Show HN: People Food - $7 Office Lunches for Hungry Startups
pplfood.com
pplfood.com
2. Cleanliness! Make sure you put in serious effort to ensuring the things you're delivering were prepared properly and cleanly. That they arrive nicely (tape soup lids well!). One round of office food poisoning...
3. Target individuals and teams. Get groups of people in companies to start "Lunch Pooling" (thelunchpool.com available :D). Make a minimum subscriber count of 3 or even more, so it's worth your while and people are forced to spread the word. Or even use the PayPal/Dropbox technique, people inviting others could get a free lunch. If enough employees do it on their own some companies will decide to just do it for the whole company. The Apple approach to "enterprise" sales.
4. Come to Santa Monica, CA.
2. No problems with that so far, but thanks for the tip!
3. That's a good idea! We've been suggesting to really small startups (<5 people) that they order lunch along with other companies in their building.
4. You got it!
1. Foods like pb&j and ramen aren't exactly going to keep your brain in tip-top condition all day. Unbalanced meals can make you feel very tired.
2. Many of these scrappy startups can't make the time to even order groceries online. (source: I lived in a hacker house for a year)
Source: Startup founder who is about to sign up with the service to give it a try because I've been looking for something like this.
Maybe if they had another $3 per meal they could make more food I'd want to eat.
It's $10/meal if you commit to 4 meals per week.
- Do you have a minimum/maximum order size?
- What sort of commitment do you require (the FAQ mentions a commitment but doesn't give details)?
- Can you accommodate my low carb/dairy-free/gluten-free/MOKO* lifestyle?
- Are there any feedback mechanisms so I can let you know what I thought about the food?
- Is there any choice in what I get, or is it all chosen for me?
- Do you guarantee my food will arrive when I want it and not two hours late?
All of our current customers have a repeating weekly order. If they want to change it, they have to tell us by Friday the week before. That's really all a 'commitment' means.
Right now, only 1 meat meal and 1 vegan meal a day. We're thinking about adding a GF option.
I was supposed to add a feedback button today, but now my email inbox is overflowing :)
All chosen for you. Current customers love the 'surprise factor' and haven't had any complaints about food choices yet.
Yes. We did have our delivery schedule run 15 mins behind one day and apologized with a 5% discount for our customers.
Hope that answers everything :)
Source: I currently work for ZeroCater. dpiers used to work at ZeroCater, and these are questions you're going to get hit with.
One emphatic suggestion: make sure your vegetarian/vegan meals have as many calories as the meat meals. This is something that so many caterers get wrong.
Low-carb and MOKO strike me as not something you should take into consideration but options to avoid dairy and gluten make sense for when you expand your menu, as those can be serious allergies for some people. I would add nut allergies to the list, as they're quite common.
P.s. Know any good food photographers?!
Also think you could do a lot with marketing here... differentiate yourself through fresh ingredients or better supplies. Make that apparent if you have any leg up. Convince them you're better with some unique flair and customer testimonials.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z5232fgpj0xs77g/DSC_0461.JPG https://www.dropbox.com/s/bczdlrf4gp1szp7/DSC_0452.JPG
Locally sourced to me = fresher, healthier, and better for my local economy obviously
b) turn down clients until they can accommodate.
sigh sometimes I hate the people on HN.
Come to NYC?
(question: what are our options in NYC? Besides seamless, which basically means we eat from the same 3 places every week?)
Now, given that it's for startups in San Francisco, the demand for local-sourced organic quinoa meat substitute may make $7 harder to do.
Also, I would say that most popular catering option in SF is ZeroCater, and their website says that meals start at $12-14/person.
$5 sandwiches
What kind of drinks would you want with your food?
Don't bother with run-of-the-mill soft drinks or hot coffee, or plain water, or indeed anything that a startup would ordinarily stock in a mini-fridge. They aren't interesting enough.
I hope the food is not too heavy though as I remember we used to have a Chevys right by our office in SOMA and whenever we went there with the team for lunch we usually wouldn't be back until 2 hours later and wanting to take a nap at the office :)
I'm also curious what the minimum order amount is.
We're really striving for "feel good" meals that fill you up, but don't slow down your brain for the rest of the day.
Minimum order is only 2 meals, but we charge a bit more ($8.50) if you only have a few people.
I'd be really happy if I could consistently find a $5 meal in SF.