Healthy Food Delivery Start-Up Sprig 'Pausing' Chicago Service

By Gwendolyn Purdom in Food on Jul 29, 2016 5:40PM

Locals who've ordered from healthy food delivery start-up Sprig in the year since it expanded operations to Chicago got word via email Thursday that the San Francisco-based company would no longer be doling out quinoa, tofu and other healthy dishes here—at least for now.

"We’ve made the difficult decision to pause operations in Chicago for the time being to focus our company efforts on building out this new operational model. When we resume service, we promise to have an even more delicious and convenient product than ever before," the email from Sprig Chicago City Manager Ian Stuart-Hoff said. The "pause" also means several Chicago staffers were laid off. According to TechCrunch, the cuts were to drivers and kitchen staff.

Sprig launched in Chicago in June of last year and has been using a model in which drivers are sent to different neighborhoods with a set number of each of that day's available healthy meals—the idea being when customers order their meal, it can be delivered within five minutes (full disclosure: I once ordered a meal from Sprig and it was delivered within five minutes. It was pretty awesome). Apparently, this approach wasn't working as well as the company would like. According to a blog entry from CEO Gagan Biyani on Sprig's website, posted Thursday, the structure was leaving users with fewer options; if the user wanted a dish whose driver wasn't nearby, the dish would show as sold out on the app. Sprig is now testing new models.
From Biyani's post:

"It is incredibly difficult to make and test changes to a new model in multiple markets, and we don’t want to hedge our bets with two different paths in two cities. We’re going all-in on our new model, and scaling Chicago back now allows us to be nimble and then re-start with the updated model once we’ve fine-tuned it in San Francisco. Chicago has been a great home for Sprig—since launch, we’ve delivered hundreds of thousands of meals. We are sad to part ways with our local team members and are thankful for all our customers’ support. When we resume service in Chicago, we promise to have an even more delicious and convenient product than ever before."

Sprig is hardly the only option in the healthy food delivery sphere in the city, though its super speedy (and apparently ill-fated) delivery model was somewhat unique. Radish, headed by former Baffo executive chef David Yusefzadeh, came about last year, and last winter, Kitchfix went from purely a delivery service to having its first brick-and-mortar Chicago location open in the Gold Coast.

There's no set restart date for Sprig's services at this time.