DC office catering startup acquires Philly-based Local Stove

A couple of months ago, HUNGRY cofounder Eman Pahlevani hinted that the office catering startup would likely be expanding to a new market.

This week, news came that the Rosslyn, Va.–based company will start offering its service connecting chefs with companies looking to serve catered meals to employees in Philadelphia, and it’s growing by acquisition.

According to our sister site Techncial.ly Philly, HUNGRY completed a deal to acquire Local Stove, a two-year-old startup that also uses tech to connect catering jobs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

HUNGRY has built up a client base of 300 comapanies in the D.C. area, including Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and WeWork, as well as more than 60 chefs. Pahlevani said the company looked to be “methodical” in its approach to expansion, and identified the bootstrapped startup’s success to date.

“We surveyed the market and saw that they had done a good job of building a chef network, but what they needed was a technology platform and operational execution to scale quickly (two areas HUNGRY excels in),” Pahlevani told Technical.ly DC via email. “The thinking was that it makes sense to join forces and use our technology infrastructure to help grow and scale what they had started.”

HUNGRY’s technology includes interfaces that help chefs run a catering business, and companies with ordering. The company also provides delivery of the food.

The acquisition will add 10 people to HUNGRY’s 20-person team by the end of the year, with Local Stove’s cofounders remaining on during the transition, then serving as advisors, according to Technical.ly Philly.

Launched in 2017, HUNGRY has raised $4.5 million, including $1.5 million in seed funding that closed earlier in 2018. The company reported $1 million in sales in its first year.