This is not another post on food trucks. Instead it is a look at how a 25 year old woman founder has launched an online ordering platform for restaurants with delivery services and street food vendors. Currently serving New York city, FoodtoEat.com is one more online service that wishes to make it easier for their consumers to find and buy take-out food. Two things from their offering grabbed my attention. What I like about their business approach is what I will discuss here.
Instead of going after the gourmet food trucks who already use very well social media (mainly Twitter) to find customers, Deepti Sharma Kapur tailored her online platform for the rest of the street food market, for the ones who are not tech-savvy. Many restaurant owners and street food vendors don’t have the time nor the skills to go digital. FoodtoEat provides them with a Web presence, and an online ordering service that can easily reach their food cart or food truck. Since many orders are taken before the rush hours, it enables the food vendors to better manage their work and how much food they need to buy to meet the demands.
On the customer side, like its competitors, FoodtoEat allows them to locate street vendors by cuisine type and near by their current location. Customer save time by placing their order online.
Where I think that FoodtoEat stands out is by supporting corporate accounts. I think that it is brilliant since it enables them to reach a bigger market. It addresses the needs of the employees and the entreprises. By opening an executive account, a business have control over who can order food and when they can order. Employees gain more freedom to order food to their own diet and taste. Since everything is managed through one system, it reduces the paperwork and administrative costs associated with ordering out.
As I learned on this video interview for Fast Company, FoodtoEat was founded through a $500,000 friends and family round. They have a sister site who takes restaurant reservation. I am curious to see how they will do. For the moment, I have to applaud the spirit of this 25 year old woman entrepreneur. She inspires me to do more.
More Help for Food Entrepreneurs
If you are interested by the food industry, I invite you to read about San Francisco’s La Cocina incubator program. The mission of La Cocina is to cultivate low income food entrepreneurs as they formalize and grow their businesses by providing affordable commercial kitchen space, industry-specific technical assistance and access to market opportunities. Nina Tamburello did a great interview for the Daily Muse with Carola Mulero, Marketing and Events Coordinator at La Cocina, along with three graduates of the program.
photo credits: Co.Exist by Fast Company
