Silicon Chef: A Half-Baked Guide to Food Startups

DeliciousNutritious—Lets employees pre-order nutritious foods for overnight delivery to workplace break room refrigerators.

Dinevore—Personalized restaurant search and recomendations.

Dishtip—Information on the best dishes at thousands of restaurants, compiled from reviews around the Web.

Eat24—Find nearby take-out restaurants, browse their menus, and order online.

Eater—a national network of hyperlocal food and restaurant news sites. Part of the Curbed Network.

Eatery—An iPhone app for group meal tracking, from San Francisco-based Massive Health.

E la Carte—Hardened tablet computers for ordering, entertainment, and payment in restaurants.

Epicurious—Web and mobile recipe search drawing on Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines.

Exit 41—Web and mobile ordering systems for takeout food.

Flavorbite—A community site for sharing food experiences and photos.

Foodbuzz—A community of food bloggers, owned by Federated Media.

Foodcaching—Mobile social games that connect diners with restaurant discounts. Seattle only.

Foodia—Community ratings and reviews of food products, plus nutrition and environmental scores.

Foodily—Recipe search enhanced with social sharing features.

Foodista—A Wikipedia-style community encyclopedia for recipes and cooking techniques.

Foodler—Online ordering from local restaurants, for delivery or takeout.

Foodoro—An online marketplace for gourmet food from artisanal producers and farmers.

Foodspotting—User reviews of specific dishes at restaurants around the United States.

Foodtree—Crowdsourced maps linking farmers, grocers, markets, restaurants, and consumers.

Fooducate—Mobile apps for scanning food-product barcodes, learning about nutritional content, and making better shopping choices.

Fooducopia—An online marketplace for artisan foods, connecting food entrepreneurs, farmers, and customers.

Foodzie—An online marketplace for foods from small producers and growers.

FreshDirect—Online shopping for food delivered directly from farms to homes. Currently New York only.

FreshDish—Meal kits delivered to your door.

Gojee—Hand-picked recipes from food writers.

Goodplates—Dish-level recommendations for 700 restaurants in Boston and Cambridge, MA.

Grubhub—Online ordering of food for pickup or delivery by 13,000 restaurants.

Grubwithus—Planning discount restaurant meals with groups of strangers.

Kitchit—Online search and booking of chefs for social events.

Kitchen Monki—Recipe organization and sharing, plus a grocery list maker.

Locu—Developing an online application called MenuPlatform designed to help restaurants manage their online presence.

LoseIt!—Web and mobile apps for tracking food consumption and exercise.

Lot18—Daily deals on premium wines.

Love with Food—Ships a box of gourmet food samples to customers every month.

MooBella—Portable “ice creamery” vending machines that make a single serving of ice cream.

Munchery—Online ordering of meals prepared by personal chefs. Currently San Francisco only.

NatureBox—Healthy snacks delivered monthly for $19.95 per month.

No Wait—Mobile apps that alert restaurant guests when their table is ready.

Author: Wade Roush

Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco. Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.) I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia. I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats. My personal site: waderoush.com My social media coordinates: Twitter: @wroush Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967 Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/ Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/