fingertips.
- Dynamic Scaling: Recipes can be scaled up or down with just a few clicks, making it simple to adjust portions for different service needs.
- Sharing Capabilities: meez enables chefs to share their recipes with colleagues and peers, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange within the culinary community.
As meez gained traction, it became clear that the platform could offer much more than just recipe storage. Recognizing the diverse needs of culinary professionals, the platform expanded to include a suite of advanced tools designed to address every aspect of recipe management and beyond.
These features transformed meez from a recipe storage solution into a comprehensive culinary management platform, catering not only to chefs but also to foodservice distributors and operators.
meez offers a comprehensive solution for culinary professionals, with ingredient costing as a foundational feature. This allows chefs to calculate precise food costs, considering factors like yield and prep loss. However, one of the most powerful tools within meez is its menu engineering feature.
This advanced tool goes beyond basic costing, enabling chefs to optimize their menu for profitability and customer appeal. By analyzing sales data and the cost impact of menu changes in real-time, meez empowers chefs to make informed decisions that enhance both the financial and culinary success of their restaurant.
“Understanding your food costs is essential to running a successful kitchen,” Sharkey emphasized. “With meez, chefs could calculate costs down to the penny, helping them make informed decisions about pricing and menu development. It wasn’t just about creating delicious dishes—it was about making sure those dishes were profitable.”
With increasing consumer demand for transparency, meez also offered tools for allergen identification and nutritional analysis. This feature allowed chefs to easily identify allergens in their recipes and generate detailed nutritional information, ensuring that their menus met the needs of all diners.
meez’s automated scaling and conversion features have proven to be a significant innovation, particularly for busy kitchens. Whether a recipe needed to be scaled for a large event or adjusted for a small private dinner, meez handled the calculations, ensuring accuracy and consistency.
“Scaling recipes manually often led to errors that could affect both the quality of the dish and the bottom line,” Sharkey noted. “meez eliminated this risk, allowing chefs to scale and convert recipes with confidence.”
In addition to recipe management, meez offers tools to help with staff training and team management. The platform allowed chefs to turn their recipes into interactive training materials, making it easier to onboard new staff and ensure consistency across the kitchen.
“Training was one of the biggest challenges in the industry,” Sharkey explained. “With meez, we streamlined this process, helping chefs train their teams faster and more effectively, which in turn reduced turnover and improved kitchen performance.”
meez’s menu engineering tools give chefs the power to analyze the performance of their dishes in real-time. By integrating sales data, the platform allowed users to see how changes to portion sizes, ingredient costs, or pricing impacted food cost percentages, profit margins, and overall revenue.
“Most industries had built business intelligence tools around their core offering, yet food and beverage companies had never put recipes centerstage—until meez,” Sharkey observed. “Our platform helped restaurant and culinary management professionals not only create great dishes but also make smart business decisions that improved the bottom line.”
Before founding meez, Sharkey had over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur, chef, and restaurant operator at establishments like Oceana, Tabla (with the legendary Floyd Cardoz), Bouley and Cafe Gray (with Gray Kunz). After more than a decade cooking in Michelin-starred kitchens, he opened Bark Hot Dogs in 2009, which earned numerous accolades in the fast casual space.
Sharkey spent five years as the Chief Operating Officer of Aurify Brands (Melt Shop, The Little Beet, Little Beet Table, Fields Good Chicken, and Le Pain Quotidien) before launching meez to the public in late 2020 following more than two years of development.
Since then, meez has partnered with renowned groups and concepts, including José Andrés’ ThinkFoodGroup, Jean-Georges Restaurants by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, fast-casual favorite Mulberry & Vine, and local staple BKLYN Larder.
During the pandemic, Josh used meez’s technology to create Recipes for Relief, an initiative that made interactive recipes available for purchase with 100% of proceeds supporting restaurant relief.
In 2021, the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) became the first culinary school to be powered by meez. Josh believes in building technology with domain empathy, ensuring software always conforms to how we operate, and fervently focusing on the finer details.
Sharkey’s background gave him insight into what makes a successful operator/vendor relationship. For instance, Gordon Food Service, one of the largest privately owned food distribution companies in North America, has leveraged meez to enhance their operations.
By integrating meez with their existing systems, they were able to offer more tailored support to their restaurant clients, ensuring that the ingredients they provided matched the precise needs of the recipes being used.
The meez platform continues to grow as it responds to the ever-changing needs of the chef and restaurant operator. “meez addressed the challenges that chefs and restaurateurs face every day,” Sharkey concluded.
“Whether it was reducing food waste, improving profitability, or easing the workload for kitchen staff, meez is there to help.” The meez community has grown to thousands of users across thousands of kitchens worldwide.
meez assists restaurants and food service businesses all over the world build profitable menus and scale their business successfully. If you’re looking to organize your recipe IP and train your team to put out consistent product every day in less time than ever before, then meez is just for you.
meez can transform all those old Google Docs, Word Docs, PDFs and Spreadsheets into dynamic, actionable recipes in lightning speed.
Plus, stop all that manual work of processing invoices, because meez will digitize all your purchases automatically. And there’s a built-in database of ingredient yields, prep yields, and unit of measure conversions. For every ingredient, which means you’re going to get laser accurate food costs in a fraction of the time.
For more information about meez and to explore its features, visit meez’s website.
