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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

office catering

ZeroCater’s New Cloud Cafe Adds Flexibility to Corporate Catering

Corporate catering company ZeroCater announced today the national rollout of its new Cloud Cafe digital app. Cloud Cafe adds customizable subsidy functionality for employers and features personalized meal recommendations for employees.

Founded n 2009, ZeroCater partners with more than 450 food partners including commissary kitchens, cafeterias and restaurants to deliver meals and snacks to corporate offices.

You’d be forgiven if your first reaction to this news is, Wait, are there still enough people going into offices to justify office meal catering? There are big questions around what the future of office work will look like post-COVID, especially since vaccines are now (knocks on wood) on the horizon. But Cloud Cafe seems built for the gradual and eventual return to working in an office as this pandemic recedes.

Part of preparing for a post-pandemic office environment is the new sliding subsidy ZeroCaters Cloud Cafe now offers. With this feature, employers can choose how much or how little they want to pay for a worker’s lunch. This type of flexibility is beneficial for a company that can’t afford to have an on-site cafeteria but wants to offer something more than a vending machine to staff. Partial subsidies could provide a way to help attract and retain talent without breaking the bank.

But ZeroCater also says it can help employees get the most out of the meals they choose through its smart recommendations system. ZeroCater’s FoodIQ keeps track of your dietary needs and preferences to make meal recommendations. FoodIQ also lets you rate dishes and keeps track of all of this data for every employee to make better targeted food recommendations in the future. ZeroCater believes that if workers do have to come into the office, having better meals provided will translate into more satisfied employees.

The future of office work is still very much in the air and companies are figuring out how many of their employees will be remote. One idea emerging involves working from home and satellite offices spread out across the country. Instead of coming in all day every day, workers would come into the office certain days of the week.

ZeroCater isn’t alone in trying to navigate office lunches of a post-COVID workplace. Byte Technologies, which makes smart fridges, also pitches customizable subsidies with its smart fridge platform as a cost-effective means of getting office workers fresh food.

People may not be coming back to the office in droves quite yet, but ZeroCater is laying the groundwork for when they do and life gets back to normal.

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. 

Compass Group Acquired Corp. Caterer Feedr. But What Will Post-COVID Office Lunches Look Like?

Foodservice giant Compass Group acquired the U.K. based office catering startup Feedr in March, according to TechCrunch, which reported the sale price at around $24 million. Feedr had previously raised $2.7 million in funding.

Pre-pandemic, Feedr provided office food delivery by connecting companies with restaurants. As we wrote previously:

Feedr works with local restaurants to create a rotating daily menu for office workers at participating companies. Employees can pay for lunches themselves or get a subsidy through their company. Feedr then coordinates the logistics and delivery of ordered food to the office.

Compass told TechCrunch that it plans to use Feedr’s tech to accelerate Compass’ digital transformation and become part of its “return to work” strategy.

What returning to work actually will look like is only just starting to become clear. Some companies have gone full-on remote work for the foreseeable future, while other offices will operate with staggered shifts and reduced capacity.

For companies that offered catered lunches pre-COVID, there is a question around if and what that particular perk will look like. First off, will companies have the money to fully cater meals for employees? If they can, what will those meals look like? With buffets banned at dine-in restaurants, it’s hard to imagine big troughs of food being brought out for people to rush and crowd around, all using the same serving utensils throughout lunchtime.

Given that the world is on fire, whether or not some people are able to get free lunches delivered to their workplace seems pretty trivial. But a lot of money was poured in office catering companies over the past couple of years: ZeroCater raised $17.6 million, eZCater raised $319.8 million, and DoorDash acquired Caviar from Square for $410 million. Will all that money disappear?

Since the future of work is so uncertain, there could be a lot of pivoting for these startups. In fact some smaller players already have. Ox Verte in NY switched to home office delivery, and Forkable added home delivery as well.

Feedr’s model, which offers a sliding scale of corporate subsidies for individually packaged restaurant meals, seems like it could mitigate some of the larger issues surrounding office catering. Even so, being acquired by a big company like Compass means Feedr at least doesn’t have to worry about surviving as a startup in this new world.

Ox Verte Pivoted from Office Catering to Home Office Meal Delivery in Three Days

What a difference a five days can make. A couple of weeks back, NYC-based office meal delivery service Ox Verte had a nice business going. The certified B corp counted a couple thousand offices as customers and had a substantial run rate. Then COVID-19 came on strong in New York and people were told to work from home. In a matter of days, Ox Verte’s revenue disappeared to $0.00.

But Ox Verte Founder and CEO Jessie Gould didn’t panic or quit, she mobilized and pivoted the company completely. Instead of delivering food to offices, they would deliver it to home offices.

This week, in just three days, Ox Verte launched a new website (oxverte.nyc) and a whole new line of business. The startup now offers delivery of a box set of fruits and veggies ($95) , snacks ($4), as well as Ox Verte-made bowls ($16.50 each). Since it is now delivering to homes, the company also offers a menu of meals for families ($65 or $145, depending on size). Because it is a B Corp., all of Ox Verte’s food is plant-forward (though not strictly vegetarian) and locally sourced.

I spoke with Gould by phone this week and asked if its supply chain had been disrupted and she was quick to say no. “There is just a mismatch right now because there’s a run on grocery stores,” Gould said, “But fields haven’t stopped growing food. Our supply chain is intact and they [food producers] would like us to take more.”

I also asked if there were new sanitation or cleaning procedures that are being mandated by NYC since the outbreak. “DOH [Department of Health] procedures in NY pretty strict to begin with,” Gould said, though they have instituted contactless delivery as well as new cleaning protocols for the containers carrying food.

The pivot hasn’t come without its own challenges, however. Ox Verte had to lay off three full-time employees, and stop work with a number of contractors. Gould hopes these layoffs are temporary and that those affected can be re-hired as the business grows.

To grow that business, Gould is targeting the employees of Ox Verte’s previous corporate customers to see if there is a way those companies can subsidize meals for its people working from home. Ox Verte isn’t abandoning the corporate market altogether. The company plans to just build up two lines of business after this pandemic subsides.

In the meantime, Ox Verte’s story can hopefully provide a ray of hope for other businesses impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. It might be mercenary, but it’s also true that crisis brings opportunity. For Ox Verte, it forced them into a new line of business. Now we’ll see if there’s an actual business there.

UPDATE: This story originally incorrectly reported Ox Verte laid off 9 people. It was only three. We regret the error.

Minnow Launches its Lunch Delivery Pods in Portland, OR

Minnow, which makes IoT-connected cubbies for lunch deliveries in office buildings, is swapping one Portland for another as it officially launches its business.

Though the company began in Portland, Maine back in October of 2017, when it came time to go live, Minnow picked Portland, Oregon as its launch city, where it has installed its pods in seven different locations. The company has also moved its headquarters from Maine to Seattle, where it believes it will have access to more talent and capital.

As my colleague Mike Wolf wrote previously (when the company went by the name Kadabra), Minnow essentially makes an Amazon locker for food. You could also think of it as an Eatsa/Brightloom service, but for offices. Minnow installs their pods, which house 20 different cubbies, in office buildings. Office workers use either SMS or the mobile web to pre-order their lunch from a rotating menu of local restaurants. Once the restaurant completes the orders, Minnow then delivers all the orders at once at a designated time, putting each order in its own cubby. To collect their lunch, the recipient just goes to the Minnow pod, clicks in a special mobile link and the cubby housing their food is opened.

There are actually a few benefits to this office cubby approach. For the restaurant, it consolidates a bunch of orders first thing in the morning, so they start the day with some revenue and can more easily manage fulfillment since all the orders are being picked up at the same time.

For the building locations, it serves as a tech-forward amenity to attract tenants, and it can help reduce the number of delivery people coming in and out of the building. Instead of ten different delivery people for ten different lunch orders at ten different times in the morning, there is just the one drop off.

For office workers, this type of asynchronous approach means that they don’t have to wait around for a lunch delivery person, or have that delivery person arrive during an important meeting. Lunch is delivered at a set time and waits in the cubby until pickup. Additionally, the delivery fee for Minnow is just $1 and there’s no tipping or extra service fees that often come with other third-party delivery services, so it can be a more economical way to get your meal delivered.

There are limitations to Minnow, however, especially as it gets started. It offers a rotating menu featuring just one restaurant a day per location, so there isn’t a ton of variety. And you have to lock in your lunch order early on in day, so there isn’t a lot of wiggle room if plans change. Also, with just 20 cubbies available (for now), the service can sell out in busy offices with lots of people, and those cubbies aren’t temperature controlled, so your hot stuff can get cold if you don’t grab it in time.

But as noted, Minnow is just starting out and will be ironing out some of these bumps as it grows. The company has raised more than one million dollars in seed funding, and has three revenue streams: it collects an amenity fee from the office building, it takes a cut of the sales it gathers for the restaurants, and it gets that delivery fee.

Minnow’s approach is similar to the Outpost delivery system Sweetgreen put in place a couple years back. Though the advantage to having a Minnow system is the ability to order from more than just Sweetgreen.

And like Byte Technology, Minnow is staking its territory in the middle ground of office lunches. It’s a meal solution for offices that can’t afford full-on catering or an on-site chef, but still want to provide an easier way for workers to eat on-site. It would be great if Minnow could work with offices to enable meal subsidies to provide an extra perk and incentive to workers (Minnow says this feature is on its roadmap).

If Minnow takes off, it’s next step will be raising more money so it can grow beyond PDX, PDQ.

First Chop Pivots from Consumer Sous Vide to Prepared B2B Meal Service

Famed Silicon Valley entrepreneur and advisor Steve Blank has said that “a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” That’s why it’s not uncommon for a startup to pivot during its lifetime as it searches for that repeatable model.

So I wasn’t too surprised when I saw that First Chop, a company that started out selling protein-only consumer meal kits complete with their own sous vide circulators, had pivoted and moved towards selling more complete meals to businesses.

I originally covered First Chop back in November of 2017, writing:

FirstChop is looking to stand out in the competitive meal shipping space in few ways. First, it only does meal proteins: chicken, beef, lamb, etc.; no vegetables, no starches. Second, all those proteins are cooked, and then frozen and vacuum sealed, so you can eat them on your own schedule. And third, the Bay Area-based company is basically giving away a sous-vide wand so all customers have to do is put the frozen bag of meat in hot water to prepare it.

Turns out that “all customers have to do” was actually big ask.

I talked with First Chop Co-Founder and CEO, Ajay Narain, today who said that there were two big issues with his company’s original plan. First was that customer acquisition costs got too high and it unsustainable to go directly after consumers. The other big issue was that the sous vide element proved too much for most customers.

“Sous vide was too steep a hill to climb.” Narain said, “[Customers] had to understand the benefit of sous vide and buy into the premise that the food would come out better and pay a bunch of money to try it out.”

Spoiler: they didn’t.

It wasn’t just educating them on sous vide, Narain said. Even if they used the wand perfectly, customers still had issues with the cooking method. Sous vide cooking takes a long time. You have to heat the water to the right temperature, then slowly heat the protein, which, in the case of First Chop’s food, took even longer because it was frozen. All in, customers were looking at more than an hour before they got to eat a First Chop meal.

Plus, Narain said, while sous vide heats food to a precise temperature, that temperature often isn’t as hot as people want when they eat. “The food comes out the perfect temperature, but for most people it’s not hot enough. It’s 140 degrees, but you’re used to piping hot food in your mouth.”

Facing all these challenges, Narain and co. decided to pivot this past January, shifting from a direct-to-consumer model towards a B2B model. With the revamped meal service, the sous vide wand is out and carbohydrates are in. First Chop now still fully prepares, cooks and assembles chef-prepared meals, but they are now in two pouches that you re-heat in the microwave. Instead of an hour, meals take two minutes.

First Chop is now aiming to sell to food service companies like Aramark, but before they can do that, the company first has to show some ground level interest. As such, First Chop piloted its new service with an unnamed Bay Area company earlier this year. The company is preparing for a more full launch in the next few months, but Narain said that during its first business trial, First Chop sold as much product than it sold in its first year as a consumer play.

While that kind of initial return is definitely good news for the privately funded First Chop, the company is venturing into a crowded market. There are lots of companies looking to sell into offices through various innovative means. Byte Technologies licenses out smart fridges. Markov pairs its high-tech microwave with a meal kit solution. And the just-launched-in-the-U.S. Genie is a one-touch machine that cooks and stirs freeze-dried meals in a cup. Not to mention all of the office catering startups.

With its pivot complete, now we’ll have to see if First Chop’s pivot has paid off and whether it’s found its repeatable, scalable business model.