
Show HN: People Food - $7 Office Lunches for Hungry Startups - jmhamel
http://www.pplfood.com/#
======
staunch
1\. Make it $10 or $11. It's the most a lazy and cheap person will pay and
it's a lot more than $7. You're still _way_ cheaper than most other options.
Use most of the money on delivering great food.

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.

~~~
jmhamel
1\. We've though about it, but we really want to support the scrappy little
seed-stage startups who can't afford $11 lunches, but want to eat lunch as a
team.

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!

~~~
optimusclimb
Shouldn't the scrappy seed stage startup be hitting up Safeway and buying
bread and cold cuts, pb&j, or...ramen, if it wants to be "scrappy"?

~~~
jmhamel
That's definitely the traditional idea. Here are two reasons that I think $7
is worth their money:

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)

~~~
ebrescia
I think the $7-$8 price point is ideal. It is affordable enough for most
companies to be able to justify it. Over $10/meal starts seeming a little
extravagant to me.

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.

------
dpiers
A few questions:

    
    
      - 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?
    

*MOKO: will only eat 'meat of known origin'

~~~
jmhamel
Minimum order size: 2. We didn't really set a maximum, but so far, nobody has
asked for more than we can handle.

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 :)

~~~
justin66
> Right now, only 1 meat meal and 1 vegan meal a day. We're thinking about
> adding a GF option.

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.

~~~
jmhamel
Thanks for the suggestion! We've been leaning on lots of different beans to
make sure the vegan meals have enough calories & protein :)

------
evandena
8 new Outlook windows on the other monitor later, I realize it's a mailto
link. And show me some pictures of the food!

~~~
jmhamel
I totally feel you about the mailto link - It was just a quick way to get
everything up and running. Will definitely change soon :)

P.s. Know any good food photographers?!

~~~
justhw
Try this, someone showhn'd a while ago.
[http://squaresend.com](http://squaresend.com)

~~~
jmhamel
Nice, I like it!

------
urberdurr
Jesus, Iowa is cheap I think I averaged $2 a meal last month. Sandwiches and
cereal FTW.

------
nzp
You made a well designed front page. The colours are nicely fitting and the
logo is great it associated with some kind of food immediately (made me think
of spring rolls or something like that)! Just wanted to say that after a day
of repeatedly stumbling upon extremely annoying hip, identical, scroll-untill-
you-die sites, yours made me smile a little. And now I'm hungry.

~~~
jmhamel
Thank you so much for the lovely compliment :)

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diziet
Just ordered and tried the food. It was very good.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/z5232fgpj0xs77g/DSC_0461.JPG](https://www.dropbox.com/s/z5232fgpj0xs77g/DSC_0461.JPG)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/bczdlrf4gp1szp7/DSC_0452.JPG](https://www.dropbox.com/s/bczdlrf4gp1szp7/DSC_0452.JPG)

------
rodly
How can I be sure you source from local markets? This doesn't scale easily
either. How do you plan to combat carelessness when demand goes up and you all
of sudden need to push out 1000 or 10,000 meals at lunch time?

~~~
dsl
Cryptographically signed receipts, of course.

 _sigh_ sometimes I hate the people on HN.

~~~
rodly
I... don't know where the sarcasm or hatred came from. Do these questions seem
unfair to you?

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memset
I love that you folks - in contrast to so many other catering companies - are
transparent with your pricing!

Come to NYC?

(question: what are our options in NYC? Besides seamless, which basically
means we eat from the same 3 places every week?)

~~~
jmhamel
Thanks! Hopefully we'll come to NYC sometime in the future :)

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tejay
If I lived in SF I'd totally jump on this. I was so productive in college
because I lived right next to a gym and my dining hall had unlimited eating
from 7am until 8p, every day.

------
vishaldpatel
Questions: Why did you pick $7? Why not $10 or $15? What diet will the first
meal plans be for? Will it be all organic? Is it freshly prepared each day
from raw ingredients?

~~~
jff
$7 will buy you a couple tacos and a bottle of Coke at the taco truck. $7 is a
pretty good price for lunch.

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.

~~~
jmhamel
"local-sourced organic quinoa meat substitue" hahahaha so true

------
physcab
I'm all for more lunch options. Can you _please_ offer a healthy snack
solution as well? I'd pay out of pocket for this. 4pm is my hunger-witching
time.

~~~
jmhamel
Ooh good idea. How much would you pay for a 4pm snack?

~~~
physcab
I got a Naturebox ($20/month) for my mom and she loves it. I'm considering
doing the same this year for her and myself and I think its the right price
point. If my company stocked Naturebox treats, they would be a huge hit. Most
tech companies seem to be using the same service for their snacks. Whenever I
visit another office I always see the same assortment of Popchips, Doritos,
Pirates Booty as well as Vitamin Water, Crystal Geyser mineral water, Odwalla,
and soft drinks.

------
budwin
What a wonderful idea. Just FYI, I went to share this on facebook, and the
thumbnail was white on white. You might want to put a few metadata tags in
there.

~~~
jmhamel
Ahh thanks for noticing that! Just added it to the infinite to-do list :)

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aabalkan
This sounds promising. I upvoted just because I want SF folks to afford cheap
and healthy lunch. I hope it all goes well and you can expand to Seattle area.

~~~
jmhamel
Thanks so much for the support! I also hope all goes well and we can expand to
the Seattle area soon :)

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rikacomet
-Whats the approx nutritional value for all your combos, crude figures on the lower side of estimate would be a good thing to know.

~~~
jmhamel
We aim for 600-800 calories per serving, but we don't make any promises about
the exact nutritional value

------
dafzal
FYI, it seems like the email you have listed (support@pplfood.com) is
bouncing.

~~~
jmhamel
Hmm just tested it and it seems to be working. Also, my inbox is overflowing
haha. Try again and let me know if it works!

------
jmtame
What a great idea. When will you support Palo Alto/peninsula area cities?

~~~
jmhamel
Why thank you! Once we get settled in SF, the rest of the Bay Area is next (~6
months) :D

------
shivaas
any plans to expand to Seattle soon? Would love to give this a try for our
team

~~~
jmhamel
We're still getting settled in SF, but I'll add Seattle to the list :)

------
karangoeluw
Good idea. But I think pricing needs an update. Usually eating out is $5 a
meal.

~~~
jmhamel
Thanks! Just curious, but where can I get a $5 meal in SF? (Not trying to
sound rude, I just can't find anywhere that cheap :)

Also, I would say that most popular catering option in SF is ZeroCater, and
their website says that meals start at $12-14/person.

~~~
munaf
Not many places. You can get a good Bahn Mi in the inner sunset for < $5.
Also, Mehfil in SOMA has a $5 lunch special, but it's not a balanced meal.

