It's 7:15 p.m. on Friday and you're collapsing into the sofa, just arriving home after a long commute and a longer day at work. Your Netflix queue beckons. Your stomach grumbles. Flash to the fridge, and you're not loving the options. You sigh, craving dinner but loathing the effort involved in making something appetizing, or edible.
You're considering bribing a roommate (or, ahem, your husband) until your phone buzzes. A pleasant push notification asks you this:
This is the vision and promise of Chef Nightly, an app for iOS and Android that just officially launched in Boston.
The food delivery space is not novel, but the approach here is decidedly different. With Chef Nightly, you get customized meals prepared by local chefs from fresh ingredients, and delivered via a smart and intuitive app that learns your ordering schedule and meal preferences and becomes smarter over time.
"It is time to make dinner easy again."
"Each time you order, Chef Nightly learns more about your food preferences and will update the selection of meals based on the items you choose," said Mike Sheeley, the cofounder of RunKeeper who launched the app along with former RunKeeper mobile developer Adam Stroud, Bret Sheely of GSN Games and Nick Samia of DSI Marketing Communications.
Chef Nightly has about 20 local cuisine-specific kitchens on board, spread across Boston so that everybody in the Boston area has a participating kitchen less than two miles away; once ordered, meals are delivered to your door in about 30 to 45 minutes. If you order a pizza and a sandwich, they might be coming from different restaurants – because not every restaurant does everything well.
Another nice feature: All meals are $12, including tip.
"Chef Nightly is all about removing the frustration from having to figure out what's for dinner each night," Sheely said. "The menu is dead. Most online ordering products are nothing but a local search of restaurants and their large confusing digitized menus. That was great in 2008. But not anymore. It is time to make dinner easy again."
That's an appealing prospect, whether's it's Friday after a long day of work or simply a day when cooking is the furthest thing from your mind.
Added Sheeley: "We are quickly going to be adding more meal options soon. Our goal is to have a one-swipe interaction for you to get the freshest locally prepared and delivered meals possible."
For more on Chef Nightly, head here.
Editor's note: BostInno co-founder Chase Garbarino is an investor in Chef Nightly.
