Foodee brings corporate catering to three U.S. cities, plans expansion by year’s end

Vancouver start-up Foodee is looking to disrupt the corporate catering world, launching its service in Philadelphia, Austin and Denver during the past month.

With 20 partners in each of those new U.S. markets, Foodee hopes to expand its American reach by the end of the year.

Focusing on persistent problems when it comes to corporate food culture like lack of variety, meals arriving too late or too early, and excessive packaging waste, Foodee has also developed an informal “foodprint” metric designed to lower the overall impact that the food services industry leaves behind through a commitment to lower emission deliveries and encouraging sustainable packaging.

“Our goal is to reinvent the corporate lunch hour across the continent, partnering with the best local restaurants and delivering quality food on time,” said Foodee CEO Ryan Spong. “Online food delivery may be a noisy space, but if you remove consumer companies, low quality providers and un-scalable business models, very few are in a position to properly service the unique needs of businesses like we are.”

Foodee partners with local restaurants to help them open new revenue streams through corporate catering, as well as encouraging them to save time by placing and picking up bulk food orders during off-peak hours and creating two lunch rushes, instead of only one.

The corporate catering market is estimated at $10 billion, and while start-ups have already taken a crack at livening up the consumer food delivery space, Foodee believes that enterprise food delivery deserves a shake-up.

The company has seen 1500% growth over the past 24 months, partnering with over 100 restaurant providers and serving half a million meals to 2,600 businesses in Canada.

“We’ve served over 500,000 meals to boardrooms of clients like Facebook, Deloitte, Microsoft and Lululemon here in Canada,” Spong explains. “Our customers know eating good, food impacts overall company culture and morale, and we are excited to offer those benefits to businesses south of the border.”

Foodee has already raised $4.5 million in seed funding from investors, including Tobias Lütke of Shopify, Laurie Baggio of 1800GOTJUNK, and prominent VCs representing Voyager Capital, StructureVC, BDC and Yaletown Ventures.