Why Food is Becoming the New Center of the Office

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1:55If you've been to our food court up on the sixth floor, you know that we have as many snacks as you could possibly eat. There is fruit tossed in there, though, to be fair. A lot of fresh fruit, delicious yogurts. And workplace food is becoming no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have to bring in the kind of workforce that you need. And our next guest is in charge of doing that on a B2B level. Nihat Raman joins us, CEO of Easy Cater. Great to have you in here. Also a fellow Westchester resident. Talk to us about your business. I mean, how many businesses, how many universities, how many organizations are you bringing food to every day at lunch?

2:40Yeah, but the highest level, Matt, we've helped organizations feed their people at their workplaces. And workplaces can be office buildings, warehouses, distribution centers, universities, labs, even sports teams when they're on the road. And food is, you said it so well, food is so central to the workday, to the workplace culture. You know, I'm often reminded what our customers often remind us. They say food is the highest ROI investment that they can make for their employees. It boosts morale, productivity. It helps you build culture, bring people together. And, oh, by the way, food at the workplace is deceptively complex.

3:24I mean, imagine if you were standing at a factory floor having to feed 300 workers in a 20-minute lunch break. Food has to show up on time, as ordered, every minute counts, at or under budget. It's sort of a logistically complex operation. and our customers often remind us the cafeteria was built for a different era. And people love restaurant food. And businesses want to actually help the local restaurants. And so at EasyCater, that's what we do. We embed directly with our customers, like those universities, like those large employers across the nation. We connect them with 125 ,000 restaurants across the U.S.

4:11and we build meal programs for them. Okay, so I didn't realize this. So you don't run the kitchens close to your clients and you're making the food yourselves. You are contracting with restaurants in the area to supply the food. That's right. So we are a technology platform. We're connecting the employers who want to bring food in for their employees with these restaurants and we're really making it easy for them. So we're embedding with their procurement systems. We're embedding with their expensing systems. We're allowing them to bring in food in a controlled, structured way. I mean, if you think about it, food at the workplace can get pretty chaotic, right?

4:50Multiple vendors, how do you expense? Who wants to eat what? Everybody has a point of view on food. So a structured way to do this is essential. That's what our customers say. You know, there's no chief food officer. Right. But there's a way you want to do it. And so that's where we bring structure. That's why we bring our technology. And it turns out that when you've done it for over 15 years, you've learned how to do it really well. It also can be a productivity tool, right? Because I don't know why we have so much food at Bloomberg, but it has been suggested to me that the boss didn't want everybody leaving the office for an hour every day at lunch.

5:30Better if you just go up to the link, grab your lunch, and come back to your desk, then you can get straight back to work, right? I mean, cafeterias, we're really a different generation. That's not something that financial institutions in New York really have so much of anymore. So having a business like yours that can deliver to me, what, five guys? I can get like Pizza Hut. I can get whatever, even local restaurants that are only downstairs really solves two problems with one stone. You're helping the local economy and you're helping increase productivity at the business. And for another thing I would say, Matt, is I think people are looking for a technology asset-like way to do this versus a heavy, asset-intensive, logistically challenging way where variety is not really there.

6:17You're not helping the local economy. So, yeah, you said it better than I did. Do you have proprietary technology that's helping you do this? Give us a feel for what that tech is like. Proprietary data, proprietary technology that has been perfected over 15 years now, more than 15 years. We were founded in 2007. And, you know, I think one of the things, Alexis, is everyone does food differently. What's most important for FedEx is different from Johns Hopkins. And we have built a set of tools that enable these organizations to pick the things that's most important for them, whether it be technology, access, governance, guardrails, budgets, and create the program around it, and then switch it on.

7:05And then they trust us to really do this at scale across the nation. So give us your origin story or the EasyCater origin story. Did you bootstrap this business? It's grown to an institutional size now. And how do you finance? How do you fund this business? And what's the growth look like to you? Our co-founders, Stephanie Amelette and Briscoe Rogers, really saw this well before a lot of us saw it. And they really started from a place of sales representatives would bring in food to prospects and clients. But they wanted to sell the product. They wanted to talk about what it is that they were selling, not deal with food.

7:47And so that was the original use case through which this started. and it was growing spectacularly well. COVID did a number on us and, you know, turns out that business catering was one of those classic businesses that would, should die during a COVID situation. But we survived and now we're thriving. But let me ask this, fewer people are going into the office post-COVID. It's a fact. How has that impacted your business? In the offices, potentially. Yes, you're right. Some of the return to work mandates have really, I think, subsided. But, you know, Alexis, there's seven out of 10 Americans, six out of 10 Americans, hold positions that require them to be at their workplace.

8:35Think about the distribution center workers. Think about transportation, retail, media, universities. We're here all the time. I want a number one trend in food catering right now for businesses. Number one trend. individualized packaged food delivered at scale at a price point that matters. Individualized. Very cool. You want a roast beef sandwich, I take it. I'm so hungry. I know you are. You know? Me and Nihat are going to go out for some. We're going to go grab some food at Haiku. Up in Westchester? Yeah, we'll go to the Eastchester Haiku. It's too packed. It's too full at all times. And Haiku is delicious, if you've never had it.

9:12Duly noted. Nihat, thanks so much for joining us. Nihat Raman there from Easy Cater.

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