New Meal Planning Start-up Backed by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz

There's a new start-up in town: gatheredtable is a meal-planning service that claims to cut your dinner-related stress in half. The online service, which is free for the first six months, uses an algorithm that creates customized menus based on the number of eaters and dietary preferences. The service provides weekly menus, grocery lists, and recipes (or users can input their own recipes) and gives the option of grocery delivery through a separate, integrated service called Peapod.

The start-up was founded by Mary Egan, who previously led Global Strategy and Corporate Development for Starbucks. And Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz threw a few bucks in, as did Geoff Entress, the leading high tech angel investor in Seattle. There's growth in the works, too, with gatheredtable adding additional grocery delivery service partnerships in 20 of the top 25 metropolitan areas in the United States by the first quarter of 2015.