Building a Better Food System with Digital Tools | Chelsea van Hooven (Choco App) | DH080

Chelsea van Hooven and Choco are here to change the world by helping build a better food system with technology.

Chelsea van Hooven is Global Industry Advisor for Choco, a digital ordering tool for restaurants and suppliers of all sizes.

The Choco team is looking to digitize the food system so that less food is wasted, and more people are fed. This makes a major mark on global hunger and helps the food industry long plagued by razor-thin margins.

The goal of Choco is to help food businesses:

Save Time

Save Money

Save Food

Listen to our interview with Chelsea van Hooven on the Digital Hospitality podcast to learn more about her career, the future of the food system, and food supply chain startup Choco.

Let us know how we can help you on your own Digital Hospitality journey by emailing [email protected] or sliding into our DMs on social media @calibbqmedia @calibbq @shawnpwalchef.

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CHOCO FOR RESTAURANTS: https://www.choco.com/restaurants

CHOCO FOR SUPPLIERS: https://www.choco.com/suppliers

A Holistic Education on Food Production:

Since she was a kid, Chelsea’s skillset to change the world was being formed merely by merging two different worlds within her own home.

“I grew up with an American mom and a German dad in Germany,” recalls Chelsea van Hooven on the Digital Hospitality podcast. “So, my main task growing up was cultural translation for my parents.”

Throughout her youth, it’s fair to say Chelsea was doing as much teaching at home as she was learning at school. When it came time to attend university, Chelsea’s worldly upbringing in Germany led her across Europe for another masterclass on converging cultures.

“I studied food, culture, communication and marketing at the most beautiful university in the entire world, the University of Gastronomic Sciences in North Italy,” smiles Chelsea.

In Italy, Chelsea was schooled on slow food ideals, diving deep into the global movement of regional sustainable food production. This consciousness approach to creation and consumption shaped Chelsea’s views on the role food plays in this world, from feeding and flavor to economics and logistics.

“I had a holistic education on food and food production,” shares Chelsea. “I'm very passionate about anything that has to do with food production and restaurants.”

After an amazing Italian education, Chelsea returned to Germany to begin her career. While leaving school and entering the work world can be a burden for many – especially those with as enjoyable university experience as Chelsea – it instead propelled her to the perfect position to change the world by once again connecting worlds.

Taking her talents to Berlin-based food tech company Choco, Chelsea is blazing merging pathways between two major industries as the brand’s Global Industry Advisor.

“At Choco, I basically found my dream job,” beams Chelsea van Hooven. “Choco is the intersection of tech and food and I get to be the link between both.”

What is Choco?

You’re probably asking yourself, what is Choco and how does it work?

We’ll let the Global Industry Advisor for Choco answer that: “Choco is the digital ordering platform that connects the kitchen of restaurants directly with suppliers, producers and farmers,” Chelsea van Hooven said.

“At Choco we developed a very simple app that we set up individually for each restaurant. We ask the restaurant what suppliers they work with and we implement them in chats with product lists. From there, the chef or anyone from the restaurant team can go into the app, click the product that they want, log the quantities and send it.”

With Choco, restaurant employees that work in operating or work around the oven can have direct access to bringing in the best ingredients with the click of a button.

Choco is used by more than 10,000 suppliers and 15,000 restaurants who place over 100,000 orders each month using the digital ordering tool.

Pulling from a long list of suppliers,