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Founding Designer·2016–2019

ChefSteps

Designed the Joule hardware/software experience and built Joule Ready from concept to market. Grew the mailing list to 300K+ subscribers.

Context

ChefSteps started as a cooking content company, producing high-quality instructional videos and recipes for home cooks. When I joined, we were expanding into hardware with Joule—a sous vide circulator—and eventually into CPG with Joule Ready sauces.

The vision was a "full-stack" cooking company: content to inspire, hardware to enable, software to guide, and ingredients to simplify. I worked across all of these, from website design to hardware packaging to product strategy.

The Madlib Signup

Early on, I designed a "madlib" style signup flow for the website. It turned a boring form into something playful—users filled in blanks about their cooking interests rather than just entering an email.

ChefSteps madlib signup
The madlib signup. This simple design pattern grew the mailing list to 300K+ subscribers. Every time we tested alternatives, the madlib won—we eventually stopped trying to beat it.
The madlib consistently outperformed every alternative we tested. We eventually accepted that we'd hit a local maximum and focused our experimentation elsewhere.

Joule Sous Vide

Joule was a rallying moment for the company. I contributed to hardware design, software UX, branding, website, sales pages, and marketing. It's still beloved by its users—a rare combination of thoughtful hardware design and genuinely useful software.

Joule sous vide circulator
Joule combined elegant hardware with app-driven cooking guidance. The companion app didn't just set time and temperature—it taught users how to achieve the results they wanted.

Joule Ready: Finding Product-Market Fit

After Joule launched, we wanted to create a consumable product that would generate recurring revenue while solving real problems for cooks. The journey to Joule Ready sauces involved several pivots.

I wrote a detailed case study about this process: The Story of Joule Ready. It covers our experiments with meat sales, butcher partnerships, and how we eventually landed on shelf-stable sauces.

Meat sales: We started by selling protein directly. 80% of sales were "sous vide upgrades"—vacuum-packed with herbs and spices. This gave us +20% margin for pennies in materials.

Butcher partnerships: We partnered with local butchers to expand distribution. Some were enthusiastic; others literally hung up on us.

Joule Ready sauces: We eventually landed on shelf-stable sauces that shipped easily, had great margins, and integrated with our hardware and content ecosystem.

Outcomes

Joule: Successful hardware launch with strong reviews and a devoted user base. Still in use today under Breville.

Joule Ready: Launched a CPG product line from concept to market, with distribution through our massive mailing list.

Growth: Mailing list grew to 300K+ subscribers. The madlib signup became a case study in conversion optimization.

Exit: ChefSteps was acquired by Breville, validating the full-stack approach to consumer products.

Reflection

ChefSteps taught me what it means to work across an entire product ecosystem—hardware, software, content, and physical goods. The most valuable lesson was about iteration: Joule Ready went through multiple pivots before finding traction, and each "failure" taught us something essential about our users and our business.

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