We sat down with Munchery Co-founder and CEO Tri Tran and Senior Software Engineer Andrew HunzekerHesed to hear where the idea of Munchery came from, how introducing mobile ordering has grown the business 10X, and why they chose to work with Braintree.
Where did the idea for Munchery come from?
Tri: I’ve always loved cooking, but everyday I would come home from work and the last thing I wanted to do was prep food, cook and wash dishes. I ended up getting food delivered -- but the food wasn’t always healthy, it was oftentimes expensive, and the delivery times weren’t predictable. At the same time, my neighbor was a personal chef. He would go to his customers’ homes, cook, and leave healthy meals for them. The only problem was that it wasn’t something that most people could afford. As an engineer, I wanted to find out how to bring high quality, affordable food to everyone. That’s how Munchery was born in 2010.
Have you noticed any trends in the way your customers browse or buy?
Tri: We’ve noticed two key trends. First, the world has gone mobile. People are beginning to use their phones like a remote control to their lives. When people think about food -- especially last minute -- they're not going to get on their computers, they're going to whip out their phone. We know this because our mobile growth has jumped 10X in the last couple of years. Second, people increasingly expect simplicity. Customers will immediately abandon any products or services that are too complex or take more than a few taps to buy.
Braintree has helped us capitalize on both of these trends. With Braintree, our customers only need to type in their payment information once and it will be securely saved for all future payments -- which makes buying on mobile extremely simple. And with Braintree’s v.zero SDK, we can offer our customers a range of mobile payment options including credit cards, PayPal, One Touch, Apple Pay and more. Our customers enjoy a simple and flexible mobile and online checkout.
How has Munchery evolved since launch?
Tri: Our products, technology and the variety of meals we offer have evolved significantly. But one thing that has stayed constant with us is Braintree. We partnered with Braintree to handle our payments early on, knowing they had a complete API and all the key features we needed from security to vaulting to fraud protection. Since partnering with Braintree, we’ve gotten access to a lot of additional tools and features that Braintree has rolled out. Now our customers have a completely seamless experience from browsing to checkout to delivery.
Why did you choose Braintree as your payments partner?
Andrew: When we started out, we knew we wanted to partner with a payment processor because we didn’t want to be liable for data loss or credit card fraud, and we wanted to work with a payment partner who could simplify our PCI compliance. Now we can send everything to Braintree and get tokens back so we don’t have to deal with sensitive customer data. Having this liability shifted to Braintree has been a blessing. It’s more secure and convenient for us and for our customers.
But we didn’t just want a payments provider, we wanted a true partner. We were looking for a partner that could grow with us as we evolved strategies, a partner that could scale with us as we expanded, and that could give us access to new tools as they became relevant to our customers. Braintree met all of these criteria. As we grew increasingly mobile, Braintree provided us with seamless mobile payment solutions. As we moved into new markets, Braintree quickly scaled with us. And as payment methods like PayPal and Apple Pay became relevant for our customers, we could quickly enable them via the v.zero SDK. And speaking of being a partner, Braintree’s customer service team worked really closely with us every step of the way to ensure everything ran smoothly to help us succeed.
So, what’s next for Munchery?
Tri: We just launched in New York, expanding our availability outside of San Francisco, the Bay Area and Seattle. We’re looking forward to growing our presence and moving into new markets in the coming months and years.
If all this talk about food is making you hungry, click here to order and get $10 off with code Braintree10.
Interested in hearing more? Watch the video case study: