

Sequoia Capital invests $10mil to let you order grilled cheese over the Internet - raldi
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/06/01/jonathan-kaplan-from-flip-cams-to-flipping-grilled-cheese/?mod=google_news_blog

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vessenes
I think the interesting thing here is the tech development angle; online /
mobile ordering and delivery service. I'm sure that it's agreed at Sequoia
that the restaurant chain idea is just a hard testing ground for the
technology.

The tech is what will be worth the money; the rest of this is just sort of the
press being slow.

That said, I do really like the idea of a mobile-integrated ordering and
delivery system for the restaurant industry, and of course, fast-concept food
is the right place to test it.

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hugh3
_the rest of this is just sort of the press being slow._

Or just the press doing exactly what Sequoia wants 'em to. "Sequoia invests in
yet another startup doing mobile payments for restaurants" = boring story.
"Sequouia invests in grilled cheese" = exciting story.

And here we are, we're part of it, helping out by talking about it. But I
don't mind, as long as the grilled cheeses are good.

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SeoxyS
Building 500 restaurants sure is an expensive way to get a cool press release,
if it's just a PR play.

~~~
hugh3
Yeah, the 500 restaurants in the next couple of years is believe-it-when-I-
see-it territory. I can't see where the money's going to come from.

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rdl
Presumably, franchises or private equity. Building a new restaurant and IT
concept MIGHT be a VC investment, but scaling out to a bunch of physical
retail locations is either PE or IPO or a big debt (bond) issue (if corp
owned, like Starbucks), or a bunch of franchises (e.g. McDonalds).

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erik_landerholm
I go to restaurants to get things I can't make well or easily myself...grilled
cheese is neither of these things.

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hugh3
For dinner, yes. For lunch, I go to whatever's convenient and sounds tasty.
Heck, I'll pay six bucks for a ham and cheese sandwich I could have just as
easily brought from home, because I'm lazy. A grilled cheese sandwich I
couldn't bring from home (well, not if I wanted it hot) so it's even better!

PS. I'm surprised the paleo-diet nuts haven't shown up in these grilled cheese
threads yet...

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jlees
Nuts? Some people who follow paleo style eating are definitely more...
evangelist than others, but let's not tar all cavemen with the same brush.

I don't eat grilled cheese, but I never thought it was particularly healthy
before reading up on nutrition and experimenting with a more paleolithic style
of eating, and I certainly don't now; but neither are many other restaurant
chains' signature offerings. You can eat them if you like, it's your own body
after all.

(Aside: My impartiality to grilled cheese is possibly also because I'm
British, and you can't get a decent cheese-and-beans toastie here for love nor
money; it's nothing without the beans, I say. Nothing!)

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esoteriq
I lived in London for six months and discovered the wonderfulness of pasties.
I admit that I would eat pasties whenever I didn't feel like cooking (which
was often).

Why a pasty craze never took off here in the U.S., I will never know.
Delicious meat in an easy-to-eat package? I'm sold.

~~~
hugh3
I'm trying to introduce meat pies and sausage rolls to the US, but it's not
working. The one place in the SF Bay Area that you could get 'em (The New
Zealander in Alameda) closed down recently.

Luckily I'm on the east coast next week and I hear there's a pie shop in New
York City.

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tokenadult
The upper peninsula ("U.P.") of Michigan is the place to get pasties in the
United States. It's almost the only region of the United States that includes
people who know how to pronounce "pasty."

<http://kenanderson.net/pasties/michigan.html>

<http://www.upper-peninsula-now.com/pasties.html>

<http://www.exploringthenorth.com/foods/north.html>

I've had a pasty in the U.P., and I'd be glad for pasties to become more
generally available in the United States. As it is, my wife (who is Taiwanese)
makes homemade meat pies, to surprisingly good effect from someone who didn't
grow up eating them.

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johnrob
It's a marquee founder trying to explore how to better involve technology in
the restaurant industry. Not nearly as bizarre as the press apparently loves
to paint it. This is borderline link bait.

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onesweetworld
You have to wonder if this company will succeed when on America's next great
restaurant, the restaurant veterans passed on a similar idea.

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michaelbuckbee
IIRC the reason that Meltworks (the ANGR concept) got rejected was that they
felt that the guy who was running it wasn't flexible enough and that they felt
he wouldn't be a good partner.

Like many investments, it is the team as much as the actual concept.

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imjk
Disregarding the potential of Jonathan Kaplan or the driving technology, this
title is almost a satirical representation of the current tech
bubble/abundance of funding out there right now.

I swear this would be a great title for an Onion article.

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stevenj
I bet this works out well.

I'm bullish on the fast-casual market; especially when a restaurant's menu is
focused and provides quality food at a fair price.

Maybe grilled cheese and tomato soup isn't the right product mix, but I'm
pretty sure this market is ripe for disruption.

The place I eat at most frequently is Whole Foods' self-serve deli. It's $8.99
a pound and always has fresh, quality food.

Whole Foods is a grocery store. But I don't buy groceries there, I just go
there to eat. And I'm willing to drive 3 - 7 miles to get to one.

Just think if you only had to drive a couple blocks to get a decent cup of
coffee or an espresso-based drink.

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lurker19
I'd think you were in Seattle and were very picky about your coffee. I don't
get the bit about "drive", though. :-)

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T_S_
I order my sandwich at Specialty's in Mountain View using an mobile web app
they offer. Even if I eat it there, it saves the time spent in line. It's no
different than just-in-time inventory management, which is an old idea now.
Mobile just makes it possible to handle lots of orders with nobody on the
phone.

There's no need to open a chain, though. Just build and sell a system to lunch
cafes. I think we all have learned from restaurant web sites that they
shouldn't build technology, they should buy it. Except Sequoia's of course.

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cube13
>There's no need to open a chain, though. Just build and sell a system to
lunch cafes.

I think that this technology might be the end result from this venture, more
than the restaurants themselves. Making yourself the client can remove a lot
of potential feature creep, especially with non-technical restaurant owners
who may not know exactly what they want at the beginning. Starting their own
small chain lets them work out the kinks of the system in a much more
controlled environment than putting it into production with established
places.

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fleitz
Yup, once it's perfected they will probably roll out to the test locations at
McDonalds, and then eventually nationwide. One of the benefits of the
McDonalds system is they'll be able to have all their employees fully trained
on the new system in 6 months (once all the staff from the existing system
turn over)

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latj
After reading this I made a joke to a friend that someone should make a parody
site claiming to be the airbnb for grilled cheeses.

You request a grilled cheese via mobile app and are directed to the nearest
house who has marked themselves available to make grilled cheese sandwiches.

Then I saw the Google suggest for "airbnb for ".

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kd0amg
I was under the impression that restaurants tend to operate on very thin
margins. Is this not actually the case, or is The Melt expected to be an
exception, or is it expected to overcome this with large order volume?

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jonknee
They want to sell grilled cheese at scale. That's where the big money is. Not
one location, not ten, but hundreds. With five hundred locations, it doesn't
take a large monthly profit per store to add up to a lot of money.

~~~
fleitz
This business as others have pointed out is not about selling grilled cheese,
it's about proving the market and perfecting the system. They'll likely go
after big fast food chains which is why they sell a similar product made in a
similar way. Oh knows maybe it will be a runaway success but I have a feeling
it will be moderately successful return the fund and the cream will be selling
the system to everyone else.

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tomkarlo
Why make the success of the technology so dependent on the success of the food
operation? Grill cheese / retro comfort food is hot right now in hipster
places (I'm thinking of the new "meatball" shop on the Lower East Side in New
York, too) but it might not be in a while. And it might not have the wide
appeal nationally, either.

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raldi
And don't forget S'mac.

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jasonkolb
While I have no problem with investing in restaurants I have two problems with
this particular investment:

A) $10 mil is a hell of a lot for any restaurant B) Pizza hut already does
online ordering for cheesy treats

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rokhayakebe
It isn't one restaurant. It is a chain.

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schnaars
What bubble?

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localhost3000
Is it April 1 already?

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zackattack
They're going for the smartphone crowd with those annoying QR codes. Geeks.
Grilled cheese sure was popular at SXSW this year.

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clistctrl
I wish someone would do a fast food chain that dishes out the croque monsieur.
It was my favorite part of france :D

