One of the top requests we receive from clients is variety. Employees love when there’s something new on the menu: a restaurant they’ve never visited, a cuisine they’ve never sampled, or a new dish from a favorite vendor.
So therein lies the question: “How can I get the most variety from Zerocater and their network of vendors?”
Although the Zerocater vendor network varies city to city, one word accurately depicts the vendor pool across all markets: elastic. The roster of restaurants, food trucks, private chefs, and caterers Zerocater partners with is constantly evolving. Our vendor team scours the food scene in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Chicago, Austin, D.C., and Los Angeles to bring new, exciting meals to your office.
Understanding Zerocater’s ever-changing vendor network
The longer you partner with Zerocater, the more vendors you will sample. In the past year alone, Zerocater has added 202 new vendors to our platform.
| City | Vendors added from 2015-2016 |
| San Francisco | 60 |
| New York City | 65 |
| Chicago | 20 |
| Washington, DC | 35 |
| Austin | 22 |
| Total | 202 |
Just as the vendor network is constantly growing, so are the number of cuisine types. This means more local, authentic, and diverse meals for your team to try and enjoy. Zerocater offers at least eleven cuisine types in each U.S. city—and up to forty-nine in San Francisco!
How to access the most vendors in your network
Zerocater views each vendor partner as just that—a partner. For this reason, Zerocater works with each vendor to ensure a mutually beneficial relationship. A vendor might not be available for delivery to your office due to:
- Headcount: Each vendor sets their own order minimums
- Location: Each vendor sets their own delivery zones
- Budget: Rising food costs, a higher minimum wage, cooking in small batches, and increase in rent prices have tightened restaurants’ profits across the country. Therefore, menu prices may rise to guarantee profitability for the vendor.
By increasing your budget by just $1 per person, your lunch options multiply, because more vendors will benefit from the order. Just look at how vendor options expand (as budget increases) for clients in Chicago.
Tips for gaining the most variety for your team
Just as restaurant owners have a budget to stick to, so do you. Knowing when to save and when to splurge can help maximize your mealtime budget. Here are a few tips on making that extra dollar stretch:
- Save for special occasions: Office birthdays, new hire welcome parties, and work-anniversaries can be celebrated without a full meal. Try bagels, cupcakes, or pastries (a great way to sample dessert vendors!)
- Splurge on the holidays: Zerocater works with vendors to create specialty holiday menu items. Why not hold out for that spooky, graveyard themed cake at Halloween?
- Save on Mondays: Meatless Monday. Light Monday. Get-back-in-gear Monday. Start the week off right with a light meal, perhaps by sampling a vegetarian (or even vegan) vendor.
- Splurge on Wednesdays: Does your team need a jolt of motivation to get through the week? Choose Wednesday as your day to splurge, and give them a meal worth remembering.
- Save over brunch: Breakfast menus are typically offered at a lower price point than lunch or dinner. Why not swap a breakfast vendor into your weekly routine?
- Splurge at dinner: If your team is pulling an all-nighter at the office, this is the time to thank them—and thank them big. Use this as an excuse to try a vendor you’ve never tried before!
Getting the most out of lunchtime
Zerocater only partners with locally-owned restaurants, which means you support small businesses through each and every meal. You also receive the variety, quality, and customer service you may not see from a large, national chain.
We want you to sample as many Zerocater vendors as you possibly can. For more advice on how to gain the most variety at lunchtime, speak to your dedicated Client Success Representative to see what new vendors to try next.
