The last thing start-up teams should be worried about is what to eat for lunch. That's the idea behind Gastronaut, a San Francisco-based business that caters daily meals at local companies. Mirit Cohen and Nate Keller, two former chefs at Google, launched Gastronaut to emulate the tech giant's communal lunchtime ritual. "A lot of the programmers sit all day in front of their computers," says Cohen. "Coming to lunch is like coming up for air. They get to have social interaction." Plus, employees get more done, because they don't need to leave to fetch food, she says.
Gastronaut's 24 employees deliver buffet-style meals to eight businesses, most of them venture backed. The lunches cost $16 to $18 per serving and typically include a meat entrée, a vegetarian entrée, two hot sides (one starch, one vegetable), and a salad or two. Cohen and Keller work with a nutritionist to develop the menus and use only organic ingredients. "This is brain food," says Cohen.
Here's what three companies recently had for lunch:
Square
Credit card processor with more than 150 employees