(Image: Shef)

A busy new center of food and drink activity in the middle of the Pike/Pine nightlife and entertainment district is not a restaurant you can visit. Instead, they bring “homemade” food to you.

Shef, a startup with an Airbnb-like platform for home cooked meals, as Forbes put it, is busy on 10th Ave.

“Many of the “shefs” in Seattle cook out of local commercial kitchens and drop their food off at our drop-off locations. Our primary drop-off location in Seattle is currently the one on 10th Ave,” a company spokesperson tells CHS.

The busy new facility comes as the Shef service launches in Seattle. It is filling the space formerly home to the Gary Manuel Aveda Institute next to Havana and Poquitos across from Elliott Bay Book Company with a center focused on receiving creations from the cooks who participate in the platform with “drop-off operations” coordinated with delivery drivers “to make sure customers get their delicious food safely and on time.”

The Shef center has been in operation for a few months. Capitol Hill was chosen for its central location in the city.

The institute, meanwhile, has moved two blocks west.

The big salon school space had been lined up for a different sort of Pike/Pine future. CHS reported here on the plans for a new Glossier showroom that were put on hold by the pandemic.

On 11th Ave, another big name, new era “platform” remains in place though it is not clear how the company will emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. WeWork opened its Capitol Hill coworking and office space facility on 11th Ave in late 2019.

Nearby, meanwhile, on 10th Ave, the street’s Everyday Music is getting ready to mark its final day of business down the block.

For now, the buzzy startup Shef is putting the building to use growing its business in Seattle and connecting hungry neighbors to home chefs and their creations like “Shef Hardik” and his Mumbai Style Pav Bhaji or “Shef Kayla” and her Vegan Carne Guisada. It’s a much lighter investment than the shelved Glossier plans but the building is busy again.

You can learn more at shef.com.