Startup Cater2.me Brings Its Catered Meals To New York City

Startups like Cater2.me, Eat Club, and ZeroCater are trying to deliver a better food experience at work, but right now, they’re mostly limited to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, however, Cater2.me is announcing its expansion into New York.

Cater2.me co-founder Zach Yungst says the company has now served more than 800,000 meals to companies like Apple, Dropbox, and Square. It matches up small food vendors with companies in need of catering — workers get varied, (hopefully) tasty meals delivered to their offices with a minimum of hassle, and food carts, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and other small vendors can reach a new audience. (TechCrunch HQ gets its lunches from ZeroCater, which offers a similar service.)

The downside, of course, is that Cater2.me has build up a new network of food vendors and customers in each geography. And in New York, there are some unique intricacies to the geographic landscape — co-founder Zach Yungst says that many of the potential customers are in Manhattan, while most of the vendors are in Brooklyn.

At the same time, Yungst says Cater2.me brings some advantages to the New York market. There’s the fact that he and his co-founder Alex Lorton both worked in Manhattan, and still have ties to the financial community there. Plus, there’s a growing tech community and food scene. Cater2.me now has a team of five in New York, including Lorton, and has enlisted 30 food vendors. It’s now taking sign-ups for a limited number of New York companies, with plans for a full roll-out soon.