The Feed

Mike LaVitola is the Co-Founder & CEO of Foxtrot- a corner store that lives in our neighborhoods and on our phones. What started out as an online warehouse has evolved into an all day cafe and lounge that stocks 1,500 highly curated SKUs from 150 different suppliers. We chat about the flywheel of omnichannel retail, the future of CPG discovery, the role of ultrafast delivery, and much more.

Andrew Rigie is the Executive Director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance. Andrew was a driving force behind the recent set of NYC legislation that regulates restaurant delivery commissions charged by third-party marketplaces as well as data sharing provisions. We chat about how the regulations shifted from temporary to permanent, the externalities of fee caps, and the latest set of legislation designed to improve the brutal working conditions for bikers in the city.

Christine de Wendel is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sunday, a new QR-based payment platform that is looking to improve the guest and server experience at restaurants, hotels, bars, and cafés across the world. We chat about everything from the complex merchant payment system in Europe and the US, what it takes to be a consumer-facing wallet, and how Sunday will enable restaurants to leverage valuable customer data to grow their business.

Barnaby Montgomery is the Co-Founder & CEO of Yummy.com, one of the first online grocers to deliver in 30 minutes or less since 2002. We chat about everything from unit economics of newer quick commerce players to inventory curation and the tradeoffs between full time drivers and gig workers.

Paul Shapiro is the Founder & CEO of the Better Meat Co, a startup with the second largest mycoprotein fermentation plant in the world. Imagine walking into a Shake Shack and ordering a burger blended with fungi-based protein to form a patty that contains 50% less meat. That’s what Paul and his team are working to build with foodservice and CPG brands for poultry, seafood, and beef products as they also sell their proprietary Rhiza strain as an ingredient for pure meat alternatives.

Ilir Sela is the Founder & CEO of Slice, a dedicated marketplace and end-to-end ordering solution for over 16,000 independent pizzerias nationwide. Instead of 20-30% commissions of DoorDash and Uber Eats, Slice charges restaurants a flat $2 fee for any order above $10. We chat about everything from the $47bn highly fragmented pizza landscape to the startup’s expansion into building its own POS system and payments solution inside the four walls.

David Bishop is a Partner at Brick Meets Click, a decade-old consulting and research firm in the e-Grocery space. Each month, David runs a survey that is considered one of the industry’s most prominent benchmarks tracking monthly online sales across delivery, pickup, and ship-to-home. We chat about everything from Amazon’s grocery strategy to the fight between third-party marketplace and traditional grocers.

Ashwin Wadekar is the Chief of Staff at Gorillas, a new pure-play small basket grocer that delivers items in less than 10 minutes from over 115 dark stores. We chat about everything including the shift in consumer behavior from weekly stockups to on-demand purchasing, Gorillas’ full-time labor model, and sustainability when it comes to food waste and e-bikes. If you’re curious about the battle of convenience and on-demand grocery, this conversation is for you.

Ellis McCue is the CEO of Territory Foods, a hyperlocal marketplace of personalized, chef-driven meals. Territory has created a distributed network of commissaries in 24 cities across the country that deliver pre-made dishes cooked by restaurants and chefs to customers who don’t want to sacrifice wholesome, healthy food for convenience. We chat about everything including the rise of the micro-chef, the sustainability of delivery, and how Territory leverages 90,000 data points on consumer preferences to inform its weekly menus.

Chris Baggott is the Founder and CEO of Clustertruck a fully-vertical delivery service that serves over 80 dishes across multiple cuisines throughout the Midwest. Prior to ClusterTruck, Chris sold Compendium Software to Oracle and took ExactTarget public before it was eventually acquired by Salesforce. We chat about everything from how ClusterTruck is able to coordinate its kitchen-to-doorstep time of less than 10 minutes to a host of consumer-facing issues plaguing other delivery companies today.