Case Study
T.E.D.O. Restaurant Innovation: Market Expansion
Contents
The Client
Imagine a restaurant with no tables. Just a commercial kitchen, operated by ~20 cooks, that churns out thousands of meals every single day, from 8am to 2am.
Now imagine those same 20 cooks making those thousands of meals for 30 different restaurants across a dozen different cuisines.
That describes this (confidential) client perfectly. A pioneer in the T.E.D.O. (tech-enabled, delivery-only) restaurant space, our client operates 30 different restaurant brands (and counting) — all of which are available only on your favorite delivery apps.
Their restaurants span a variety of cuisines (think sushi, ramen, burgers, breakfast, Thai, and so much more), and only the savviest of customers would have any inkling that all of this delicious food is coming out of a single kitchen.
And, before you doubt the quality, bear in mind that each cuisine is spearheaded by a head chef, often of Michelin Star caliber. The food is good, and it's crafted to be delivered directly to your door.
The Challenge
Expanding a successful direct-to-consumer offering into the office catering space.
When the Apollo 21 team began working with this client, they had already established product/market fit. Utilizing a single, centrally located kitchen in Manhattan, they had created 30 different restaurant brands and delivered well over 1,000,000 meals to hungry New Yorkers. And they were looking for opportunities to expand their business and their revenue by capitalizing on a newly raised Series A funding round.
They set their target on the $60 Billion catering market—specifically catered lunches for office workers.
The Plan
Leverage the unique selling proposition of catering a variety of cuisines and brands in a single order.
Most offices that are catering lunch rely on a simple formula of "Today we're ordering __________. If you don't like it, fend for yourself." The result is the age-old "taco Tuesday" and "pizza Thursday" solution that ultimately feeds everyone, but satisfies no one.
This tired dynamic gave our client an opportunity to leverage their unique variety of cuisines, delivered in a single order, enabling everyone in the office to order what they want without compromising the community-driving benefit of having lunch together.
The Solution
Create a catering service that enables employees to order from any of our client's 30 restaurants in a single, cohesive, office-wide order that is delivered all at once.
Design Sprint: Exploring the Potential of the Office Catering Business Model & Experience
Before jumping head-long into the development of a full-blown catering offering, Apollo 21 conducted a Zero-to-One Sprint as a means to explore the opportunity. The Sprint process allowed us time to deeply interrogate the existing catering market, talk to employees about what they look for (and feel is lacking) in existing catering options, and consider how to integrate this new offering into the existing operations of the business.
Upon successful completion of the Design Sprint, the collective team felt that the idea of this unique catering app was validated from the employees' perspective, but we still had questions about how it would resonate with Office Managers who are generally tasked with overseeing lunch orders. We conducted a second round of user testing specifically with this user group to align the feedback we'd heard from employees to the needs of Office Managers.
This user segment also validated the potential of a catering business based on the key differentiators described above.
Creating an Owned-and-Operated Ordering Hub
To date, our client's operations related to ordering were based entirely on 3rd-party apps (Uber Eats, Doordash, Grubhub, etc.). The new catering offering would demand their first foray into an owned-and-operated ordering hub specific to their restaurant brands.
This need also created a huge opportunity for the client to secure a place on consumer's devices through the catering offering, and then eventually integrate order-at-home functionality into the existing platform. Effectively, the B2B space offered a means to create an installed user-base of people who want free office lunch and earn their trust so that—when the timing is right—they can leverage that user-base for future growth.
Borrowing from the Best of Social Media and Beyond
The creation of a standalone application also provided an opportunity to rethink what in-app ordering looks like. Most delivery apps focus on a simple app structure designed to accommodate a huge variety of restaurants. However, because our client controls all of their brands and the content creation around them, they were able to integrate storytelling opportunities directly into the ordering experience.
The outcome is an app that sits somewhere between Uber Eats and Tiktok, leveraging video and chef personalities associated with the restaurant brands to create a more engaging experience for users.
Giving Office Managers Granular Control
In addition to offering employees a best-in-class lunch option with unprecedented variety, this platform also enables Office Managers to control every aspect of the offering for their team, including:
- Who is invited to the platform.
- How billing to the company is handled.
- What the daily spend allowance is, per employee.
- When order windows open and when food will arive.
The Outcomes
While the catering platform is still in its infancy, our client anticipates it will account for:
- $5MM in revenue during year 1.
- An increase in catering revenue from 5% to 30% of the overall business.
- Expansion opportunities into new cities.
In Their Own Words
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