Move over, Seamless, there’s a new food delivery service in New York — and it’s powered entirely by SMS.
is an ultra-simple platform that offers conversational commerce by way of texting. Every day, the company sends users a text at 10:00 am, offering a curated menu of lunch dishes for same-day ordering. These meals range from quinoa wraps to salmon entrees to gourmet burgers and are sourced from over 150 popular New York restaurants.
If a user is interested in ordering one of the given meals for lunch, he/she texts back before 11:00 am in order to purchase an option. The company then sends out its team of 23 “food runners” who pick up the orders from the daily restaurants. The lunches are then delivered to customers before 1:00 p.m.
On the user’s end, the received texts are light and conversational, and incorporate images of the meal options to give you a preview of what you might be eating in a few hours. With over 8,000 restaurants to choose from in the city, making a decision on where to eat (or order from) is a consistent hassle for busy New Yorkers.
This is the primary problem Arcade is attempting to solve — the company narrows your choices down to two per day, so you barely have to think about what you want for lunch.
Arcade is not alone in the market for convenient, curated food deliveries. Subscription box services, and
, have seen great success in their pre-arranged boxes of exotic cuisines and nightly dinners. , a food delivery service grounded in emojis, has also seen traction in New York, betting that emoticons will take SMS ordering to new levels.
However, with no delivery or tip fees, Arcade is a standout as a low-cost option when it comes to dining in Manhattan. The company was founded in 2015 by Shaunak Amin, a veteran in the food delivery business. Amin is also the founder of Served by Stadium, which allows picky eaters to order multiple dishes from different restaurants in a single order.
Amin’s long-term goal for Arcade is to offer $5 lunch options everyday and expand to other cities in the U.S.
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