As technology reshapes everyday services, trust and dignity are becoming central to the future of domestic work. In this conversation, Syed Raffay Hassan Zaidi shares how CookUp is formalizing home cooking through a trusted hiring marketplace, creating reliable opportunities for families while empowering skilled cooks with stable and dignified employment.
Boardroom: What inspired the creation of CookUp?
Raffay Hassan: CookUp was inspired by Pakistan’s high unemployment and the lack of dignified job opportunities for low-income workers. We saw a chance to formalize domestic cooking work while solving a real problem for families.
Boardroom: What problem in everyday cooking are you solving?
Raffay Hassan: Families currently hire cooks informally and under the table, often getting unreliable help with no accountability. CookUp solves this by providing background-checked, dependable chefs for long-term home hire.
Boardroom: How does CookUp differentiate itself from traditional recipe platforms?
Raffay Hassan: CookUp isn’t a recipe platform — it’s a hiring marketplace connecting families with vetted, reliable home cooks. We’re solving a labor and trust problem, not a “what to cook” problem.
Boardroom: What role does AI play in personalizing the cooking experience?
Raffay Hassan: Rather than personalizing recipes, our focus is on smart matching — pairing families with cooks based on skill, dietary needs, and household requirements. AI-driven matching helps ensure the right fit for long-term reliability.
Boardroom: How do you balance convenience with nutrition and taste?
Raffay Hassan: By placing skilled, dedicated cooks directly in the home, families get meals tailored to their taste and nutritional needs without sacrificing convenience. It’s home-cooked quality without the hassle of managing an untrained hire.
Boardroom: How do user preferences shape your product development roadmap?
Raffay Hassan: Feedback from both families and cooks shapes how we refine our vetting process, matching criteria, and support services. Our roadmap prioritizes features that increase trust and reliability on both sides.
Boardroom: What challenges do you face in changing everyday cooking habits?
Raffay Hassan: The biggest challenge isn’t changing cooking habits — it’s shifting families away from informal hiring toward a trusted, formal system. Building that trust takes consistent proof of reliability and safety.
Boardroom: How do you see technology transforming home kitchens over the next decade?
Raffay Hassan: Technology will formalize domestic work, making hiring trustworthy, background-checked help as easy as booking a service online. Home kitchens will shift from informal arrangements to structured, reliable employment relationships.
Boardroom: What opportunities do you see in the growing food-tech ecosystem?
Raffay Hassan: Pakistan’s domestic cook market is entirely informal with no organized player yet, making it a wide-open opportunity. CookUp can become the first mover in formalizing this space at scale.
Boardroom: What is your long-term vision for CookUp as a smart cooking platform?
Raffay Hassan: Our vision is to become Pakistan’s go-to platform for safe, reliable home cooking staff, while giving low-income workers dignified, stable employment. Long-term, CookUp aims to formalize domestic labor across multiple home-service categories.
