The idea for Muncho was born out of the compounding disappointment of a Philadelphia Eagles loss and a cold pizza.
After a pizza delivery took two hours and arrived after the game had ended, Adam Chain and his brother were left to mull the loss over a stale pizza. Chain thought, "I could do this better."
Eagles fans are used to saying things they don't mean after a loss, but when Chain found himself still thinking about his post-game idea the next morning, a real business concept began to unfold.
"What if we could bring an oven to somebody's door and reverse engineer that? And that's how we started," Chain said.
Muncho combines elements of a food truck, delivery service and pizzeria. A batch of pizzas is partially baked in the morning and early afternoon in the kitchen at BLDG 39 at the Arsenal in Northeast Philadelphia. Orders can then be placed between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m., at which point the pizzas are baked again in ovens inside the vans to ensure they're hot and fresh when they get to the customers. Chain calls it "the double bake model."
He aims to do all of this in under 15 minutes from the time the order is placed, with the average delivery time at 12.5 minutes. Some hot pizzas have been known to arrive at doorsteps in as little as six minutes.
On the menu are six different pizzas, along with a specialty pie that rotates weekly, each at about $16. It also serves fries for $6. Orders can be placed through Muncho's website, and Chain hopes to launch an app in April.
Muncho sold its first pizza in November 2021 and after a year of research and development launched full time in August. After "scouring the city" to find the best place to kick off business, Chain decided on an area that he thought had the most competition — Fairmount.
"There's too many pizza places there, so it was like, if it works there, it's going to work everywhere else," he said. He added that the dense neighborhood has its share of longstanding residents and said, "if we can tap into a community made up of people who know Joe from the corner pizzeria, we can probably keep going."
Just over six months after its hard launch, Muncho is getting interest from investors, other food delivery startups, franchisees and pizza lovers alike.
Chain, a former investment banker and Radnor Senior High grad, said the Muncho's customer base grown by 15% each month and has a 55% retention rate among existing customers. The company has received an investment from Philadelphia Union captain Alejandro Bedoya, who is also co-chair of the SeventySix Capital Athlete Venture Group. Muncho launched a $2 million seed round at a $5 million valuation in January that Chain hopes to close in mid-March.
Muncho is now available in University City and Brewerytown, in addition to Fairmount. For customers who don't live in those three neighborhoods, they can sign up to be on a waiting list that currently stands at over 4,300 people so Chain knows where to expand to next. He already has some ideas however, saying that the area around Temple University and Fishtown are at the top of the list.
He said he has been receiving heavy interest from franchise attorneys looking to get in on the "double-baked pie." Meanwhile Gopuff, Reef Technology and Wonder Group have all reached out for non-disclosure agreements to "see under the hood" of the startup, according to Chain. He said he denied all of them and will pick one franchise attorney to consult with.
What has happened "under the hood" at Muncho has been interesting as well.
One day after Chain's frustration at the kitchen working on the pizza recipe was overheard by the building's owner, a connection was made out of "sheer luck." The owner of BLDG 39 introduced Chain to Carlos Aparicio, the former head baker at Stephen Starr's Parc restaurant in Rittenhouse Square.
"[Aparicio] took two weeks before he came back and said, 'I know what to do,'" Chain recalled.
From there Aparicio played the role of recruiter and pizza scientist. He brought on a number of former members of the Parc kitchen staff, according to Chain.
Chain is still focused on Philadelphia before eyeing other cities for expansion. He pointed to State College, where he attended Penn State University, as a potential area for expansion .
The company is still "really, really new," Chain conceded, adding that most of 2022 included "some trial and error." That, combined with current capital markets and an uncertain startup landscape have given him pause to move too fast.
"Our goal is to figure out how to grow before jumping to deep into it," Chain said. "It's our job right now to mess what we're doing up, so that's another reason why we're not rushing."
