Sharebite is an Inc. Best in Business honoree. The second annual Best in Business awards recognize companies that have made a huge impact on their industries, their communities, the environment, and society as a whole.
Corporate clients can place large orders through Sharebite's network of restaurants. Sharebite's customers went when companies sent employees home. I got a lot of calls from people asking what I was going to do. Is the company going to go bankrupt?
Sharebite avoided such a fate thanks to a well-timed $15 million fundraise earlier in the year, but also allowed him to focus on supporting his people and his community. He and co-founder Mohsin Memon eliminated their own salaries for half the year in order to not have layoffs. Commission fees for restaurants on the platform were also free. The company helped restaurants fulfill nearly one million lunch orders for first responders and frontline staff at New York City hospitals.
The latter gesture was a lifesaver for hard-hit NYC restaurants, like MakiMaki, which needed to maintain its flow of orders to hospital workers. Kevin Takarada says his sushi chain helped fulfill about 1,000 more meals for Sharebite's law firm clients, bringing the total to 3,500 between March and June 2020. "We kept the price to $10 a meal delivered, so there were no profits to be made, but it was enough to keep the lights on and keep people employed," says Takarada.
Sharebite tripled its donations to City Harvest, which helps food-insecure children. Every order placed on Sharebite has resulted in a donation to the organization. "We wanted every transaction to have an impact." 400,000 pounds of food was promised to feed the local community in 2020.
The company spent a lot of time on its business. After a complete shutdown of orders in March and April, business started to come back in May, with a little more coming back each month until July, when a critical mass of corporate clients returned to their offices. The Sharebite Stations initiative allowed companies to pool their orders for certain vendors on the Sharebite platform and receive their orders at a single location in each company's building. The effort eliminated the need for workers to leave the office and come into contact with others. Companies that historically never fed their employees have signed on. "Sharebite Stations is a complete rocket ship on its own."
The company ended the year with more revenue than ever before. That's not what makes him proudest. He says that the team has been referred to as a family since day one. We've behaved like one even when it wasn't very convenient.
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