Silicon Chef: A Half-Baked Guide to Food Startups

Objective Logistics—Tracking employee work habits to boost sales in restaurants.

One Green Planet—A guide to plant-based food, recipes, trends, recipes, health and nutrition

OpenTable—online restaurant reservations.

Own—Customized point of sale systems for restaurants and coffee shops.

Plummelo—Online storage for recipes, with automated shopping list feature.

Punchfork—Uses social data from Twitter and Facebook to discover the most-shared recipes on the Web.

ReadyPing—Text-message based restaurant table paging.

RealMealz—Quickly discover 30-minute, plant-based recipes using ingredients you have on hand.

Real Time Farms—A crowdsourced directory of farms and farmers’ markets around the country.

RouxBe—Online cooking school with video lessons and video recipes.

Seamless.com—The nation’s largest online and mobile food ordering site, with 7,500 restaurants in its network.

Serious Eats—A network of blogs focused on “celebrating and sharing food enthusiasm.”

Shopwell—Personalized nutrition ratings for supermarket items, via the Web and mobile apps.

Spoondate—A dating site for people who want to meet over good meals.

SproutRobot—Personalized planting calendars and seeds for gardeners.

Tasted Menu—Beta-testing a system for restaurant and dish ratings, reviews, and picture sharing.

Textaurant—Mobile notifications for people waiting for restaurant tables.

The Daily Meal—Articles and reviews on restaurants, chefs, food trends, wine, and cooking.

Thryve—A “mobile food coach” designed to help you find the best foods for your body.

TipCity—Exclusive restaurant deals for members in 20 cities.

Urban Remedy—Selling a line of cleansing, nutrient-rich drinks and snacks online.

Urbanspoon—Mobile restaurant reviews. Owned by IAC.

Velvet Aroma—Online tool for tracking food bloggers and the recipes they share.

Venuetastic—Searching and booking restaurant spaces for group meals and events.

VillageVines—Members-only discounted pricing on restaurant meals.

Vmeals—Online ordering of restaurant and catered food for events.

Yelp—Crowdsourced restaurant reviews via the Web and mobile apps.

Yummly—A semantic search and recommendation engine for recipes.

Yummy Plants—An online community where vegetarians and vegans can share recipes, restaurant recommendations, nutrition information, and practical tips.

ZeroCater—An angel-funded startup that delivers food from 90 restaurants, caterers, and private chefs to more than 100 Silicon Valley companies.

ZipList—Online recipe box and digital shopping list.

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/