You only need a single pot or pan to enjoy this Shanghai startup’s cook-at-home offerings

Not long after arriving in Shanghai, Simon Vogel realized that his goal of opening a restaurant wasn’t going to happen as planned.

“It’s much more difficult to open a restaurant in Shanghai now than it was five years ago,” he tells Tech in Asia. “The more we looked into the restaurant market we realized that, with rents what they are now, it’s not a safe investment.”

It wasn’t an issue of skill – Simon has years of experience in the hospitality industry, co-founder Wolfgang Illing has the same, and they already had an experienced chef, Patrick Trisch, on board. They were ready to start a food and beverage business in Shanghai. They just needed to decide what kind.

“Initially, we were not looking at a tech-based solution,” Simon says. “On the other hand, there was this boom of tech companies in the US like Blue Apron and Plated.”

And so, in fall of 2014, Simon and his co-founders scrapped the restaurant idea for good – and launched Saucepan, one of Shanghai’s first cook-at-home meal delivery services.

The Saucepan team

Getting off the ground

Once the team decided to move from a restaurant to an online platform-based service, they were met with the usual hurdles – getting licensed, building a website, and tweaking the service as customer feedback came in. But dealing with local restrictions and customer preferences required more innovation – and most importantly, patience – than they had expected.

“Our business license should have taken two months; instead, it took like five months,” Simon says with a sigh. City authorities knew how to license a restaurant – but what about an ingredients-and-recipe-delivery service? Incorporating the business, getting proper Shanghai permits for food preparation and delivery – all basic logistical check boxes seemed to be moving in slow motion. But by early this year, the company was ready for a test run.

When Saucepan finally launched – initially within a network of about 50 of the founders’ friends – Simon realized that more changes would need to be made.

First, user feedback showed that the process was too slow. “We realized that the customers are hungry,” Simon says with a laugh. “And after already waiting between 30 minutes to an hour for food delivery, they don’t want to spend another half an hour in the kitchen to cook it.”

Initially, Saucepan had been shipping out raw ingredients to customers. But after getting this feedback, it revamped its offerings to focus less on cooking and preparation, and more on reheating. The time-intensive steps – braising, roasting, marinating – are now done beforehand, in Saucepan’s kitchen. The customer simply needs to reheat or cook sous-vide (that is, by putting a bag full of ingredients in boiling water and cooking within the bag).

Saucepan also strove to limit the number of cooking utensils needed for a single meal – each recipe now uses a frying pan or a pot, but never both. “We don’t want the customer to have a dirty kitchen after dinner,” Simon says.

So you’re hungry…

Looking ahead