Expansion Capital Allowed Company To Facilitate Holiday Parties

A lot of recent holiday parties were successful due to the $630,000 of seed capital that ezCater raised from angel investors last October. The Boston startup was formed in 2009 to help caterers find new customers online.

By entering a zip code on the ezCater website, people are led to the catering options for their events. The middleman services of ezCater include providing reviews, ratings, and menus to connect users with the optimal local caterer for a successful party experience.

The company is expanding to raise awareness of the ezCater website plus add more small businesses to the available catering choices. Already, ezCater has a list of 45,000 caterers in 49 states, including several large corporations listing their local establishments. Some of the catering options on ezCater are The Cheesecake Factory, California Pizza Kitchen, Papa John’s, and Subway. Within a couple of months at the end of 2011, ezCater doubled the number of caterers receiving orders from its website.

Most of the ezCater users are companies with catering needs for corporate events. The caterers normally serve parties of 10 to 150 guests. The brand strength of ezCater is that it focuses on facilitating catered events plus presenting reviews on a national level. This permits event planners in New York to efficiently arrange the catering for a future party in Los Angeles.

A competitor such as ZeroCater is not national. And online delivery service GrubHub is not able to accommodate events of more than 100 guests with only a one-day notice. Best of all is that using the ezCater website is free. Instead of charging users, ezCater earns commissions paid by the caterers who receive orders through the online system.

With the backing of a little funding from angel investors plus a successful holiday party season, ezCater is now ready to continue its national expansion.