
Lunch, disrupted: ZeroCater helps startups get fed - arram
http://gigaom.com/2012/03/20/zerocater/
======
billybob
Is this just an illustration of the difference between a "startup" and a "new
business"? If I started a business, I'd probably use a home office or crappy
cheap rented space, pack a sandwich, etc, and wait until I had enough revenue
to do nicer things. Seems like startups are about getting and burning money
from Day 1, hoping to take off but maybe crashing.

~~~
lsb
ZeroCater's minimum order size is 10, if I recall.

Imagine you could get an extra half-hour of productive conversations out of
people for ten bucks each. That's paying people $20/hr! What a good deal for
engineers in the Bay Area.

~~~
timr
_"Imagine you could get an extra half-hour of productive conversations out of
people for ten bucks each. That's paying people $20/hr! What a good deal for
engineers in the Bay Area."_

It is, and it isn't.

I might be an oddball, but I prefer to get away from the office for an hour a
day. It's become conventional wisdom in the valley echo chamber that catered
lunch is a "productivity win", but there's a lot to be said for the change in
perspective that getting out of the office provides. When I go out for lunch,
I feel more relaxed, more creative, and calmer about my work. And don't forget
-- just because I'm sitting around a table eating with my co-workers does
_not_ mean that I'm talking about work (in fact, I suspect it's a net-neutral
benefit, if you're only looking at worker productivity).

Last, but not least, there's a health component: carry-out for lunch, every
day, is a good way to kill yourself. My cholesterol levels (and body weight)
shot up dramatically when I was eating take-out on a daily basis. Google
cafeterias serve _healthy_ food; cheap restaurant food doesn't measure up.
Once I went back to finding my own lunch, my cholesterol levels dropped back
to normal.

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thejteam
The best way to profit from the gold rush is to sell shovels and pickaxes.

Reminds me of the story of a saloon during the original California gold rush
that would sell a bowl of soup for an astronomical sum. The people who stuck
it rich would buy it so they could brag about how much they paid for a bowl of
soup. Not sure how true it is, but believable.

~~~
patja
a bowel of soup? no thanks!

~~~
dctoedt
Sort of like haggis [1], right?

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggis>

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btipling
I appreciate all the work ZeroCater is doing to create a better catering
experience. We use ZeroCater at our SF Rackspace office. Their customer
service is very responsive. The website is great. My biggest complaint is how
variable the food quality is. Sometimes it is pretty bad, in which case you
can rank the quality low and leave a comment and ZeroCater will get back with
you, which is great.

Also variable is the labeling. I'm a vegetarian, often I have to play the
guessing game of "is that meat or not?" Just last week I bit into a meat
filled burrito that was in a bagged marked as 'vegan'.

So they'll have to work on the quality of the restaurants they make available,
but the service itself is great.

~~~
binaryborealis
Hey, this is Yoshi over at ZC. I handle the Rackspace account. I'm very sorry
to say this is the first I've heard of your burrito incident, and I'm amazed
that you don't sound more upset about it. Would you mind dropping me an email
at hello@zerocater.com? I'd like to discuss how we can make it up to you.
Thanks!

~~~
larrys
"and I'm amazed that you don't sound more upset about it."

ZC is a YC company. He's probably afraid of the downvotes if he doesn't keep
up the crowd fawning going on here.

~~~
binaryborealis
:( That's a terrible reason to keep quiet about something this serious,
though.

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brezina
Both of my companies www.sincerely.com & www.xobni.com are ZeroCater
customers. The quality and diversity of the food we get is better with
ZeroCater than when we ordered it ourselves. Also, the vendors show up on
time. They know if we complain they won't just lose 1 customer - they may lose
all of ZeroCater. Arram has found a true market need. His story of hustle is
inspiring. I'm so genuinely excited by this perfect story of entrepreneurship.
And I wish I would have invested.

~~~
philippb
I lived together with Arram when he had 6 customers and did it with his mobile
phone and a Excel spreadsheet by himself.

I have to agree with what you say. A very inspiring story!

~~~
arram
The AirBnB connection. :) Thanks Philip.

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kennystone
> On the vendor side, working with ZeroCater means regular business for a
> number of food service operators... In exchange for volume discounts,
> ZeroCater provides a steady stream of orders for a number of local
> businesses.

This is so cool. Running a restaurant is extremely difficult and the margins
are low. ZeroCater is helping them operate a different kind of business in an
efficient way (like catering but with way less overhead and sales).

~~~
guiseppecalzone
It's really amazing to see how Arram is transforming the local restaurant
economy.

I've gone out and talked to restaurants that work with ZeroCater. ZeroCater
has become a significant source of revenue for many of these small businesses.

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ABS
very nice but I don't see the disruption, at all. In fact I'm getting really
tired of all the startups who call themselves disruptive, 99% of them aren't
(and I'd argue you are disruptive when others call you so, not when you do it
yourself)

~~~
twentysix
They are doing something similar to the Dabbawalas but with restaurant food
replacing home cooked food. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala>

You are right, I wouldnt call it disruptive either, but it is a very useful
service.

 _(and I'd argue you are disruptive when others call you so, not when you do
it yourself)_ That applies to the word "Hacker" too.

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stdbrouw
"dealing with catering was a huge pain for everyone who handle such things"
Here you have it folks, catering isn't just a little inconvenient or
cumbersome at times, it's a HUGE PAIN.

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pessimist
I wouldnt classify this as a disruption - more like a useful middleman.

~~~
simon_weber
What do you see as the difference between the two? Or, put another way, what
do you see as the requirements for a disruption?

I don't see any reason why a middleman that's doing something innovative
shouldn't be considered a disruption.

~~~
vangale
I see "disruption" as either removing middlemen (disrupting supply chain) or
changing consumer expectations in a market. Adding a middleman in the supply
chain isn't disruption so much as making it more efficient for producers to
reach consumers.

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yabbadabbadoo
_ZeroCater’s next market has yet to be determined_

Pls let it be New York City. We'd love to sign up.

------
starfox
Too bad <http://tacocopter.com/> isn't out of closed beta yet.

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dmragone
It might seem like a productivity win, but it may also be a creativity loss. A
recent book by Jonah Lehrer
[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0547386079/theeconomi...](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0547386079/theeconomists-20)
(I found out about it via The Economist
<http://www.economist.com/node/21550235>) describes how creativity is most
likely to happen at times of calm relaxation, such as a relaxed warm shower or
a casual walk. There are times when I eat lunch at my desk to get more done,
but I have found a casual stroll and lunch outside to be well worth the time
and mental state it provides for thinking and creating.

~~~
aquark
Often the most productive hour of my day design-wise is the hour long run at
lunchtime.

Not only that it makes the afternoon far more productive too as I am much more
awake than if I skip it.

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larrys
Expanding ZeroCater will involve solving tremendous quality and logistical
problems when attempted in the real world at "typical" companies.

At the risk of sounding like the person who predicted the need for only 100
computers worldwide (or whatever that small number was) I don't see how this
idea can be expanded to offer a similar service in the legacy corporate world
where companies are not trying to be "mommy" to their workers to squeeze out
ounces of extra productivity.

Food service is really hard even if you operate the food service place and the
people come to you. Here you are maintaining quality among multiple food
places with many chances for things to get screwed up. Additionally the
typical workplace is not filled with a young forgiving workforce.

~~~
eitally
I disagree. As an employee in the legacy corporate world who has to suffer
through crap every time lunch or dinner is catered in for a meeting, I would
welcome healthier, better, more consistent options. I don't see many big
businesses setting up daily deliveries en mass, but even if it was just weekly
or at the group or departmental level, I can see a significant market for ZC.

~~~
larrys
I am not saying that there isn't a market for what they do.

I am saying that maintaining quality with this is extremely difficult.

You are dealing with food service and rag tag food service at that.

Having owned (non food service companies) that employ the type of workers that
are essentially the same as in food service with an equivalent amount of
variables (that can go wrong because of human error) it is my feeling that
this is difficult to scale.

And while it is true that zero cater will be an important customer to any of
their vendors, they don't have control over hiring and food quality as well as
other things that will impact their customer base. And they can't just switch
to a supplier in another state. They are limited by the existing suppliers in
their market.

Now of course if they want to operate the food suppliers (with their own
canteen) that would give them the control they need. But that is an entirely
different business.

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encoderer
We use Waiter.com's "virtual cafeteria service" here (a social startup in
SOMA).

Basically, every day they pick a restaurant. I place my order off the menu. It
gets delivered w/ my name on it. Works fantastic.

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lewisgodowski
Sounds like a great idea, I would just be worried about getting sucked into
the habit of having them cater everyday, and end up blowing more money than I
could afford. Regardless, it's great seeing problems like this solved (:

~~~
arram
Google and Facebook don't feed their employees because they're naive. At a
$65k salary, the meal is fully paid for if you can save employees 20 minutes
by having it brought in.

~~~
lewisgodowski
I mean as a new startup to Silicon Valley, not an already established, large
company. In the long run, I definitely see how this saves a company money, but
for startups where money is tight, I would be wary.

