Spread

01/11/2022

We've hit refresh. Come check out the all new tryspread.com! New look, new restaurants, and savings just for you.

08/03/2021

Building Spread has been such an incredible experience and I'm feeling so grateful for all those that made it possible. .0, early investors, interns, fellow founders, friends & family, the list goes on ❤️

Looking forward to the next chapter for Spread as we continue to build out a true commission-free marketplace for the restaurant industry with Nabeel and the entire Lunchbox team.

If you know anyone interested in building a more ethical marketplace for restaurants, please reach out to andy@lunchbox.io. We are hiring for roles in engineering, strategy & operations, account management, support, and more!

02/21/2021

Thank you for featuring us in this incredible article on startups and restaurants fighting back against 3rd party delivery apps ❤️

Can’t wait to grab a print version tomorrow!

01/03/2021

Wrote an article this week about “arming the rebels” in the food delivery space.

I used to think that allocating time to “writing” was a waste of resources. Even a short piece like this can take hours to research, write, edit, etc.

Seeing results from “content marketing” can take months or even years but I realized I was reaping benefits even if a single person didn’t read the article.

Planning a piece like this forces you to organize your thoughts and think deeply. Getting ideas out of your head and down on paper is almost therapeutic. Additionally, it’s been a great way to work on my limited design skills (shout out to ) via some fun info graphics and cover art 👍

There was a great interview with Ben Silberman (CEO of Pinterest) where he talked about the benefits of writing down your vision early and often (even if you don’t have the resources to build them right that minute).

I’m going to take that advice this year and try to write as often as I can.

01/01/2021

Happy New Year All!

In order to increase the number of restaurants we can help, we kicked off a big project to find, verify, and tag every commission-free direct ordering page out there (even if we haven’t directly onboarded them yet.

You can now browse 1,000+ restaurants by cuisine, price, fees, etc. and easily link out to their direct ordering site. If they are on our site, you can feel comfortable 100% of sales go to the restaurant.

The best part is, hundreds of threes restaurants already have exclusive offers for ordering directly through them. You can hit our new “Offers” filter to view all and browse via our new “Map View”.

We will be adding thousands more over the next year, expanding to new neighborhoods and even cities and states. If we’re missing any of your local favorites, please let us know ❤️

12/03/2020

Hey guys! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving week. We spent the last week building out a fun new referral program (inspired by ).

Almost all the merch designs have yet to be finalized so would love to hear any and all feedback! Who’s going to be the first one to rock a Spread longsleeve?? 👀

Link to full details in bio!

PS - we have a very big new feature rolling out later this month. Stay tuned :)

11/17/2020

There’s an old saying among chefs that you eat with your eyes first.

One of the most requested features for the site was individual package photos. So we added it!

is one of the first menus we’ve uploaded with individual photos. Our team will be working hard these next couple weeks to add them for all restaurants.

Take a look, let us know what you think, and if you get to hungry, order some Korean fried chicken through tryspread.com and get $6 off your first order 🤤

(menu link in bio)

10/23/2020

Today we feature two restaurants: Hak Box and Two Boots Pizza. One has the smallest menu on our site (6 items and 9 total modifiers) and one has the largest (182 items and 23,574 total modifiers) 🤭

A friend once asked me how online menus get made. They are all manually “digitized” (aka typed out and linked up nicely in an excel sheet) by our restaurant onboarding team (aka me).

Some menus like Hak Box can be made in under 10 minutes. Others like Two Boots (who has A LOT of topping options) can take hours.

But as they say, it is not the size of the menu that counts, it is the fight in the...uh...dog that counts?

Anyways, order some Dim Sum or Pizza through tryspread.com and pay extra attention all the menu modifiers as you’re browsing ❤️

10/21/2020

Today’s featured restaurants are two long time partners and

Running a restaurant and running a startup have many similarities. One of them is that mistakes are inevitable.

Today our customer service team was hustling to solve two order mistakes (one made by the restaurant, and one made by the customer), and both were resolved in surprisingly positive ways.

In the first case, the customer contacted us to let us know their food was not prepared correctly but that they were big fans of both Spread and the restaurant and understood mistake can occur. They were not upset and just wanted to provide feedback.

In the second case. The customer did not pickup their phone when delivery was trying to be made. The food had to be returned until the customer could be reached. When we explained what had happened to the customer they were so apologetic, they added an extra $10 tip to the order, and eventually got their food redelivered.

No one is perfect, including us! Our team pushed a site update today that prevented mobile users from checking out 🤦. We will do everything we can to not make the same mistake twice, but we will never let the fear of making a mistake stop us from moving forward.

For those that made it this far, if you have a chance this week: (1) be extra nice to any customer facing employees and (2) place an order from these two great restaurants on tryspread.com ❤️

10/08/2020

Some exciting news! Our new product is finally launching! www.tryspread.com

For those in NYC, definitely sign up and test it out for us. Even if you're not in NYC, we would be forever grateful if you could help us repost and spread the word to any friends or family in the NYC area.

For those not familiar, we set out to build a commission-free version of Grubhub/UberEats/etc. While these apps do provide a lot of value, the 15-35% commission they charge restaurants can be incredibly harmful.

We always wondered, what would it look like if restaurant owners banded together and built their own marketplace? It would have all the same features, but by cutting out the 15-35% middleman tax, they'd be more than happy to pass some of those savings onto you...the actual customer.

If you browse the site, you'll find hundreds of exclusive offers from amazing restaurants. We have a big backlog of restaurants to onboard but you can already redeem offers from some local favorites like Celeste, Hide-Chan Ramen, Hatsuhana, Miriam, Just Salad, etc.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out :)

04/13/2020

Thanks Business Insider!

Help us spread the word :)

Small, local businesses are hurting now more than ever. Spread is a commission-free delivery service working to keep local restaurants on their feet.