Show HN: People Food - $7 Office Lunches for Hungry Startups

http://www.pplfood.com/#

by jmhamel • 13 years ago

55 75 13 years ago

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

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

dshanahan• 13 years ago

just found a banh mi stand outside the SF Fed today ~$4 per sandwich. Was surprised, to say the least:)

d3gamer• 13 years ago

Cafe Algiers @ Beale and Mission (financial district)

$5 sandwiches

arsenerei2• 13 years ago

In what region? Downtown prices in my experience are minimum $7.

Datsundere• 13 years ago

Does meal usually include drinks as well?

lifeformed2• 13 years ago

$5 if you're eating fast-food in the midwest suburbs. Even then, a "normal" combo meal is closer to $6 or $7.

bluedino• 13 years ago

Dollar Menu. Or dollar-ish menu. Chicken nuggets and a small chili @ Wendy's for example.

tinbad• 13 years ago

I assume no drinks included as it's not mentioned anywhere and at $7 it seems very fair/competitive. If you get a sandwich or buffet in SF it's usually around $7-10 as well. Delivery can also be a nice bonus - especially since going out to get lunch at peak times can be hectic in the city.

I hope the food is not too heavy though as I remember we used to have a Chevys right by our office in SOMA and whenever we went there with the team for lunch we usually wouldn't be back until 2 hours later and wanting to take a nap at the office :)

I'm also curious what the minimum order amount is.

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

Correct, no drinks right now. Might offer as an add-on in the future.

We're really striving for "feel good" meals that fill you up, but don't slow down your brain for the rest of the day.

Minimum order is only 2 meals, but we charge a bit more ($8.50) if you only have a few people.

ztratar2• 13 years ago

Most catering companies charge at least $12 per head. This is a deal. $5 would be near impossible to sustain.

Matt_Mickiewicz• 13 years ago

I've had quotes for $20-$30 (!) per person for lunch in SF...

adhsu01• 13 years ago

Maybe in Seattle. In general, double your prices for the Bay Area. :)

I'd be really happy if I could consistently find a $5 meal in SF.

evandena• 13 years ago

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

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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?!

pirateking• 13 years ago

I have a reference - contact info in profile.

justhw• 13 years ago

Try this, someone showhn'd a while ago. http://squaresend.com

ztratar2• 13 years ago

Totally agree here. Pictures of food would help a ton.

Also think you could do a lot with marketing here... differentiate yourself through fresh ingredients or better supplies. Make that apparent if you have any leg up. Convince them you're better with some unique flair and customer testimonials.

vishaldpatel• 13 years ago

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?

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

I think it's much more affordable for a seed stage startup. Also, ZeroCater is more in the $10-15 price range and they're feeding more series A and above companies.

jff• 13 years ago

$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.

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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

jmtame• 13 years ago

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

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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

shivaas• 13 years ago

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

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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

aabalkan• 13 years ago

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.

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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

dafzal• 13 years ago

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

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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!

dpiers• 13 years ago

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'

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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 :)

jroll• 13 years ago

If you don't support weird dietary restrictions like dpiers listed, you will miss out on a lot of offices.

Source: I currently work for ZeroCater. dpiers used to work at ZeroCater, and these are questions you're going to get hit with.

justin66• 13 years ago

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.

gamblor956• 13 years ago

Another question: are you properly licensed and permitted to run a catering operation?

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

Yes

urberdurr• 13 years ago

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

staunch• 13 years ago

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.

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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"?

smokey_the_bear• 13 years ago

Fwiw, SpoonRocket is $6 a meal, and I love the concept but the food just isn't good enough for me to order regularly. I do think it's a great deal for $6 though.

Maybe if they had another $3 per meal they could make more food I'd want to eat.

rodly3• 13 years ago

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?

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

I guess you can never be entirely sure. (Do you have any ideas about how we can prove this to people?) Sometimes, we like to slip in notes about where the food came from, but we don't have any rigid guidelines set in place right now.

rodly3• 13 years ago

Perhaps you could have a nice looking "Our Food Sources" page that details the markets, farmers, etc? I might be the minority on this, but when I see food locally sourced I'm more likely to buy it than generic food brand X.

Locally sourced to me = fresher, healthier, and better for my local economy obviously

GrinningFool2• 13 years ago

a) you'll just have to trust them, the same as you trust any merchant to deliver what is promised.

b) turn down clients until they can accommodate.

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

Wow, this was much better than my answer! Thanks :)

dsl• 13 years ago

Cryptographically signed receipts, of course.

sigh sometimes I hate the people on HN.

rodly3• 13 years ago

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

budwin• 13 years ago

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.

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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

tejay• 13 years ago

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.

physcab2• 13 years ago

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.

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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

physcab2• 13 years ago

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.

nzp• 13 years ago

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.

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

Thank you so much for the lovely compliment :)

memset• 13 years ago

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?)

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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

rikacomet• 13 years ago

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

jmhamel26• 13 years ago

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

diziet• 13 years ago

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

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z5232fgpj0xs77g/DSC_0461.JPG https://www.dropbox.com/s/bczdlrf4gp1szp7/DSC_0452.JPG

Show HN: People Food - $7 Office Lunches for Hungry Startups

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