New Yorkers can spend less than $5 per day on an assortment of cuisine including barbecue, tacos or falafel through a new subscription service launching Wednesday.
MealPass — which offers members lunch every weekday from its lineup of about 130 Manhattan restaurants for a flat monthly fee of $99 — is the brainchild of Katie Ghelli and Mary Biggins, co-founder of the fitness startup ClassPass.
The service rolled out in Boston and Miami in January, touting that you can save big if you use it every day, while also treating yourself to a less-than-sad desk lunch.
Participating restaurants include Brother Jimmy's, Dos Caminos and Maoz.
But there are a few caveats: Each restaurant will offer only one lunch option a day for subscription holders, posting it online at 7 p.m. the evening before, and you'll have to choose what you want to eat by 9:30 a.m.
At lunchtime, you pick up your own pre-paid meal by selecting a 15-minute window when you want to pick up lunch, i.e. skip the line and run back to the office to eat.
Unlike competing lunch start-ups like UberEats and Caviar, which are focused on convenient delivery, MealPass is targeting office workers whose priority is paying less for their midday meals, Biggins told Eater.
Her mission has been, she said, to "figure out how to give you really good food at an affordable rate."
Biggins declined to say how her start-up compensates participating restaurants, but she said that the service will cut down on their labor costs by getting customers in and out the door quickly at lunchtime.
You can sign up for the MealPass waitlist here.
