This is absolutely bonkers. People still eat. People wil eat in the future. There will be corporate locations and events that will need catering in the future.
> Doesn't matter how much capital you have, it won't help.
If you have enough capital you could weather it for years. At some point, people are going to have conventions again.
> This is absolutely bonkers. People still eat. People will eat in the future. There will be corporate locations and events that will need catering in the future.
I think you're missing the point. People who go into offices will still eat, sure. But a startup focusing on corporate catering is betting on a sizable and specific market that's built around in-person work and relatively well-off companies being so flush with cash and desperate to hire that they provide catered meals.
That could well come back. But it could well end up being seen as just a crazy artifact of tech boom times, a perk that died during a global pandemic, multi-year recession, and subsequent reallocation of capital to other sectors that don't depend as much on keeping a small number of used-to-comfort workers happy.
> relatively well-off companies being so flush with cash and desperate to hire that they provide catered meals
Providing food for workers is a pretty basic thing to do in any industry at any cash level. Even old style factories provide a cafeteria. Even a prison needs to feed people!
I would like to see some data on that. I worked in a few different factories and never saw that; the best I recall is coin-op vending with dubious sandwiches. And I've consulted for a whole bunch of companies over the years; the ones that provided free on-premises meals were rare indeed.
Except most of that is not free for the worker. A lot of it is actually run for profit by subcontractors.
And if you have to pay out of your own pocket, you probably wont hire catering.
The only people outside tech getting their meals paid by work are usually higher ups, and even then not neccesary.
Corporate catering is a market that is mostly not serving “tech.” Businesses of all sorts use catering. Car dealerships have promotions with “free barbecue,” random offices have lunch meetings with catered food. Retail stores often cater food for employees during inventory. Holiday parties are huge business.
Thinking that corporate catering is “food for overfed tech workers” is a ridiculous simplification. Corporate catering is worth billions and it isn’t even a majority of “tech companies,” who buy those services.
Reading the case study in TFA, it really doesn't seem like they're talking about car dealerships offering barbecue for an afternoon. Their focus is on delivering meals to office workers, and from the language I don't think they're talking about the occasional lunch-and-learn. Especially when they talk about "restart rate" I read it as regular catered staff meals.
This is absolutely bonkers. People still eat. People wil eat in the future. There will be corporate locations and events that will need catering in the future.
> Doesn't matter how much capital you have, it won't help.
If you have enough capital you could weather it for years. At some point, people are going to have conventions again.