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.
The best way to profit from the gold rush is to sell shovels and pickaxes.<p>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.
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.<p>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'.<p>So they'll have to work on the quality of the restaurants they make available, but the service itself is great.
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.
> 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.<p>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).
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)
"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.
It might seem like a productivity win, but it may also be a creativity loss. A recent book by Jonah Lehrer <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0547386079/theeconomists-20" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0547386079/theeconomi...</a> (I found out about it via The Economist <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21550235" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/node/21550235</a>) 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.
Expanding ZeroCater will involve solving tremendous quality and logistical problems when attempted in the real world at "typical" companies.<p>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.<p>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.
We use Waiter.com's "virtual cafeteria service" here (a social startup in SOMA).<p>Basically, every day they pick a restaurant. I place my order off the menu. It gets delivered w/ my name on it. Works fantastic.
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 (: