The Orange Chef, a developer of kitchen products that integrate iPads and connectivity, has raised $3m in a seed round led by existing backers Google Ventures and Spark Labs Global Ventures.
Other investors in the round include New Enterprise Associates, Lerer Ventures, Forerunner Ventures and individual angel investors including Warby Parker co-founder and co-chief executive Dave Gilboa. The Orange Chef plans to use the funding to hire more staff and to fulfil pre-orders for its PrepPad product.
High-end housewares retailer Williams-Sonoma has also come on board with an exclusive deal to carry The Orange Chef products in most of their brick-and-mortar stores. The retailer will also carry The Orange Chef products online.
Products in the range include a Chef Sleeve, which is a simple cover for the iPad that allows cooks to work a tablet touchscreen without getting it greasy while preparing a meal, with a price point of $20. It also sells an iPad stand for $40 and a cutting board with a built in iPad stand that sells for just under $75.
Williams-Sonoma discovered The Orange Chef when the company ran a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, where it raised almost $47,000 in May 2013, according to news reports. The Orange Chef’s next round of funding is likely to be allocated to advertising, app development and new kitchen hardware.
In 2013 The Orange Chef Company secured $1.2m in a deal led by Google Ventures and SparkLabs Global Ventures. Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Kima Ventures and angel investors also took part.
The funding was allocated to product development, including its latest product, a PrepPad, which is a $150 iOS-enabled bluetooth food scale. Prep Pad provides real-time nutritional information for all raw ingredients and scannable food items through an app. The food scale is the first of its kind, allowing users to visually obtain the full macro and micro-nutritional profiles of ingredients and meals as they create them, while saving to a personal profile. Users also have the option to then share their creations socially via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Evernote – among other features.