ZeroCater (YC W11) is Feeding Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

ZeroCater (YC W11) is Feeding Silicon Valley

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We were actually the first ZeroCater customer at Scribd, and we now use ZeroCater at Parse too. We're huge fans. They take care of everything -- from making sure the food actually shows up to changing up the menus based on our feedback and handling dietary restrictions. Also with Leslie managing our account we have absolutely incredible customer service -- she responds to every comment we make on the meals on their site. ZC saves us a ton of time so we can focus on our product and not on worrying about what/when to eat. The catered lunch/dinner also gives our team a nice dedicated time to hang out and chat. Congrats Arram and company on this story! Now don't get distracted and forget about my dinner tonight! :-)

So I work for GREE (the company pictured in the article), and while I do like ZeroCater, I actually think Munchery is way better. Just a personal opinion. ZeroCater's service is awesome and their food selection is good, but I always feel kinda sick after eating. I think because they source their meals from restaurants.

Why do I like Munchery more? Because its made by chefs who typically use healthy ingredients. They change it up alot and I've even heard stories of some employees calling the chefs to see what's on the menu for the evening. Pretty cool! And after dinner, I feel great!

Hi Christopher, We actually have a ton of personal chefs and caterers. If you talk to your office manager at GREE, we'd be happy to switch it up.

Employee ratings help determine what gets ordered, so what's probably happening is that people are up voting restaurants more.

Ah I see. I really like the personal style. I'll try to rally others to my cause! Its nice to see where your food comes from and who makes it. I feel privileged that we get food in the first place, but always prefer the lunch that comes served by chefs over the stuff that comes dumped out of plastic containers.

Ironically, the complaint goes the other way at Google. We have in-house chefs that source the best ingredients and design the healthiest meals possible, and then people complain about the food being too healthy. (Lately the pendulum seems to have swung in the other direction, however. Last night I had waffles with whipped cream, bourbon butter, and syrup for dinner. Oh well, you only live once...)

Munchery chefs' rule #1: taste is King. By using fresh and local ingredients, healthiness comes naturally.

Reading this article and this thread taught me that there is actually competition in this space. We've used ZeroCater at Sincerely since the beginning and have honestly never considered switching. They are that good.

We use ZeroCater at Instagram and at least what we get has been consistently fresh and at least SEEMS healthy. They also make sure to take into consideration some of the vegetarians we have on staff. I'm not involved in the ordering process, but at least from the eaters perspective, it's pretty great.

They are usually very accommodating to different dietary restrictions. And the food is usually very delicious (SF has some amazing restaurants!) But restaurant food just tastes...heavy? I loved when we had Osha one day and grilled brisket + mac n cheese the next, but I certainly couldn't have that style of food everyday.

Sorry to be late to the conversation. I want to note that at Munchery, we work ONLY with independent chefs and caterers to serve you meals. There are no restaurants in the mix. Thank you for your feedback and I'm glad to hear you are enjoying the service!

A related note about UI design. I've lately been seeing a lot of ads (mostly on Muni) for both ZeroCater and Cater2 (a competitor http://cater2.me). What's interesting is how much better the clean ZC style looks compared to Cater2's ... frankly, amateurish resembling-developer-designed logo.

We were a ZeroCater customer and actually switched to Cater2.me.

Service-wise, they are both pretty much equal with Cater2.me maybe having less repeats and being a little more friendly to special needs (vegans, gluten allergies, etc). Our office manager is on some kind of mailing list for other office managers and said there seemed to be widespread trend of offices switching to Cater2.me.

We have made significant improvements to our service in regards to repeats and special needs in the last 8 months.

We have a dedicated team of food scouts who are constantly searching for new, exciting vendors to send to our clients. Our current repertoire includes over one-hundred of the best, most reliable vendors in the Bay Area.

We also keep detailed notes on every company's dietary restrictions and preferences and provide labels for all items that include notes if the item is vegan/gluten free/etc.

If SeatMe ever decides to give us another shot, I promise I will personally bake and deliver cupcakes for the entire office. And my cupcakes are pretty good: http://i.imgur.com/fFlC5.jpg . :)

Daniel Piers - Engineer / Czar of Cupcakes @ ZeroCater

Hi Aloisius,

I'm the founder of ZeroCater. Sorry to hear you're no longer with us. I'd would be great to get your feedback on how we could improve our service. I'd love to grab a beer some time.

We started out with ZC and switched to Cater2.me after a few months. Turns out a better website doesn't translate to better food or service, who knew? Also Cater2.me just updated their site and seems to be putting more effort in on that side now. That makes sense to me. Food quality and customer service should be the focus, not the logo or even the UI.

Thanks for the feedback! We were indeed really focused on customer service and are now finally finding the time to put some efforts into improving our image. - Ben from Cater2.me

Hi, I'm Ben from Cater2.me. Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it! We are pretty focused on operations and customer service but we're (finally?) putting some efforts into our image and have revamped our website for example. Stay Hungry! :)

We've been using them here at SugarCRM for a few months and they have been doing a pretty bangup job so far. Food selection has been pretty varied and the quality has been solid...and from what I hear from the folks who do the booking, their service has been exemplary.

PLEASE GIVE SCRIBD MORE KALE!!! THEY LOVE KALE!!!

confirming that scribd loves kale and you should ship them all of your remaining kale.

Kale en route.

We've just dispatched a courier with a big bag of Kale. ETA 7 minutes. I am not joking.

thank you this is awesome.

P.S. The Kale was wonderful

What's the minimum number of people necessary to use ZeroCater?

Right now it's 15. One of the reasons that we're able to offer much higher quality restaurants and caterers is that we focus on sizable groups.

IIRC you store taste preferences per-user – is it possible to have different subsets of people order food each day?

At Parse we started using ZeroCater with just 9-10 people by ordering the minimum food for 15 and splitting it with others or giving some away. Totally worth it.

good to see zerocater expanding beyond tech companies!

ZeroCater looks pretty sweet. I'm at Etsy though and you know... our Eatsys are pretty awesome too.

the free-food culture is so ingrained in the tech world that it would be much harder to eliminate there.

free food in tech startups isn't free at all. You (as the employee) are just donating more time & money to the employer.

I'm fortunate enough to work for a company that has a fabulous suite of cafeterias that host a huge variety of foods, but in the startup world, free food just felt like the NYC power lunches of the 80's

>I'm fortunate enough to work for a company that has a fabulous suite of cafeterias that host a huge variety of foods, but in the startup world, free food just felt like the NYC power lunches of the 80's

Am I the only one who find your comment ironical?

"You (as the employee) are just donating more time & money to the employer."

Not sure if I agree with this. You aren't necessarily required to eat and work at the same time just because you are getting free food. Secondly, an extra ~$10-15 bucks a day per person is a relatively minuscule amount of money for a company (keep in mind that if this was distributed as salary to employees, it would only be about $5-10 a day after taxes). So, essentially the employee is enjoying a meal that is being paid for with pre-tax money.

i've worked at a few startups with catered lunches. where i'm at now, we purposely only cater lunch and not dinner so that people don't feel obligated to stay later. we always have the kitchen stocked so there's food if they do, plus we order extra at lunch so there are leftovers. no one is required to stay and eat, but it helps everyone bond at lunch over non-work related things.

plus, some people go out on their lunch, and come back and eat the food at their desk. win-win. free food, no obligation to work.

Literally, TANSTAAFL.

This falls in the class of benefits that serve to remove worries for employees so they can spend that time thinking about work instead.

I really don't see how that's a bad thing. If you're feeling shortchanged by the deal, let your boss know. Ultimately, quit.

My last job didn't have catered food. I was a daily chore to figure what to get and go out and get it. Not difficult, but annoying and it broke my concentration. Also we didn't have a lunch area, so most people ate alone at their desks. In my current job (free catered lunch), I've experienced to drone down to the cafeteria and get food without really breaking my train of thought, and I've experienced meeting some people in the cafeteria and picking up a great non-work related conversation.

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