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Photo courtesy of Fooze.
Former US national champion gymnast Lisa Wang used to come home after late practices to power bars. In college, the vending machine was her go-to during long nights studying. Afterwards, she found herself in the same snack rut as a hedge fund analyst working late hours. And she was still hungry.
Enter Fooze. Wang wanted quality late night food, without being exhausted by too many low quality options and slow delivery. So she made an 1-tap app to get the food she was craving.
“People are already seeking better late night dining options,” said Wang in an email.
Fooze offers three food options that switch up nightly from participating restaurants. You pick the one you want, it tells you the all-inclusive price, you tap the button and it charges the card you have saved. The app promises you’ll get your late night nosh in under 25 minutes, all in the name of making it simpler to order late night food.
“Late night ordering is a pain,” said Wang, “and it is my vision to transform casual perceptions of late night dining as unpalatable and unreliable by providing more quality options and better service.”
Fooze is limited with the number of restaurants it partners with and the number of food options offered every night–especially in comparison the endless scrolls of Seamless–but according to Wang, that’s the point.
“While delivery giants like Seamless and Grubhub provide a plethora of options, they don’t offer any specialization,” she said.
She added that the late night offerings already out there are limited and low quality.
“Currently, restaurants delivering on Seamless after 11:30 pm average only two stars on Seamless,” said Wang.
Wang has found that with current delivery systems, people find themselves spending too much time trying to figure out what they want based on the quality of what’s open. Late night delivery also takes a long time–Wang found that late night delivery times had an average of about 60 minutes.
“While people tend to be pickier with lunch, and especially dinner, late night eaters are more craving driven,” said Wang, “People struggle with decision fatigue at the end of the day, and over 50% of customers are habit-driven ordering the same 1 or 2 types of food almost every week.”
Fooze has some pretty interesting cuisine choices, which works in the app’s favor. A Spoon University survey found that the top adventurous orderers go to New York University and Columbia College. Previous menu items include a Kobe beef burger from Bark Hot Dogs, a Steak and Bacon Fried Rice Bowl from Korilla BBQ, and spicy pork ramen from Ramen-Ya.
“We sought comfort foods that this market craved, but made sure we were sourcing quality restaurants/items,” Wang further explains, “we also recognize that increasingly more people seek healthy, hearty food as well, so we do try and offer a vegetarian and healthier option within our three nightly choices.”
With this logic, Fooze makes sense. It eliminates the need to make too many decisions by only offering three options. It’s also quick. According to a Fooze blogpost, their average delivery time has worked out to 21 minutes.
Wang’s audience caters to students and busy young professionals. According to the National Restaurant Association, over half of consumers under 35 years of age visit restaurants late at night several times a month; they’d do it more if restaurants were open later.
“Our initial target audience is college age and young working professionals who self-describe as ‘Night Owls,’ ‘Partiers,’ and ‘Foodies,'” said Wang.
According to a 2014 survey by GrubHub and Spoon University, this demographic is twice as likely to order food late at night, making it ideal to target. College students also order a significant amount of Chinese food, pizza, and cookies.
Wang thinks that Fooze is coming at just the right time of transition.
“My larger belief is that with the disaggregation of the 9-5 job, there will be increasingly more entrepreneurs, freelancers, people who are making their own schedules,” said Wang. “That trend combined with our reliance on mobile technology will significantly shift everyone’s bed times later and later.”
A significant number of people order online, and mobile apps are becoming an increasingly popular way to do so; in a 2013 survey by the National Restaurant Association, 23% of adults ordered food via app, with the majority of those adults in the 18-34 age range.
Wang believes this will create a larger market for late night ordering.
“People will start demanding more quality late night options,” said Wang, “and who knows, in a decade or so, the midnight meal may be our fourth meal of the day!”
For more information on the Fooze app, click here.
-by Kari Sonde