Nomiku was a San Francisco-based company making sous-vide immersion circulators designed for the home cook. The company was started as a Kickstarter project in 2012. Nomiku was intended to provide affordable access to sous-vide cooking. In 2017, the company began to offer home delivery of prepared meals that are prepared using sous-vide method, but ceased operations in December 2019.
Company history
Nomiku was founded by Lisa Q. Fetterman, Abe Fetterman, and Wipop Bam Suppipat. Previously, Lisa and Abe started their first company together, called Lower East Kitchen, while living in New York City. After relocating to the San Francisco, Lisa and Abe decided to pursue their sous vide endeavours further and joined the hardware startup accelerator Haxlr8r. Nomiku's name is a shortened version of the Japanese phrase “Nomikui”, which means “eating and drinking”. In 2017, Nomiku began to offer a meal delivery service that shipped pre-packaged, pre-cooked, pre-portioned meals to customers that could be prepared using sous vide cooking in 30 minutes. An investment from Samsung helped the company developed an RFID enabled sous vide version of their Nomiku immersion cooker and expand the business from a connected hardware device to a subscription meal delivery service. On December 13, 2019 the company emailed its customers that they would be discontinuing the Nomiku Smart Cooker and Nomiku Meals effective immediately, suspending operations.
Founders
Lisa Q. Fetterman was the CEO of Nomiku. A graduate of New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, she worked in several fine dining restaurants. Fetterman also worked as a journalist at many publications. She has been named Forbes 30 Under 30 as well as Zagat 30 Under 30 for her work with Nomiku. Abe Fetterman holds a PhD from Princeton specializing in Plasma Physics and Astrophysics. He is the CTO of Nomiku and helped Lisa conceive Lower East Kitchen and develop their Ember Kit. Wipop Bam Suppipat is Nomiku’s third co-founder and designer. Suppipat earned his Industrial Design degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and was classically trained at the French Culinary Institute.
Products
In addition to the original Nomiku Immersion sous vide machine, Fetterman authored a cookbook with Meesha Halm and Scott Peabody, Sous Vide at Home, that was published by Penguin Random House in November 2016. The book was a bestseller on Amazon, and a follow up, Sous Vide Made Simple, was published in October 2018 by Ten Speed Press.
