A Recipe for the Future
Talking Food, Hospitality, Blockchains and IP with Lisa Grimm, Roux CEO
I recently spoke to Lisa Grimm, the co-founder and CEO of Roux. I met Lisa while researching restaurant (or adjacent) blockchain companies for this piece.
Lisa calls Roux the home of food culture. In a very practical sense Roux is a place to search, collect, and riff on recipes. At another level though, I’d argue Roux is critical infrastructure for the future of commerce; I know, big statement, but hear me out. The internet was not built for individual creators to capture the value they create without costly intermediaries and/or a whole lot of crap in pursuit of indirect monetization. Blockchains can facilitate direct value capture. Roux seeks to do this for food creators, including restaurants, chefs, bartenders, recipe writers, etc.
The Roux vision though is even bigger than this and I LOVED hearing Lisa go here:
So this is a little bit of a crazy one. I think that at scale, we don't even need to necessarily know the word Roux. I think that there is a world in which we can be really successful in the background…the way in which we think about having this interoperable culinary identity that we can take with us…to restaurants, to workouts and wellness and health and diet and travel. All is powered by the infrastructure that we have created…there's so much more there. Our hopes are so much bigger.
Fully realized this has implications in health care, personalized nutrition. And for me, most excitingly, potential new revenue streams for restaurants that are rooted in community building.
Good stuff- please give it a listen.
In other news, I’ve got my head down a bit. Mostly working towards the opening of our third Shy Bird location in the next couple months. And in my writing after hours I am also DEEP into Benedict Evans most recent presentation. Next week’s newsletter will tackle it from the perspective of restaurants.
And lastly- if you made it all the way down to here, you’re clearly somewhat engaged, thanks! I am curious which of the following headlines you’d be most interested in reading from EO next:
Really enjoyed exploring how we can build infrastructure that fundamentally changed how people interact with food, recipes, and restaurants. The way you connected the dots on community-driven revenue streams for restaurants shows exactly why these conversations matter. Can't wait to share more as we make this vision reality.