How Hotplate empowers home chefs with TalkJS
Hotplate is a platform that helps home chefs sell meals directly to customers. Ben Klenk, Co-founder & CEO, wanted to give these chefs an easy way to communicate with their customers, so he started looking for the right chat solution.
“TalkJS showed up in our search and seemed like the best option after looking through the documentation.”
Ben Klenk, Co-founder & CEO at Hotplate
About Hotplate
Hotplate is changing the way people run food businesses. Instead of dealing with the headaches of traditional restaurants—like expensive leases, labor costs, and food waste—home chefs on Hotplate run pre-order-based businesses. They open sales at the start of the week, cook meals based on those orders, and handle customer pickups at the end of the week.
This setup allows chefs to stay flexible, avoid unnecessary costs, and keep more of their profits. But to make the system work smoothly, communication between chefs and customers is key. That’s where TalkJS came in.
The Challenge
Hotplate needed a chat system that would work well for both their team and their users. It had to integrate easily with their app and be flexible enough to fit their needs.
“The app is all about connecting home chefs with people who want home-cooked meals. We needed something simple and reliable to make that happen,” Ben explained.
But there were some roadblocks. Styling TalkJS’s components to match Hotplate’s design required a lot of tweaking. What stood out, though, was the support team’s responsiveness:
“The support was incredibly helpful. It’s now the major reason we’ll continue to stick with TalkJS.”
The Solution
Hotplate implemented TalkJS to power its in-app chat. The process was straightforward—two engineers got the feature up and running in just two and a half weeks. The flexibility of TalkJS’s mix-and-match API made it easy for the team to start simple and add custom features over time.
“The flexibility lets us implement as we wish—starting simple and adding custom functionality as we go.”
Ben Klenk, Co-founder & CEO at Hotplate
Despite the challenges with styling, TalkJS allowed Hotplate to create a chat system that felt like a natural part of their platform. The detailed documentation also made the process smoother.
By using TalkJS, Hotplate has made it easier for home chefs and their customers to connect, helping these small businesses thrive in a whole new way.
