4 Delicious Food Startups We Can’t Live Without

Seriously, we’d probably die if they shut down.

It’s been a long day. You put in a full workload at the office, you ran some errands, and now you’re at home, starving for dinner. The last thing you want to do is cook. The second-to-last thing you want is to head back out of the house and sit down at a restaurant.

Enter the insanely, extraordinary, jaw-dropping amazing food delivery apps that have popped up in the last couple of years. For a reasonable price, they’ll deliver a freshly prepared meal to your home or place of work. We are not talking about restaurant food thrown in a box here and catapulted at your front door. Nay. Instead, expert chefs publish a daily menu of a select handful of offerings, designed specifically for delivery based consumption. Your only job is to select one and chow down.

At Whttl, we are in early-startup-phase, so we are often working right through lunch and/or late into the evenings. As such, we are big fans of the available services that can keep our bellies topped off and our minds on track. Here are the food delivery startups we cannot live without, in no particular order.

Available in San Francisco

With former Google executive chef Nate Keller on board, Sprig’s got a seasoned crew leading this culinary concept. The team serves lunch and dinner, priced at just $9 and $10, respectively. Lunch is offered during the week from 10am — 2pm, and dinner is served all week, except Saturday, from 4pm until 10pm. Ingredients are sourced from producers no more than 150 miles from where the food is prepared, and the meat is always hormone-free, antibiotic-free, cage-free, sustainably raised, and free-range.

Delivery fee is extra, but tip is already included. If impatience is one of your…virtues, rest assured that average delivery time is only 20 minutes.

Available in the greater San Francisco Bay Area & Seattle

If charity is your raison d’etre, you’ll like what Munchery has cooking up. For every meal you order, they provide a meal for someone in need. Munchery meals are delivered chilled, you’ll only need to zap them in the microwave or oven in order to get your grub on. If you’re a planner, Munchery allows you to book meals for later in the week. They are well funded, with nearly $40 million raised, so you can bet they can afford to keep you as a happy user, whatever that takes.

View dish ratings and sort by dietary needs including dairy-free, nut-free, and vegan. Munchery delivers dinner on weekdays, exact times vary by location.

Available in San Francisco & parts of the East Bay

This one is going to require you to burn about 13 calories, but what better way to start a meal? To keep the system running lightning fast, drivers meet you at the curb for your healthful handoff. In San Francisco, delivery takes place during the week between 10am — 2:30pm for lunch. Delivery area covers about 40% of the city. Generally speaking, anything east of Divisadero Street is fair game. SpoonRocket covers a much bigger portion of SF for dinner, and serves from 5pm — 10pm. If you are ordering from the East Bay, you’ve got a much bigger window. Meals are always delivered until midnight, and service starts at 10am on weekdays and noon on the weekend.

The founders claim they are planning to set the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest virtual dinner party ever.

Available in select New York City neighborhoods

Although we west-coasters haven’t had the chance to try EatMade, we figured we would include it for our readers in the Big Apple. This service is really new, so it is unclear at the moment the exact NYC ZIP codes that they deliver to. Once we can get some insight, we’ll update our food delivery category on Whttl so you can stay up to speed. They’ve got snacks, drinks, sides, and entrees, plus they offer some dietary diversity. Food prices look to be reasonable, especially for NYC standards.

Like Munchery, you planners out there will be happy to know that you can order up to four days in advance.

Here’s where it gets really tasty now. As avid consumers of the products ourselves, we noticed that we would check one menu, followed by another, and finally a third. This was the only way to get a truly clear picture of what all of our options were, including price, delivery time, and exact meal options.

So, we built a tool to look at all the dishes in one spot. You can filter by price, delivery time, meal type, and even provider. Click on your dish and you’ll be redirected to the provider’s page to complete your order. We’re up and running in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we expect to introduce new cities in concert with the rollouts of the delivery services themselves.

While our product is a nifty way to cut down on your selection time, we are soon taking it even one step further. Launching soon, you’ll be able to actually place an order directly through our product, with no redirects needed. Join the interest list here.

Any other food startups that you can’t live without? Tell me on Twitter.

If you found value in this, it would be tremendous if you scrolled down a little further and hit the “Recommend” button.

Greg Muender is the founder of Whttl, described as the “Kayak.com for the sharing economy.” Use it to compare dozens of different providers and marketplaces at once, including RelayRides, DogVacay, and HomeJoy. Drop Greg a line via greg<at>whttl/dot/com. For further reading, check out the Official Whttl Blog.