Comfort Food? There's an App for That

Jonathan Kaplan is the creator of Flip Video, that sublimely simple pocket-size camcorder that jumped off the shelves in consumer electronics stores over the past five years. Now, Kaplan is cooking up something new: grilled cheese.

Kaplan sold his firm, Pure Digital Technologies, to Cisco Systems (CSCO) for $590 million in 2009, then left the company earlier this year, right before Cisco closed down the Flip unit in April, along with its entire consumer division. Kaplan's new startup is one of the oddest ideas to come out of Silicon Valley in years. It's called The Melt, and the grand plan is to start a nationwide chain of restaurants offering nothing but five variations on the old lunchtime standby, along with a hearty accompanying soup. Kaplan wants to extend the popularity of grilled cheese beyond elementary school cafeterias and smoky college dorm rooms, and he's enlisted some formidable help in both the kitchen and the boardroom. Celebrity chef Michael Mina is assisting with the menu and sits on The Melt's board of directors, along with Ron Johnson, Apple (AAPL)'s senior vice-president for retail, and Sequoia Capital partner Mike Moritz, an early investor in Google (GOOG). "People have a reaction to grilled cheese that is different than other food groups and is more similar to chocolate than hamburger," Kaplan says. "They talk about loving grilled cheese, they don't talk about liking it."