Sprig Wants To Kill Fast Food And Make Braised Kale More Accessible

It’s not enough to get meals to customers as fast as possible, Sprig CEO and co-founder Gagan Biyani told the audience at TechCrunch Disrupt that his company wants to kill fast food entirely.

His company which delivers healthy on-demand meals to customers in San Francisco, Palo Alto and Chicago launched in November of 2013 and has since raised nearly $57 million in funding to power its initiatives.

Biyani focused a great deal of his interview with our own Megan Rose Dickey on what’s next for the company in the current organic food industry climate.

“The food industry has forced people in-between two choices, either quality food that tastes great and takes a lot of work to make or convenient food that’s very, very cheap and bad for you,” Biyani said.

Disrupting an industry like fast food leads to a lot of conversations about keeping prices low. Sprig doesn’t exactly have a dollar menu, on average meals cost about $14 with all the fees included according to Biyani. Biyani insisted that Sprig’s food is still pretty cheap for the quality that customer’s are getting as opposed to restaurant prices.

Dickey floated the possibility of Sprig meals going for $5 down the road, which Biyani didn’t refute but he also said that Sprig’s model was really focused on bringing about change in the organic food industry.

Accessibility was a major issue that kept coming up throughout the talk, Biyani said that making Sprig a service that gives lower-income customers access to healthy cuisine as well was a tough nut to crack. Sprig wants to use their reach to raise awareness and “make organic food prices go down dramatically.”

Dickey touched on the overall investing climate and asked how Sprig would fare if a change in the economic environment led people to be less willing to drop $14 on lunch.

“As an entrepreneur the way I look at it is if I build a great business, and if I’m building a business that fills a consumer need then it doesn’t actually matter what the economic world looks like.”