Office life can often mean tight deadlines, which in turn often means making tough choices like ‘Funyuns or Fritos?’ when lunch rolls around.
But for those of who believe that no time starved employee should have to sustain themselves on bags full of salt and high fructose corn syrup, take hope: a new crop of startups are trying to revisit the office vending machine and bring fresher choices to those of us chained to our desk.
One of those startups is Byte Foods. The company operates a fleet of smart fridges installed in office break rooms and cafeterias throughout the Bay Area. The company, started by the husband and wife team of Lee and Megan Mokri in 2015, licenses their fridges stocked with fresh food from local producers such as Blue Bottle and Mixt Greens. Companies pay a monthly service fee, and Byte manages food inventory, payments and allows the employer to check out purchasing patterns with a web based dashboard. Employees access the food by swiping their card, then they choose what they want, and a bill is sent to their smartphone. Each food item has a small RFID tag on the bottom which helps the fridges determine which items the employee has chosen.
The Mokris ran a food delivery startup 180 Eats before getting into fresh vending machines. The current version of Byte is a result of an acquisition…