Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: One of the other benefits that we have working here
Speaker 2: at Bloomberg is a ton of food. If you've been
Speaker 2: to our food court up on the sixth floor, you
Speaker 2: know that we have as many snacks as you could
Speaker 2: possibly eat.
Speaker 3: There is fruit tossed in there though, to be a
Speaker 3: lot of.
Speaker 2: Fresh fruit, delicious yogurts, and food. Workplace food is becoming
Speaker 2: no longer a nice to have, But I must have
Speaker 2: to bring in the kind of workforce that you need,
Speaker 2: and our next guest is in charge of doing that.
Speaker 1: On a B to B level.
Speaker 2: Nihat Raman joins, a CEO of Easy cater Great to
Speaker 2: have you in here, also a fellow Westchester resident.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about your business.
Speaker 2: I mean, how many businesses, how many universities, how many
Speaker 2: organizations are you bringing food to every day a lunch?
Speaker 4: Yeah? At the highest level, Matt, we help organizations feed
Speaker 4: their people at their workplaces. And workplaces can be office buildings, warehouses,
Speaker 4: distribution centers, universities, labs, even sports teams when they're on
Speaker 4: the road and food. You said it so well. Food
Speaker 4: is so central to the workday, to the workplace culture.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm often reminded what our customers often remind us.
Speaker 4: They say, food is the highest ROI investment that they
Speaker 4: can make for their employees. It boosts morale, productivity, it
Speaker 4: helps you build culture, bring people together. And so, by
Speaker 4: the way, food at the workplace is deceptively complex. I mean,
Speaker 4: imagine if you were standing at a factory floor having
Speaker 4: to feed three hundred workers in a twenty minute lunch break.
Speaker 4: Food has to show up on time as ordered, every
Speaker 4: minute counts at or under budget. Sort of a logistically
Speaker 4: complex operation. And our customers often remind us the cafeteria
Speaker 4: was built for a different era, and people love restaurant food,
Speaker 4: and people and businesses want to actually help the local restaurants,
Speaker 4: and so at Easy cater that's what we do. We
Speaker 4: embed directly with our customers, like those universities, like those
Speaker 4: large employers across the nation. We connect them with one
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty five thousand restaurants across the US and
Speaker 4: we build meal programs for them.
Speaker 3: Okay, so ah, I didn't realize this.
Speaker 1: So you're not.
Speaker 3: You don't run the kitchens close to your clients and
Speaker 3: you're making the food yourselves. You are contracting with restaurants
Speaker 3: in the area to supply the food.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 4: So we're we are a technology platform. We're connecting the
Speaker 4: employers who want to bring food in for their employees
Speaker 4: with these restaurants, and we're really making it easy for them.
Speaker 4: So we're embedding with their procurement systems, We're embedding with
Speaker 4: their expensing systems. We're allowing them to bring in food
Speaker 4: in a controlled, structured way. I mean, if you think
Speaker 4: about it, food at the workplace can get pretty chaotic, right,
Speaker 4: multiple vendors, how do you expense? Who wants to eat
Speaker 4: wat everybody has a point of view on food. So
Speaker 4: a structured way to do this is essential. That's what
Speaker 4: our customers say. You know, there's no chief food officer, right,
Speaker 4: but there's a way you want to do it. And
Speaker 4: so that's where we bring structure. That's where we bring
Speaker 4: our technology. And turns out that when you've done it
Speaker 4: for over fifteen years, you've learned how to do it
Speaker 4: really well.
Speaker 2: It also can be a productivity tool, right because I
Speaker 2: don't know why we have so much food at Bloomberg,
Speaker 2: but it has been suggested to me that the boss
Speaker 2: didn't want everybody leaving the office for an hour every
Speaker 2: day at lunch. Better if you just go up to
Speaker 2: the link, grab your lunch, and come back to your desk,
Speaker 2: then you can get straight back to work, right, I
Speaker 2: mean cafeterias. We're really a different generation. That's not something
Speaker 2: that financial institutions in New York really have so much
Speaker 2: of anymore. So having a business like yours that can
Speaker 2: deliver to me what five guys I can get, like
Speaker 2: pizza Hut I can get whatever, even local restaurants that
Speaker 2: are only downstairs, really solves two problems With one stone,
Speaker 2: you're helping the local economy and you're helping increase productivity
Speaker 2: at the business.
Speaker 4: And for another thing, I would say, mad is I
Speaker 4: think people are looking for a technology asset like way
Speaker 4: to do this versus a heavy, acid intensive, you know,
Speaker 4: logistically challenging way where variety is not really there. You're
Speaker 4: not helping the local economy. So yeah, you said it,
Speaker 4: well said it better than I did.
Speaker 3: Do you have proprietary technology that's helping you do this
Speaker 3: and give us a feel for what that tech is.
Speaker 4: Like, proprietary data, proprietary technology that has been perfected over
Speaker 4: fifteen years now or more than fifteen years. We were
Speaker 4: founded in two thousand and seven. And you know, I
Speaker 4: think one of the things that lexis is everyone does
Speaker 4: food differently. What's most important for FedEx is different from
Speaker 4: Johns Hopkins. And we have built a set of tools
Speaker 4: that enable these organizations to pick the things that's most
Speaker 4: important for them, whether it be technology, access, governance, guardrails,
Speaker 4: budgets and create the program around it and then switch
Speaker 4: it on. And then they trust us to really do
Speaker 4: this at scale across the nation.
Speaker 1: So give us your origin story or the easy cater
Speaker 1: origin story. And did you.
Speaker 2: Bootstrap this business? It's grown to an institutional size now
Speaker 2: and how do you finance?
Speaker 1: How do you fund this business? And what's the growth
Speaker 1: look like to you?
Speaker 4: Our co founders Stefan Mlt and Brisco Rodgers really saw
Speaker 4: this well before a lot of us, you know, a
Speaker 4: lot of us saw it, and they really started from
Speaker 4: a place of sales representatives would bring in food to
Speaker 4: prospects and clients, but they wanted to sell the product,
Speaker 4: wanted to talk about what it is you know that
Speaker 4: they were selling, not deal with food. And so that
Speaker 4: was the original use case through which this started, and
Speaker 4: it was growing spectacularly well. COVID did a number on us.
Speaker 4: And you know, it turns out that business catering was
Speaker 4: one of those classic businesses that would should die during
Speaker 4: a COVID situation. But we survived and now we're thriving now.
Speaker 3: But let me ask this, Fewer people are going into
Speaker 3: the office post COVID. It just it's a fact. How
Speaker 3: has that impacted your business.
Speaker 4: In the offices? Potentially? Yes, you're right, some of the
Speaker 4: return to work mandates have really I think subsided. But
Speaker 4: in Alexis there's seven out of ten Americans. Six out
Speaker 4: of ten Americans hold positions that required them to be
Speaker 4: at their workplace. Think about the distribution center workers, think
Speaker 4: about transportation, retail, media, universities.
Speaker 3: We're here. We're here all the time. I want a
Speaker 3: number one train in food catering right now for business
Speaker 3: is number one trend.
Speaker 4: Individualized packaged food delivered a scale at a price point
Speaker 4: that matters.
Speaker 3: Individualized.
Speaker 1: Very cool.
Speaker 3: You want a roast beef sandwich?
Speaker 1: I take I'm so hungry.
Speaker 3: I know you are?
Speaker 1: You know me?
Speaker 2: And how are going to go out for something? We're
Speaker 2: gonna go grab some food at Haiku. We're gonna go
Speaker 2: to Westchester. Yeah, we'll go to the to the east
Speaker 2: Chester Haiku. It's two packed, it's too full at all times.
Speaker 1: And haiku is delicious if you've never had before.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for joining us. He had Ramen there
Speaker 2: from Easy cater