About CookUnity

CookUnity is the first chef-direct subscription service, a chef-to-food-lover marketplace connecting award-winning chefs with consumers nationwide. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Brooklyn, NY, the company has grown to 800+ employees, 100+ chefs, and delivers millions of meals annually.

The Context: More Events, Less Bandwidth

The People Experience team at CookUnity is lean. As the company grew, so did the expectation to run high-quality offsites - leadership alignment trips every quarter, company-wide gatherings twice a year, each one in a different city with a different vibe and a different set of requirements.

Sourcing hotels for all of that - individually, manually, from scratch each time - wasn’t sustainable. Every new event meant starting over: new RFPs, new email threads with hotel sales managers, new spreadsheets to compare rates and terms.

What they needed wasn’t just a vendor. They needed a partner who would learn their preferences, remember what worked, and make each booking faster than the last. For example, CookUnity leadership summits require U-shaped seating with ample natural light.

The Solution

CookUnity started with Marco for a single leadership trip at the Nobu Hotel Miami Beach in March 2025. Malena Sanchez Lacoste, Manager of People Experience & Culture, rated every aspect of the experience a 5 out of 5.

From there, CookUnity kept coming back:

Q1 2025 | Nobu Hotel Miami Beach - Leadership trip, 10-25 guests, $24K

Q4 2025 | ARIA Las Vegas - Leadership trip, 10-25 guests, $23K saved

Q1 2026 | 1 Hotel South Beach - Leadership trip, 10-25 guests, $64K

Q2 2026 | Honor’s Haven Resort - Company-wide, 220 guests, $105K, 62% off rack

Q2 2026 | Moxy Brooklyn - Company-wide, 80 guests, $122K, 24% off rack

Each booking got faster. The Marco team learned CookUnity’s preferences - budget ranges, vibe, location priorities - and started delivering shortlists that hit on the first round.

For the two biggest events, Marco sourced 9 and 8 properties respectively, negotiated group rates on all of them, and delivered side-by-side comparison pages showing rack rate vs. group rate, resort fee waivers, and total cost. No spreadsheets, no back-and-forth emails with hotels.