Cooking up a storm: when is it time to shake things up‪?‬ Let's Talk Startups

Hungry for some startup insights? Cook My Grub founder, Shabbir Mookhtiar is brimming with industry knowledge. From planning to pivoting, to going nationwide, Shabbir has done it all, and he’s here to give us a whirlwind tour on making tough decisions and why you might want to redirect your business, even when you're already on track.

Cook My Grub is the online marketplace for home chefs, connecting talented cooks with hungry customers nationwide. But it didn’t start there. The company has grown from a series of local networks delivering hot food on the day, and Shabbir is here to tell us why they abandoned plan A, even when it was working. They had funding, they had customers, and they still pivoted. Why?

Well, that’s what Nargis and Demos are finding out! Those brain-picking tools will be back in hand, and they will be asking about everything from scalability to the nitty-gritty pragmatics. How does a successful local company move into a national model, and what are the sacrifices that come with that? How many changes when your business makes a drastic shift in gear? So many questions and only one episode to ask them all in! 

Shabbir will also be shedding light on the factors which took Cook My Grub by surprise. These include demographics, local demand, geographical distance, and dodgy deliveries. The road is never easy in startup land! The question we want to know the answer to is, how do you face these problems? And is there anything Shabbir would do differently? Brick walls are inevitable; it’s how you get around them that matters.  

We’ll also be finding out about how Cook My Grub is prepared and practiced. There is always hard graft going on behind the scenes, so let’s turn the spotlight on it, and hear how the concept became reality. We’re talking trials and testing, consumer feedback and reviewing processes – ideas are great, but alone, they aren’t enough. Practical application is hard work, and Shabbir’s mistakes could be your lessons. 

We also love that Cook My Grub is not only passionate about food (who isn’t?) but about sustainability! They believe in keeping their environmental impact low and maintaining a transparent relationship with their customers. This includes informing them of the potential risks of damage during delivery and providing a realistic estimate of arrival. It’s one of the wonderful things we see time and again in startup land, and customers love it: integrity. So, how can you keep your startup values at the core of your growing business? 

If you’ve listened to some of our previous episodes, you’ll already know that we love to keep our guests on their toes, and

Thanks for tuning in to 'Let's Talk Startups', hosted by Nargis Jafferali and Demos Demetriou.

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