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Struggling Munchery Appoints New CEO

Food delivery startup Munchery has announced a new CEO to replace current CEO and co-founder Tri Tran. James Beriker, a former CEO of Simply Hired, will be taking over the corner office as CEO and President of the five-year-old startup. The appointment is effective immediately. Beriker’s LinkedIn profile has been updated with his new position.

Munchery CEO, James Beriker

In February, I went up to Seattle and applied to be a driver for DoorDash and Munchery. I only hear back from DoorDash. I assumed Munchery was trying to figure out their business model before bringing on more drivers. But it turns out it hasn’t been smooth sailing for Munchery this year. Shortly after I return from Seattle, it was reported their chief customer experience officer, Pascal Rigo, was leaving the company. Around this time, other on-demand food delivery startups were struggling to raise money from investors. SpoonRocket shut down in March.

If Munchery was struggling as a company, it was hard to tell until recently. Last month, Bloomberg reported that Munchery was looking for a new CEO. At that time, Munchery was losing $3 million dollars per month, down from $5 million per month in early 2016.

Today, Bloomberg reported some of the problems Munchery has been facing:

  • 16% of the meals Munchery produced from September 2014 to July 2016 didn’t go to customers.
  • Munchery cut ties with the marketing agency West, which helped with branding and offering discounts to customers.
  • Huge sums of money went to marketing efforts to acquire customers. In a month, hundreds of thousands of dollars went to putting flyers on people’s doors according to former employees.
  • Last summer, Munchery paid a well-known Los Angeles chef $100,000 a month to design a line of meals for the company and help with branding. This relationship dissolved months later and Munchery only received two recipes from the chef, and it cost the company $500,000.

There’s been a lot of shakeup in the on-demand food delivery scene this year as companies are struggling to raise more money from investors or become profitable. Couriers should be on guard as they might be out of a gig if the company the delivery for all of a sudden shuts down. I will keep you all updated on new developments as they come my way.

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