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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

catering

Tripleseat Launches DirectBook to Take Private Event Catering Off-Premises

Event management platform Tripleseat announced today the launch of its DirectBook feature that streamlines the process of booking catered and private events with restaurants, hotels, and other hospitality companies. More importantly, the new feature allows businesses to provide such services to customers in off-premises settings — that is, outside a restaurant or hotel venue. 

It’s a seemingly valuable tool for the catering industry, which has so far been slower to go online than other industries. But as I’ll get into in a minute, it’s also launching at a confusing time for the restaurant industry as a whole, and certainly for catered events.

Over a phone call this week, Tripleseat founder and CEO Jonathan Morse said his company has been working on DirectBook for nearly a year. Historically, booking an event — think corporate events, weddings, birthdays, and bar mitzvahs — meant calling the restaurant and interacting with one or more staff members to choose a menu, reserve the space, and pay for the event, among other tasks. DirectBook bundles all of these together and puts them on the restaurant’s website so that a user interfaces with that rather than a bunch of different people. 

“There’s a lot of back and forth when you’re doing a catered event,” said Morse, adding that DirectBook “facilitates all the dialogue and last-mile logistics “without all the muss and fuss.”

The company has also incorporated an off-premises angle to this feature, which allows users to book catering services (food, tables, chairs, etc.) via DirectBook and have them delivered to a location (a park, your backyard) other than the restaurant or hotel. That makes sense, given that many restaurants and hotels can’t hold sizable gatherings due to state restrictions around COVID-19.

There’s no doubt that Tripleseat’s new feature could help event planners more easily manage their gatherings, and that restaurants could make some extra revenue from the process. But is now the best time to launch a tool that makes large(ish) gatherings easier? After all, DirectBook is kicking off at a time when the U.S. is seeing record numbers of COVID-19 cases. Some states are reimposing restrictions on the number of people allowed at any gathering, and others say that small gatherings are just as troublesome when it comes to spreading the virus.

Morse was quick to point out that DirectBook can be used for more than, say, a 50-person gathering. He cited the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday as an example. For years, restaurants of all types have offered Thanksgiving meals onsite, and many are now doing the same thing for delivery and takeout. Arranging a catered Thanksgiving meal for an extended family gathering would certainly be easier with a platform like DirectBook, given the amount of food needed. But again, there’s no getting around the risks of going to Grandma’s for a turkey dinner, especially since Grandma herself might be in the high-risk individual category. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has gone as far as to discourage these large family get-togethers for the holiday.

Taken together, all of this suggests a bit of a right train, wrong track scenario for the moment. Morse himself acknowledged on the phone that as of now, there is rightly so a lot of “doom and gloom around the restaurant industry” despite the interest the company is seeing in online event bookings.

Longer term, when large gatherings are once again safe, DirectBook could prove to be a very valuable piece of the restaurant tech stack when it comes to bringing some versatility and off-premises features to the catering world. Seen in that light, the feature is definitely one to watch. It’s just a matter of getting to the day when gatherings of any size are a little bit safer.

Catering Startup Platterz Raises $43.8M CAD, Rebrands as Thriver

Corporate catering startup Platterz announced today it has rebranded as Thriver and raised a $43.8 million CAD (~$33 million USD) Series B funding round. The round was led by Viola Growth, with participation from Vertex Ventures Israel, Union Tech Ventures, Journey Ventures, and FJ Labs, as well as existing investors Aleph and Altair Capital. This brings Thriver’s total funding to $54.7 million (USD).

Since its inception in 2015, Thriver has operated primarily as a corporate catering program offering both group and individual meals as well as perks like the Treat Card, which employers could use to subsidize employees meals. Over time, however, the platform has broadened into what Thriver calls a “food and culture platform.” That means offering not just meals and meal plans to companies, but also community-building activities meant to bring employees — especially remote ones — together.

Thriver has the pandemic to thank for some of its motivation to expand into corporate culture beyond food. Scores of employees that once trekked to the office each day are now working from home. That’s an obvious dent in any corporate catering business that relies on employees working in offices. 

Thriver is addressing this by offering remote “experiences” for workplace teams that are meant to be culture-building activities employees can do together from their own homes. Thriver lists cooking classes, cocktail making, yoga, language lessons, virtual escape rooms (?!!), and many other activities as part of its remote activities. 

It’s a unique approach in terms of catering companies addressing the sudden effect of the pandemic on their business. Others, like Ox Verte and Freshly, now focus on home delivery for employee meals. Uber for Business says it can feed anyone from an individual working from home to a 1,000-person virtual event.

For its part, Thriver said in today’s release it will continue to offer its food platform along with these new remote activities. New funds will go towards expanding into new markets, building more capabilities into its platform, and growing the Thriver team. 

ezCater Raises $150M to Expand Global Catering Marketplace

Today, online catering marketplace ezCater announced it’s closed a $150 million Series D-1 round, co-led by Lightspeed VenturePartners and GIC.

This comes nine months after ezCater raised a $100 million Series D round. It brings the catering giant’s total funding to $320 million and puts them at a $1.25 billion valuation, making them a food tech unicorn. And as far as we’re aware, they’re the first food tech catering unicorn.

In addition to raising some serious funds, ezCater has been on the expansion path this past year. In July 2018 the Boston-based company expanded globally by acquiring Paris-based online catering platform GoCater. And just last week, they acquired MonkeySoft Solutions, a software company which helps restaurant operators increase off-premise sales through training and data insights.

Currently, over 60,000 restaurants and caterers use ezCater’s platform worldwide. According to a press release sent to the Spoon, the latest raise will help ezCater expand their global operations.

It’s a big day for corporate catering companies, apparently. Hungry, the online marketplace which connects independent chefs with business catering opportunities, raised $8 million.

Which, compared to $150 million, might not sound all that significant. However, it goes to show that the growth in the catering market isn’t slowing down anytime soon, especially as more and more tech companies offer free food perks to entice employees.

In the past year, both ZeroCater, Chewse, Oh My Green and Platterz raised double-digit million dollar rounds. In the U.K., Feedr raised £1.5 million (~$1.92M USD). At the same time, there’s also been some consolidation and reduction in the space. Square acquired Zesty, EAT Club acquired Farm Hill and Peach laid off 33 percent of its staff.

ezCater’s massive funding round shows that the catering space is likely to see some more big investments — and big shakeups — in the next year, too.

Sifted Wants to Be the One-Stop Solution for the Catered Office Lunch

Say you’re a newish tech company looking to attract coveted young programmers to your startup. How do you entice them?

One trend more and more offices are looking to is catered lunches. But unless you’re a Google or a Facebook with a giant in-house team constantly making fresh food on site, you’ll have to choose a catering partner. And that’s where the options start to stack up: Do you want to order directly from local restaurants? Farm the selection and ordering process out to a middleman? Put a bunch of cold cuts and a salad bar out and call it a day?

Jess Legge and Kimberly Lexow co-founded Sifted four years ago to simplify the ways offices handle catered lunches. The Atlanta-based catering operation serves workplaces which invest heavily in lifestyle perks. But unlike most other services, Sifted handles the entire catering process in-house, from ingredient sourcing to menu planning to food prep and delivery.

Monday through Friday, the company offers two lunch options: one with meat, one vegetarian. All of Sifted’s food is served buffet-style. Pricing depends on the size of staff required and frequency of service. Sifted company currently has around 150 staff.

Throughout our conversation, Legge kept repeating one phrase: “We really want to become your single food vendor.” However, that definition seems chiefly narrowed on lunch. Legge told me that Sifted will also do Happy Hours and snack services, but their main focus is midday eating.

According to Legge, Sifted’s main draw is that its entire operation is controlled in-house. The company has a chef team in each of their cities — Atlanta, Austin, Denver, Seattle, Nashville, and, next month, Phoenix — which work out of commercial kitchen spaces. Sifted also has a staff to set up and serve food. This level of control gives more transparency to Sifted’s office partners (they always know exactly where the food is coming from), and also gives the company the flexibility to pivot and adjust offerings based on diner feedback.

This is where Sifted can really differentiate itself. Every day, Sifted staff record metrics for production, worker lunch participation, etc. After service, all leftovers are weighed, to inform decisions about future food offerings. For example, based off of leftovers, Sifted could surmise that a particular office loved the Eggplant Parmesan but wasn’t a fan of the Chicken Parmesan, and update their menus accordingly. “Data drives us,” Legge emphasized.

Sifted has another value-add: its crusade against food waste. Legge told me Sifted tries to source the most sustainable ingredients possible, including over-supplied product and “ugly” produce that other food companies might pass over. The company also recently partnered with Copia, an excess-food donation platform, to give each day’s leftover food to those in need. It will be the first of Copia’s partners to donate 100 percent of its uneaten food to local nonprofits.

Reducing the amount of food you donate or throw away is just smart business. But it’s also a smart marketing move in a climate where people — especially millennials — are caring more and more about things like sustainability.

Sifted will need to use every card in its hands to distinguish itself in the crowded corporate catering space, especially since many of its competitors are expanding quickly and raising hefty funds along the way. Chewse raised $19 million for “family style” catering, Oh My Green raised $20 million, and ezCater raised an eye-popping $100 million. However, there’s also been lots of consolidation in the space: Peach laid off 33 percent of its staff, Square bought Zesty, and EAT Club acquired Farm Hill.

Legge is aware of the intense competition in the corporate catering space. But she’s adamant that Sifted’s end-to-end business model gives them a leg up, despite their lack of funding. “With Sifted, eaters know exactly what they’re eating and what to expect,” she said.

So far, Sifted has very intentionally avoided fundraising. Legge explained to me that they want to grow organically, without being beholden to investors’ “grow quickly” mentalities. This strategy is a double-edged sword. Without investor pressure the startup might be able to avoid the bust that has befallen other office catering companies in the past year. Then again, less money = less fuel for growth.

Sure, companies could work with small local caterers and get the same level of transparency and consistency in the food they order. But Sifted is taking that type of intimate partnership and applying it to each of their locations across the country, all while maintaining an ethos of sustainability. That might be an attractive enough option to entice more partnerships with offices across the country — and it’s certainly better than a sub-par platter of cold cuts.

Using AI, the Turbo Clean Robot Can Clear Dirty Dishes Off Trays

Transferring dirty plates from a busbin to a dishrack was my least favorite job when I worked in restaurants. Handling other people’s leftovers. Getting sauce on my hands or clothes. It’s honest work, but blech.

That task, however, may soon be a thing of the past. The Engineer reports that Cambridge Consultants has developed Turbo Clean, a machine that uses computer vision, AI and robotics to automatically clear dirty dishes and glassware off of trays (think: cafeteria style).

As trays loaded with dirty dishes pass under a camera, the system can identify the difference between plates, silverware and glasses. It then dispatches the appropriate robotic attachment to lift the targeted item up off the tray and deposit it into the appropriate bin for cleaning. You can see it in action in this video:

Turbo Clean: Tackling the most unloved job in the commercial kitchen from Cambridge Consultants on Vimeo.

Right now Turbo Clean is just a prototype built for a “multinational catering company,” but it’s easy to see how it could be adopted in high-volume eating facilities like hospitals, colleges or military bases.

According to Cambridge Consultants, Turbo Clean can process a tray every six seconds. And since it’s a robot, it won’t ever get tired, call in sick or take a break, so it’s another reminder that robots and automation will be eating human foodservice jobs. Clearing food trays is one of those manual repetitive tasks that are ripe for automation, but hopefully shifting that to robots will create new, more creative jobs for people.

Seeing Turbo Clean in action also makes me wonder what Dishcraft, another startup that has been quietly building robots for commercial kitchens is crating. We’ll have a chance to find out at our upcoming ArticulATE food robot conference, where we’ll be chatting with Dishcraft Founder and CEO, Linda Pouliot. It’s on April 16 in San Francisco and you should definitely clear your calendar to join us.

Food Tech News Roundup: Mushrooms, Corporate Catering, and Delivery Fee Wars

You head to the Spoon every week for the big, juicy food tech stories — ones that cover behind the scenes visits to the Beyond Meat headquarters, fundraises for robot baristas, and next-generation smart ovens.

For the other cool news bits around the web, the ones we don’t write a full post on, there’s the food tech news roundup! Grab yourself some lemonade and read up before you head to your local swimming hole for some weekend adventures.

Catering company Hungry expands into Philadelphia
Hungry, a service which connects chefs with corporate catering clients, announced this week that they had acquired Philadelphia company LocalStove (which offers a similar service) for an undisclosed amount. Hungry already works with 300 companies in the Washington, D.C. area, and will continue with LocalStove’s chef and office clients. This news comes a few weeks after the Virginia-based startup raised $1.5 million — I guess we’re seeing some of the promised expansion efforts already.

 

Chinova Bioworks raises $2 million for its natural food preservatives
This week food tech company Chinova Bioworks raised a $2 million seed round with participation by AgFunder, DSM Venturing, Rhapsody Venture Partners, and Natural Products Canada. The Canadian startup uses chitosan, a component found in mushrooms, as a natural food preservation agent in an attempt to fight food waste without artificial preservatives. They will use their new funding to scale up production and grow their team.

 

Doordash launches subscription service for restaurant deliveries
If you live in California, Texas, or the Midwest, you might be able to try out Doordash’s brand new subscription delivery service. Dubbed ‘Dashpass,’ customers in those locations can pay $9.99 to receive free delivery from restaurants in their area — as long as their order is over $15. According to Christopher Payne, COO at DoorDash (catch him at the Smart Kitchen Summit!), the subscription will pay for itself in three orders.

Interestingly, this move came around the same time that UberEats did away with its flat $4.99 delivery fee in favor of a sliding scale based on delivery distance. Which goes to show that the economics of restaurant delivery are clearly changing as demand grows and companies are experimenting to find the pricing sweet spot.

Did we miss any food tech news stories? Don’t keep it to yourself! Tweet us @TheSpoonTech.

Should Other Cities Follow Mountain View’s Free Office Lunch Ban?

Growing up, my Pappy Albrecht used to say, “Life’s not fair and there are no free lunches.” This bit of wisdom will be especially true for some Facebook employees moving into their new offices this Fall, as Mountain View, CA passed a rule that will prohibit the social network from offering free lunches inside their new location.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that as Facebook settles into its new Village at San Antonio office park:

“Under Mountain View’s rules for the Village complex, meals within the offices can’t be subsidized by more than 50 percent on a regular basis. Facebook can fully subsidize employees if they go to restaurants that are open to the public.”

This is, of course, about money. Rather than cloistering up in their shiny new offices, Mountain View wants those thousands of employees interacting with and buying meals from local businesses. Though the rule was enacted back in 2014, it’s even more relevant today as part of a larger discussion about income disparity, especially in the Bay Area, which has become all but unaffordable unless you’re living large on stock options.

Free lunches are table stakes anymore for tech companies competing to attract talent. Offering free meals intentionally keeps workers in the office so they can theoretically be more productive. But is effectively banning this perk the right solution?

I’m honestly not sure. There is something unsettling about the government making rules about where and how a private business’ employees can eat. But at the same time, tech companies have exacerbated wealth inequality, don’t really seem to be doing anything about it, and keeping employees inside office walls on purpose keeps them from going out into the world and supporting local communities. Maybe they need a little nudge.

So far, other Bay Area cities are shying away from their own free lunch bans, but if Mountain Views’ move winds up generating substantial income, other municipalities might look to follow suit. If so, this could have a ripple effect on the rapidly maturing corporate catering market, which has seen real money flow into it. A number of corporate catering companies such as Hungry, ZeroCater and ezCater have raised millions of dollars just this year. A widespread regulatory revolt would negatively impact the sector.

Who knows? Maybe Facebook will embrace this new rule and use, or more likely create, a service like AllSet, which helps companies facilitate buying lunch for employees at nearby restaurants. This in turn could spark a new way of offering the free lunch perk while supporting local communities.

What do you think about the future of free lunches? Leave us a comment and let us know, or come to our Smart Kitchen Summit in October where one of our discussions will be “Leave The Lunch Box Behind: How Tech Is Changing How We Eat At Work.”

Food Tech News Roundup: Goodbye Seattle Straws, Corporate Catering Raises, Deliveroo Expands Editions to France

What a strange/wonderful/fireworks-filled week. With a holiday smack-dab in the middle of the Monday through Friday grind (did you read our piece on how to have a Food Tech Fourth?), we’ve been feeling the summertime hazies a little stronger than usual. How about you?

But food tech news stops for no holiday! So we’ve rounded up a few of the buzziest stories that caught our eye around the web this week. Best read while eating a popsicle.

Bye, plastic straws!

In Seattle, no more plastic straws or utensils
On July 1st Seattle’s ban on plastic straws and utensils went into effect, making it the first major U.S. city to ban the single-use plastics in foodservice in an effort to reduce their negative environmental impact. Any restaurant or coffee shop still serving up plastic utensils will be subject to a fine of up to $250. Around the world, cities and countries are working to ban plastic straws, bags, and utensils. Seattle will be our first major test case to see if these types of restrictions can hold water in the U.S.

 

Corporate catering startup HungerBox nets $4.5 million
This week Bangalore-based startup HungerBox raised $4.5 million in Series A funding led by NeoPlux and Sabre Partners. Founded in 2016, the B2B company coordinates food catering for large corporations. They plan to use their new capital to expand throughout India and further into the Southeast Asian market. Just last week two U.S. startups focused on corporate catering also raised some capital, with ezCater snagging $100 million and Hungry raising $1.5 million.

 

An Editions site in London.

Deliveroo launches Edition kitchen in Paris
On Tuesday food delivery company Deliveroo opened up their first Editions food hub in Saint-Ouen, just outside of Paris. If you didn’t know, Editions projects are essentially curated clusters of cloud (delivery only) kitchens. This is Deliveroo’s first Editions location in France and houses 12 restaurants. The Editions model has proved successful in London, where Deliveroo is based, as well as its other locations in Singapore and Australia — and it shows no signs of slowing down. (If you missed my conversation with Deliveroo’s Dan Warne at SKS Europe, you can see it here).

 

Food robots are hot

Otto changes name to Vivid Robotics, picks up $4.9 million from Vulcan

It’s always easier to change your name when you do it before you come out of stealth, and that’s exactly what Otto Vivid Robotics just did. The Seattle based robotics startup is changing its name at the same time it picks up an additional $4.9 million in funding. The new round had a total of 19 investors, with Paul Allen’s investment arm, Vulcan, acting as lead. Vivid CEO Garett Ochs explained the name change to Geekwire, “We’re going to be creating products for food, and we’re also going to be creating other things. We wanted to do rebranding so we are set up for a more streamlined approach to a divergent future.”

Just a reminder: we’ll be in Providence, Rhode Island on July 17th talking about the future of seafood at Providence Pilotworks. Join us if you are looking to get your foodtech fill and have a conversation about the future of seafood.  

Corporate Catering Service ezCater Raises $100M, Eyes International Expansion

Online business catering service, ezCater, has raised $100 million in Series D funding, the company will announce on Tuesday. The new investment is led by Wellington Management Company with participation from existing investors ICONIQ Capital, Insight Venture Partners and others. This brings the total amount raised by ezCater to $170 million.

EzCater’s marketplace connects businesses with catering services and restaurants across the county, as well as offering a suite of products to help restaurants receive and manage orders and deliver large scale meals.

In a press statement, ezCater says that it will use the new funding to “deepen its products, and expand internationally.” According to VentureBeat, ezCater has not announced which countries will will expand into first.

The money also makes a very public statement that ezCater is not going anywhere anytime soon. This could be important to winning new and keeping existing clients as the corporate catering sector appears to be entering a state of flux. In just the past few months, Square acquired Zesty, EAT Club acquired Farm Hill, and Peach laid off 33 percent of its staff.

Plus, the sheer size of the round could put added pressure on rivals such as Platterz ($21.7 million raised), ZeroCater ($17.6 million raised), and Forkable ($813,000 reported, but final amount raised unknown), all of whom can now be outspent by ezCater.

As we’ve said before, there isn’t much corporate catering services can do to differentiate themselves to customers. At the end of the day, companies are trying to keep employees happy and employees don’t care who delivered the meal, only whether or not the food is good and on-time. EzCater’s war chest will now tubocharge its scaling, and help it outlast (or acquire) its smaller competition.

SnackNation Raises $12M to Expand into Hospitality and Transportation Channels

I worked for a video game startup for a while and one of the best perks was the “wall of snacks.” Packed with free cookies, gummies, chips and more, it helped me pack on more than a few extra pounds by the time I left.

SnackNation is a startup that wants to satisfy snack cravings with food that’s better for you than gummies and chips, and the company just announced yesterday that it has raised a $12 million Series B round to help expand that mission (hat tip to Nosh). This latest round was led by 3L Capital and brings the total amount raised by SnackNation to $22.5 million.

SnackNation is a snack delivery service that “exists to inspire more conscious food decisions.” The company heavily curates its offerings, and according to Nosh, they only offer products that pass “an ingredient review and tasting panel.”

SnackNation has been focused on office snack delivery, and counts Microsoft and MailChimp among its customers. According to the SnackNation website, prices for offices start at $299 a month for 140 – 160 single-serving snacks (consumer boxes start at $9.99). SnackNation says the new money will be used to open up new distribution channels into hospitality and transportation, as well as to scale its direct-to-consumer business.

There’s no shortage of snack box subscription services out there, all of whom are looking to foist their treats on us, no matter the time of day. ZeroCater just raised $12 million to help fund its office snack endeavors. Byte Foods (one of our #FoodTech25 companies) built a more modern vending machine for fresh office snacks. As noted, SnackNation is moving into hospitality and transportation, and Cargo raised $5.5 million so Uber and Lyft drivers can sell you snacks while you ride.

With all this money and activity, it looks like the “wall of snacks” will be breaking free of the office and following me around everywhere. Good thing I work from home.

Chef Dazzer Wants to Bring Professional Chefs Into Your Kitchen

In the past, if you wanted to book a decent caterer, you either had to find one through word of mouth, do a lot of googling, or just settle for a pre-made crudité plate with Ranch from the supermarket.

Chef Dazzer, a Boston-based startup which just launched in March 2018, hopes to change that. Its platform connects culinary professionals, personally vetted by their staff, with people for private event catering.

Chef Dazzer works in two ways: Customers can either get in touch through the company’s website, where they can chat with a staff member who acts as a personal “concierge” to match them to a chef. They can also download the app. On the app, chefs can create profiles, showcasing different menus and cuisines that they offer. Customers can flat-out book a particular menu from a chef, or they can chat via a built-in messaging platform in the app to customize which dishes they would like at their event. 

The two different platform entry points put me in mind of dating services: you can either go into an app and see what’s available, or you can go through an intermediary — like a matchmaker — to help with the selection process. In general, the website is for customers who want a little more hand-holding and want a person to talk to about their event — which, according to their CEO Mike Cormier, is one of the most popular aspects of the platform. 

After their catering event, customers have the opportunity to rate the chefs on a five-star system. When the clients pay the chefs, Chef Dazzer takes a 15 percent cut.

Chef Dazzer is not the first company trying to connect professional chefs to private clients. But it might have come along at the right time. One of the first companies to try this model was Kitchensurfing, which closed in 2016 after raising $20 million in capital. According to Cormier and Avery Gordon, who runs the chef operations side of Chef Dazzer, it’s at least in part because they launched before the Boston market was ready for this kind of model.

“Back when Kitchensurfing came out, having someone come to your house and cook for you was still a very new idea. Now with things like care.com, people are much more comfortable with the idea of having someone you don’t personally know come over,” said Cormier. 

Chef Dazzer also hopes to distinguish themselves by curating a high-quality experience, both for the chefs and the clients. They want to showcase culinary talent by choosing chefs that they know are high-quality, so you won’t book a local high schooler posing as a Michelin-star to cater your 400 person black-tie event. 

To pick which chefs will join their platform, Gordon dips into her years of experience in the Boston culinary community. The approach seems to be working for them now, since they’re new and small, but it will be interesting to see if they can keep up this vetting strategy as they grow and expand to new cities. 

Another potential issue for the company is lead time: most of ChefDazzer’s clients book chefs two weeks to one month out, though they can also contact a chef a few days before the event. At a time where people are used to ordering a slew of pizzas for a party and having them delivered in 45 minutes, it’s a risk to bet on customers being willing to plan that far ahead.

So far, Chef Dazzer has seen a good bit of demand — mostly on the chef side. They have a queue of 55-60 chefs who are interested in joining the platform, but only 10 or so are currently live on the website and app. They hope to scale up as they build their community of both chefs and clients.

Chef Dazzer is bootstrapped and hopes to create a solid user base before building their seed round. Until then, Bostonites can browse chefs to cater their next event, as long as they’re ready to plan a bit ahead. 

Square Gobbles up Zesty to Bolster Corporate Catering

Square, the merchant services company, announced today that it has acquired “certain assets” of the corporate catering startup, Zesty. This addition will help Square expand its food ordering service, Caviar. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Zesty is only available in the Bay Area, where it works with 150 restaurants to delivery corporate meals. The company had raised $20.7 million since launching in 2013, $17 million of that was in a Series A raised in 2015. Zesty will become part of the Caviar for Teams unit, which launched in 2016. The Zesty team will bring with it “full-fledged, white-glove corporate catering, allowing us to serve companies of all sizes,” Square said in a press announcement.

The acquisition comes at a time when the concept of corporate catering is going through its own evolution. It’s no longer just dumping food in a main room at 11:00 and having people scrum to get it while it’s still hot (and having the worst bits sit uneaten). New types of competitors are springing up with new approaches to feeding hungry employees.

Forkable uses smart recommendations to let employees order individual lunches rather than partake in large buffets. Allset flips the script entirely and makes it easier for employees to get out of the office and pre-order and pre-pay for meals at nearby restaurants. And Byte Foods sets up fridges with healthy snacks and food right inside the office.

But until those become more mainstream, Zesty will keep bringing in chafing dishes and, in the short term, continue operate independently.