Who is Jake Aronskind? Manhattan entrepreneur gets eliminated in Gordon Ramsay's Food Stars season 1 episode 3

Reality culinary competition series Gordon Ramsay's Food Stars season 1 aired a brand new episode on Wednesday, June 7, 2023, at 9 pm ET on Fox. It documented the remaining contestants participating in a unique challenge of creating wine blends to pair with food and serve to experts, including wine connoisseurs and marketing experts. While some were successful, others missed the mark and became some of the least impressive dishes.

On this week's episode of Food Stars, Jake Aaronskind failed to impress the legendary chef Gordon Ramsay in the challenge. He became the third contestant to be eliminated from the competition. The participant lives in Manhattan, New York, and is the founder and CEO of Pepper, which is a cooking app.

The Fox series is a unique concept that brings together chefs and culinary experts from different industries and facets of the culinary world together in a competition. The last standing chef this season will be crowned the winner and earn a $250,000 prize from Gordon Ramsay as an investment amount for their company.

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Food Stars contestant Jake Aronskind is building his cooking app Pepper

The 25-year-old Manhattan native is building a social cooking application named Pepper. Jake studied Intermediate Microeconomics at the London School of Economics (LSE) and proceeded to study Intermediate Spanish, Spanish Economy, Competitive Strategy, and Contemporary Art at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.

He earned his Bachelor's Degree in Economics from Vanderbilt University in 2019. During his educational years, Jake worked as an analyst, and trader, and even gained experience in operations. He founded and became the CEO of his own cooking application Pepper in September 2020.

The Food Stars contestant started the social media cooking app Pepper in an effort to provide an audience for talented home cooks. The app allows people to share recipes and dishes with their family and friends. The contestant explained his role and mission at the company to Tappollo Media and said:

"I oversee and collaborate with my team on imagining & building the product, fundraising, partnerships, legal, and generally making sure the ship is heading in the right direction while wearing as many hats as necessary to get it there."

The inspiration behind founding Pepper came from a basement. Jake founded the company with his childhood best friend Matt Schkolnick. The Food Stars participant saw his friend scrolling through pictures of people sharing their homemade meal recipes.

Being recently graduated, Jake pondered on the thought and created his own group chat, which became active quickly. However, work and studies kept the two friends busy for quite some time, but the pandemic shifted them into pursuing their idea. During the pandemic, people started posting more meals and recipes and social media, which led to Jake calling his friend again to build the application.

He described Pepper on his LinkedIn and said:

"Social media is fun. Cooking is even better. What happens when you combine the two into a community passionate about homemade food? Meet Pepper the App :) FINALLY, the social cooking platform to create, share, and discover food with family & friends..."

Jake has over 1.4K followers on Instagram but it is expected to increase after his participation on Food Stars. While he couldn't gain the investment seed amount from Gordon Ramsay himself, viewers will have to wait and see if his debut on the show brings him traffic and an audience on the app.

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Season 1 of Gordon Ramsay's Food Stars is amping up the drama with each passing episode. As the installment progresses, the remaining contestants will be tasked with tougher challenges, which will test their ultimate potential in culinary skills. Viewers will have to wait and see who makes it to the end.

Don't forget to tune in to a brand new episode only on Fox on Wednesday, June 14, 2023, at 9 pm ET.