Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Catering platform finds new purpose amid virus
NEW YORK — When it launched in 2017, the catering tech platform HUNGRY had one customer in mind: well-heeled office workers.
The goal was to bring delicious meals to places like Microsoft, Amazon and Google by creating networks of chefs and deliverers. HUNGRY was going to be the Uber of catering. Jay-Z was a fan.
Then came the pandemic.
All those gleaming offices — the lifeblood of the company — were shuttered. “There couldn’t have been a worse thing for our business than that,” said cofounder and chief operating officer Eman Pahlavani.
But HUNGRY didn’t go under. It pivoted.
These days, the company’s customers are far different from the original targets. Now it’s feeding the elderly and low-income kids. Business is better than ever.
“The best ideas come out of necessity and innovation,” Pahlavani said. “There’s always a way to get out of a bad situation.”
HUNGRY launched in the Washington, D.C., area hoping to make office lunches better and to take a bite out of the $60 billion catering market.
Instead of the same old wraps from places like Panera Bread or Chipotle, the HUNGRY platform offered up-and-coming chefs a chance to directly feed white-collar customers.
All of it was prepared by 200 independent chefs in their own kitchens and delivered by trained servers.
HUNGRY expanded to New York, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and the Texas cities of Dallas and Austin. It donated a meal for every two sold. This spring, it landed $20 million in Series B funding.
Investors included Atlanta Falcons running back Todd Gurley, comedian Kevin Hart and “Top Chef ” judge Tom Colicchio. The company was valued at $100 million.
COVID-19 didn’t care. “Our world domination plans to provide revenue to chefs trying to make it went down the drain in about one week,” Pahlavani said. “It broke my heart when COVID hit, and we knew our chefs were going to get hit the hardest.”
Other food tech sites have pivoted during these trying times, including Freshly, which donated $500,000 to Meals on Wheels, and Sweetgreen, which delivered free food to hospital workers and medical personnel. But HUNGRY — after donating over a half-million meals to first responders — ripped up its business model.
It now offers personal meal subscriptions and offers Zoom cooking tutorials to corporate clients. And instead of catering to white-collar workers, HUNGRY has won government contacts to deliver meals to the elderly and kids.
“We decided, let’s innovate our way out of this thing,” Pahlavani said. “We said, ‘Let’s chip in and figure out how we can do this and help people and help cities out while also keeping the lights on here at home.’ ”
New York City tapped HUNGRY along with some 60 other vendors to ensure no New Yorker goes hungry. With its help, the city is providing 1.5 million meals a day to those with food insecurity or vulnerability to COVID-19.
“We’ve been really thrilled to see the way that caterers and restaurant groups and farm consortiums have really stepped up,” said Joshua Goodman, the city’s assistant commissioner for Public Affairs.
HUNGRY created a food logistics hub at the city’s Chelsea Piers and hired hundreds of drivers. It now delivers 10,000 meals a day. Charlotte Jenkins, a HUNGRY site leader in New York, said she’s been inspired by the company’s drive to keep going — both feeding and employing people.
“Giving back is so important to me and it’s great to have the company’s values so in line with that,” she said. “It’s been absolutely awesome watching the company pivot and also being a part of it, too. It’s really inspiring how they’ve been able to change so much and be able to do so much good.”