It is now nearly impossible to ignore meal-kit companies like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh, which continue to plaster subway cars with advertisements and encourage huge investments to start-up competitors. The latest is Hungryroot, a meal-kit delivery company that wants to fill several niches at once: healthy, vegetarian, and quick.
Hungryroot has raised $3.7 million in funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Crosslink Capital and others, justified by the success of their predecessors and their own rapid growth. Unlike Blue Apron, Hungryroot’s business model does not involve subscriptions; one-off meals are available to order on Amazon and the company plans to expand to Whole Foods soon. While some have questioned whether the meal-kit trend is a bubble waiting to burst, the success of any business is directly tied to its ability to stand out. In this sense, Hungryroot’s biggest selling point is its innovative recipes: brownies made from black beans which somehow taste like the real thing, and noodles made from sweet potato with a “Creamy Cashew Alfredo” sauce.
While there’s no replacement for good old fashioned comfort food, there’s definitely a market for substitutes like this – especially if they’re easy to prepare. Look out for Hungryroot in your neighborhood Whole Foods soon.
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Stressing the “humility and respect” with which they are undertaking this endeavor, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced recently that in early 2017, Starbucks will finally open their first store in Italy. It may be surprising that such a store doesn’t exist already, especially since the Starbucks brand was born out of Schultz’s first trip to Milan 33 years ago, but the company is understandably cautious about bringing one of the largest chains in the world to a culture that prizes small-scale coffee operations and exquisite attention to detail.
Midtown staple Sushi Zen first opened its doors in 1983, when sushi was still considered an adventurous choice for Times Square dining. In the years since, more and more upscale sushi restaurants have joined the scene, and raw fish has fully entered the mainstream (arguably ushering in the next-wave poke trend). Sushi Zen, run by head chef Toshio Suzuki, nevertheless remained a favorite, earning some celebrity chef fans like Michael Anthony and training others like Masaharu Morimoto in the traditional Edomae style of sushi making.
This weekend a (now former) Yelp employee, Talia Jane, wrote an open letter to her employers revealing the financial struggles brought on by her low paycheck, and criticizing the irony of the company spending millions on a food delivery app while employees “can’t afford to buy food.” The post was widely shared, and Jane was subsequently let go – a move which, predictably, Yelp Human Resources claims was not caused by the letter but which Jane herself says was a direct result.
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