Square Adds Fastbite Service To Its Delivery Service Menu

Even given the tech sector’s nearly universal drive to make sure that no American with a smartphone will ever be hungry again, Square’s acquisition of food delivery service Caviar last summer seemed like something of a puzzler. Square’s main corporate MO had been centered on payments thus far – and food delivery seemed a little far afield.

However, Square’s commitment to competing in the food delivery space has only grown since the Caviar acquisition, and now it seems it is expanding as Square has also acquired San Francisco-based food delivery startup Fastbite.

Fastbite is focused on lower cost meals — generally around $10 each — that could be delivered extremely quickly (under 10 minutes). To make that possible, Fastbite did what competitors Sprig and SpoonRocket did –  kept their menu options limited to three or four and made sure those three or four things could be cooked in bulk and sent off to customers quickly.

Unlike its competitors, however, Fastbite doesn’t cook the meals and instead relies on restaurant partners, much the way its new parent Caviar does. By joining the services together, Fastbite can now provide a $10 meal in 10 minutes from a much wider variety of potential locations.

To use the service, customers need only log into Caviar, where a Fastbite button will now appear. The menu for Fastbite customers will still be three or four items long, and will range in price from $8-$15 (delivery price included).

Eight restaurants in San Francisco will be the intital partners for the run, with each being the standard bearer for their particular genre of food.

“Some of these restaurants are already doing a lot of volume with Caviar, and so they were open to this idea of creating custom meals for Fastbite,” the service’s co-founder Avlok Kohli said.

For now, the service’s availability is limited – extremely so. Caviar only serves certain neighborhoods in San Franscisco. However, the hope is that the service can expand throughout the city and beyond, if it proves to be popular.