US Food Tech companies are on fire, raising over $1B in 2014. And the majority of these companies are looking to feed consumers in a faster/more efficient way. This has led investors like Jason Calacanis to make bold statements like “The future of restaurants is no restaurant”.
With this in mind, we plotted how different spaces ranging from traditional restaurants to prepared meal delivery to chefs on-demand that are all competing to feed consumers relate to each other on the premise of convenience and time to meal.
- Time to meal – this takes into account the amount of time it takes from the action of deciding you want food, to having a complete meal
- Convenience – this takes into account things like effort (leaving your house vs. staying in) and skill required, among others.
Meal replacement startups like Soylent, which raised $20M at a $100M valuation in January to increase production and keep up with demand, are in the top right quadrant, showing a combination of convenience and speed. Alternatively, traditional restaurants like the multi-billion dollar Darden Restaurants (which operates Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, and others) and fast casual concepts like Sweetgreen are in the top left quadrant given lower convenience due to needing to leave your home, but a relatively short time to meal.
See the graphic below for a full breakdown.
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