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Zerocater

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Zerocater
Company typePrivate
IndustryCatering, foodservice
Founded2009
Founders
  • Arram Sabeti
Headquarters115 Stillman Street
San Francisco, California 94107, United States
Area servedUnited States
Key peopleAli Sabeti (CEO)
Websitezerocater.com

ZeroCater is a food service company headquartered in San Francisco, California, specializing in providing companies with catered meals from local restaurants, caterers, and food trucks. The company expanded its offerings in 2017 to include a fully customizable solution for office snacking called ZeroCater Snacks and Kitchens and, in 2018, to deliver alcohol with Zerocater Pours. The company launched Enterprise Catering for companies with 500 or more employees in 2019. Zerocater currently feeds thousands of employees of companies including Slack, PagerDuty, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Salesforce, JUUL, Datadog, and Cisco Meraki. As of November 2017, ZeroCater operates in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Los Angeles, Austin, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

History

Zerocater was founded in 2009 by Arram Sabeti. As an early employee at Justin. tv (now Twitch.tv) Arram was responsible for ordering lunch for their office. He created a process to make it easy to order from a variety of local restaurants. Soon other companies began asking for his list of restaurants. Sensing this might be a new business opportunity, Arram left Justin. tv to work full-time on what would become ZeroCater. After running the business on a spreadsheet and bootstrapping for 18 months Zerocater was accepted into the Winter 2011 class of Y Combinator and placed first on Demo Day.

In 2011, ZeroCater raised a $1.5m seed round from investors including Paul Buchheit (the creator of Gmail and Google’s unofficial ‘Don’t be evil’ motto), SV Angel, and Vaizra. In 2016, Zerocater raised a $4.1m Series A. In 2018, ZeroCater raised $12m Series B led by Cleveland Avenue, founded by the former CEO of McDonald's, with participation by Justin Kan, Romulus Capital, and Struck Capital.

In 2020, Zerocater laid off the majority of its workforce due to the COVID-19 global pandemic.

As companies return to office in a hybrid workforce model, Zerocater now provides two basic varieties of service: a “Cloud Cafe” that lets individuals pre-order boxed meals from a daily selection; and a “Managed Cafe” that provides buffet-style offerings with the offerings and amounts also pre-determined by pre-ordering. Alongside those, it lets companies blend those two together, and it also provides its services for one-off events. Food experiences are delivered, designed, and staffed by Zerocater people.

In 2023, Zerocater raised $15m Series C led by Cleveland Avenue, with participation by Romulus Capital.

Media coverage

Zerocater has been covered in Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Forbes, CNNMoney, and other mainstream technology publications.

See also

References

  1. Cutler, Kim-Mai (September 29, 2015). "ZeroCater Says 20 Of Its Small Catering, Restaurant Partners Have Done More Than $1M In Revenues". TechCrunch.
  2. Craig, Elise (July 3, 2012). "ZeroCater Bring Food-Truck Lunch To Startups". Xconomy.
  3. "ZeroCater expands from meal catering to office snacks". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2018-08-29.
  4. Zimmer, Amy (August 5, 2014). "City Businesses Offer Free Lunch to Keep Employees Happy". DNAinfo.com.
  5. Tishgart, Sierra (April 17, 2013). "14 New York Tech Start-Ups With Pretty Great Food and Drink Perks". GrubStreet.
  6. Lawler, Ryan (April 8, 2013). "ZeroCater Rides The Wave Of Food To Launch In New York City". TechCrunch.
  7. Levy, Ari (July 12, 2012). "Arram Sabeti's ZeroCater Feeds Other Startups". Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Archived from the original on July 15, 2012.
  8. Weir, David (August 18, 2011). "ZeroCater Takes the Pain Out of Ordering Your Company Lunch". 7x7.
  9. Han, Frank (October 1, 2014). "The ROI of Lunch". The Huffington Post.
  10. Levi, Ari (August 19, 2015). "You can't get this from UberEATS or Instacart". CNBC.
  11. "2017 Market Research Report on Caterers Industry". AnythingResearch.
  12. Newman, Kira M. (November 30, 2011). "ZeroCater Brings Personalized, Catered Lunches to Your Office". tech.co.
  13. "14 Startups That Will Change The Way You Eat". Business Insider. August 17, 2016.
  14. "ZeroCater raises $4.1 million to keep office workers well-fed in the U.S." Startup Anchor. August 17, 2016.
  15. "ZeroCater raises $12M to rule the fridges and pantries of an office". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2018-08-29.
  16. "Zerocater raises $15M as demand heats up for flexible in-office food services". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-02-16.
  17. Zax, David (March 22, 2012). "Fast Talk: How ZeroCater, The "Pandora For Food," Hacks Your Lunch Problem".
  18. Ovide, Shira (July 11, 2012). "Work Perk: Free-Meal Rule Widens". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 31, 2014.
  19. "14 Startups That Will Change The Way You Eat". Business Insider. Retrieved July 31, 2014.
  20. Arielle Patrice Scott (March 5, 2013). "9 Awesome Apps for Your Startup Office Manager". Forbes. Retrieved July 31, 2014.
  21. Kim, Erin (August 15, 2012). "The startup that feeds other startups - literally". CNNMoney. Retrieved July 31, 2014.

External links

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