Two of LivingSocial’s original 20 employees, Alan Clifford and Ian Costello, set out to create a food delivery startup that catered to D.C.’s busy professionals. They created Galley, a D.C.-based mobile food delivery application focused on dinner — also available on desktop — that aims to deliver 600-to-800 calorie meals for between $12-$14. Currently available throughout a majority of the District, Galley co-founder Alan Clifford told DC Inno that they plan to expand coverage to the entire city and toward northern Virginia within several months.
“While DC's food scene has grown a lot in the past couple years, there have been very few new restaurants that prepare food for delivery or takeout beyond the tradition staples of pizza, Thai, and Chinese. Combine that with a population who is very career-focused, and technology-aware, DC made sense as the best place to start the business,” Clifford said.
Unlike most food delivery services, which deliver food from existing restaurants, Galley’s chefs cook a three-option menu, which customers can choose from for quick delivery. Founded as a pilot program in November, Galley has seen steady customer growth week by week, according to Clifford. Meals are cooked fresh in the morning and chilled, and delivery starts around 5 p.m. In the coming weeks, Galley will launch delivery options available to American University and the upper Northwest area.
“We learned a lot at LivingSocial about scaling, risk-taking, marketing, and building a product consumers love. The LivingSocial network has proved to be invaluable as we've worked to get off the ground,” Clifford told DC Inno.
The $12-$14 price range includes taxes, a delivery charge and subsequent tip. The young startup is able to keep costs down through its partnership with industry expert VSAG, the team behind Founding Farmers — an homage to LivingSocial — and by keeping a controlled and selective pantry of goods.
Galley builds out local driver routes to efficiently handle the delivery of its orders. By handling communication with customers through a separate, mobile driver-centric web platform the local startup hopes to grow their top line by 25 percent by year’s end. The LivingSocial alums are also considering adding more menu options but the decision will be dependent on customer growth and regional demand.
“We chose to go after convenient and nutritious as the two pillars for our business because that's what we were looking for while at LivingSocial," Clifford said. "We wanted to know that we were eating something we could feel good about without all the hassle of cooking.”
While New York City may be one of the only truly developed food delivery markets, D.C. provides a unique opportunity. “We're focused on three key areas: becoming more convenient to consumers, expanding our reach into more areas, and providing more transparency from our local produce sources to the expected exact arrival time of your Galley server,” Clifford said.
Galley will look to hire its first dedicated engineer in the coming weeks as Ian Costello has developed a majority of the code up to this point. The move reinforces the startup's goal of improving its services and catering to a larger customer base.
In asking Clifford what he is looking forward to with his startup's future development, he put it this way: “I'm looking forward to the day when a customer starts pitching me on why I should try Galley without knowing that I spend almost waking minute thinking about Galley. That's when you know you've got something good.”
