Their family built a catering company that served around 80,000 meals a day. After they sold it, Samer and his brother Sami asked what would happen if they filled a kitchen with food founders instead.
KiCo is a co-working kitchen and food founder community in The Hague. This conversation is about the gap between a home kitchen and a co-manufacturer, why chefs are often the missing perspective in food startups, and why big food keeps getting surprised by its own trend reports.
In this conversation we discuss:
🍽️ How Samer's family grew a catering company in the UAE to around 80,000 meals a day, and the question they asked after selling it
🏠 The gap between a home kitchen and a co-manufacturer, and why founders get stuck on the "hamster wheel"
🏗️ Why they chose infrastructure and knowledge, and how a dark kitchen built on virtual concepts pushed them toward founders
🧑🍳 How common a chef background is among KiCo founders, and what a chef brings to a food brand
🧪 Sami's pilot event: chefs cooking with ingredient startups' products for retailers, manufacturers and policymakers, and why "Will people eat this?" is the question that matters
💡 Why you never hear of hackathons in food, and the case for bringing in junior chefs
📉 Why big food keeps getting surprised by its own trend reports, and why Sami says focus groups don't work
🛒 Why a startup's power is in building its own following
🔮 What comes next for KiCo, including a surprise planned for early 2027
🌐 KiCo: https://www.kico.kitchen/
🎧 Fugitive Chefs explores how culinary expertise creates value across the modern food system.
🌐 Website: https://www.fugitivechefs.com
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/57kmFAUgp6DhgnguexFuDs
🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fugitivechefs
🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fugitive-chefs/id1676930088
📩 Beyond the Pass: https://beyondthepass.substack.com
📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/fugitivechefspodcast
