Up until recently, Americans were cooking fewer and fewer meals at home. While 88-95% of meals were prepared at home in 1965, only 65-72% of meals were cooked at home in 2007. There’s evidence that some of these foods aren’t even really prepared meals, just pre-made processed alternatives that require little cooking. 

Then, of course, the coronavirus pandemic happened. More than half of Americans report cooking more since quarantine began. And half reported that they plan to continue to do so even after the pandemic is over. Grocery store sales have increased dramatically since March, while restaurant revenue has continued to decline. 

This freshly-minted cohort of home cookers is naturally turning to the internet to improve their experience. But the annoying nature of searching for recipes online has become a meme: few want to read the food blogger’s entire life story before finally arriving at their desired recipe. Methods for saving online recipes are also limited and fragmented. Pinterest can save recipes but only the annoyingly-long article versions. Tools like The New York Times Cooking app only show recipes from a certain set of chefs. As home cooking becomes more and more popular, is it time for a better way?

Manna is an all-in-one cooking app designed to help users discover recipes, cook them, and share them with their friends. Manna’s goal is to combine several sets of cooking apps (recipe apps, kitchen tools, and cooking communities) into a one-stop-shop for everything home cooking.

Users can download Manna from the App Store and begin adding recipes to their cookbook. Manna’s recipe swipe feature mimics popular dating apps — swipe left on a recipe you’re not interested in and swipe right to save a recipe for later. Manna users can also import recipes from web URLs, converting them into streamlined recipes (without the fluff) that are saved in their Manna cookbook. 

When it’s time to cook, Manna users can browse their saved cookbook and search for any of the recipes that they’ve discovered. After choosing a recipe, users can use Manna to scale up or down a recipe, take notes on preparation, or make any other edits. When the meal is finished, it’s time to share. Manna has its own social media feed to share culinary creations with friends and family. 

Manna was founded in 2019 and wasn’t meant to be launched until 2021. Then COVID-19 happened. The team adapted their roadmap and launched the Manna app earlier this year during quarantine, taking advantage of a nation of captive home chefs. The company has not yet generated revenue and operated at a loss of roughly $75,000 in 2019.

Manna was founded by a group of friends and family who believe that the cooking experience is broken. The company is led by David Greenstein, a “career CEO” and “brand incubation expert” (details are not available on his LinkedIn). David’s son — Guy Greenstein — is Manna’s CTO. He graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2016 and worked briefly as a software engineer before building Manna. COO Joshua Abady is the younger Greenstein’s friend. Abady graduated from Johns Hopkins University and freelanced as a tutor and professional poker player before Manna. Finally, Rachel Abady (Joshua’s sister) is Manna’s CMO. She has over 10 years of experience in creative marketing for companies including The New York Times and Vox Media.

Manna’s vision is to become the leading home cooking app in the world, integrating all imaginable features into one seamless experience for cooks of all kinds. To begin, the company plans to hire a developer to enhance the app’s user experience design. Manna also intends to cultivate partnerships with leading brands in cooking and launch marketing campaigns to spread the word about the app. Funds raised in this round will be applied to each of those efforts.

Manna does have some positive signals for investors. One is its commitment to developing a holistic home cooking app platform that has the potential to welcome millions of amateur chefs. The concept of an all-in-one cooking platform is a good one. Manna’s in-house development skills are an important indicator that the company has the capability to build a compelling experience for users. Moreover, the Manna app has solid exit potential if the ultimate vision is reached. There have been several acquisitions in the food and cooking tech space lately, including Whisk’s purchase of Avocando, and Perfect Company’s purchase of Orange Chef Prep Pad. Buzzfeed’s “experiment” with the Tasty cooking brand — which also allows for recipe discovery and some social sharing — has been a smashing success. If Manna can hit key development milestones and build a loyal following, there are any number of cooking tech or legacy cooking brands that might acquire it. 

However, prospective investors should also consider the risks of purchasing equity in Manna. The Manna founding team is very young and inexperienced — with the exception of CEO David Greenstein (though it is not clear how involved he is in day-to-day operations). More importantly, the company has not yet generated any revenue and does not give a clear indication of how it plans to do so. Presumably, the app could accommodate advertisements, but substantive revenue from that channel would require a user base significantly larger than what Manna seems to currently boast. Partnerships with other cooking brands could also provide a revenue stream, but likely not one large enough to sustain a growing tech company. These concerns about monetization are paired with the company’s high valuation. An $8 million estimate for a company with no revenue and minimal intellectual property seems excessive, particularly at this moment in the market. 

Manna has correctly identified a fragmented market of cooking apps and the opportunity for a strongly-branded, fully-featured solution to win users in this moment of increased home cooking. However, the company is very early-stage with a questionably high valuation. Furthermore, Manna gives no clear indication of monetization plans. Therefore, Manna is a Neutral deal.