Munchery CEO Tri Tran's harrowing journey to Silicon Valley
The article says they&#x27;ve raised $115 million to deliver in 4 cities. The populations of those cities are:<p>San Francisco: 837,442<p>New York City: 8,400,000<p>Seattle: 652,405<p>Greater Los Angeles: 3,800,000<p>For a total of 13.6 million people, or $8.45 per person.<p>I looked at one example by finding an SF zip code, and found they were charging $10.95 for 650 calories(if you assume 2000 calories, you might say they&#x27;re looking to raise $10.95 at a $33.69 daily food valuation). It&#x27;s also  59 calories per dollar:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;munchery.com&#x2F;menus&#x2F;sf&#x2F;#&#x2F;0&#x2F;dinner&#x2F;bbq-pork-with-rice-1&#x2F;info" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;munchery.com&#x2F;menus&#x2F;sf&#x2F;#&#x2F;0&#x2F;dinner&#x2F;bbq-pork-with-rice-...</a><p>I checked a couple other zip codes, and they do seem consistent with $30-$34&#x2F;day in food &#x27;valuation&#x27; by calories.<p>Looking at San Francisco, it looks like people spend an average of $3,937 to buy 48% of their away-from-home food(2000 * 0.48 * 365 &#x2F; 3937 = 89 calories per dollar), and $4,215 on 52% of their at-home food(90 calories per dollar)
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;regions&#x2F;west&#x2F;news-release&#x2F;ConsumerExpenditures_SanFrancisco.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bls.gov&#x2F;regions&#x2F;west&#x2F;news-release&#x2F;ConsumerExpendi...</a><p>So their food is about 50% more expensive than the average in the region, per calorie. If you assume people&#x27;s expenditures rise with their income exactly, and that the average income in San Francisco was $92,780 from that same link, then you&#x27;d expect them to be targeting people who make 1.5 * $92,780 = $139,170 which is the 74th percentile in San Francisco. Applying this uniformly reduces the 13.6 million audience to 3.264 million(edit: Not sure you can apply a percentile like that).<p>I&#x27;m not sure what their markup is, but if you assume it&#x27;s the 50% rather than them simply choosing more expensive restaurants, then they need to generate $3x in sales to generate $x in revenue. So $115 million &#x2F; 3.264 million =  $35.23&#x2F;person * 3 = $105.70&#x2F;per person on average to make revenue equal to their investment. If you assume only 10% of its target audience ends up using Munchery, then this rises to $1057&#x2F;person, or about 96 overpriced meals. They appear to outsource all the actual work to restaurants, but they might get a bulk discount. Maybe that&#x27;s eaten up by their operations.<p>You could reduce this by a factor of f by assuming that the valuation was some fixed multiple f of their valuation. I&#x27;ve heard 3 is common for f, and probably these are preferred stock so the multiple might be higher.<p>I don&#x27;t know - it seems like the average yuppie would have to buy way more overpriced delivery Chinese food than I expect is reasonable for their business to make sense. My historical credit card statements show about $6&#x2F;day on all my food, compared to their &#x27;valuation&#x27; of $33.69.<p>I&#x27;m not sure I understand where the investor money&#x27;s coming from though: It&#x27;s traditionally hard to get money for a restaurant(loans require higher down payments, etc.) since they tend to lose money. Buffets tend to be more efficient than sit-down restaurants like they indicate here, and I&#x27;ve also seen some restaurants hire delivery staff. If they sold it to investors as &quot;We want to set up a couple buffets three times as big as average with some delivery staff instead of a sit-down area&quot;, I can&#x27;t see them actually raising the money. (The 3x comes from me looking at a local buffet in Portland, which was 11,000 square feet, and comparing it to the 30,000 one mentioned in the article. Admittedly theirs probably doesn&#x27;t have any sit-down room).