Phoodeez Catering Raises $600k, Led by Project 11

Katie Rae was at an MIT conference when a familiar thought crept into her head: “How quickly can I duck out of this boxed lunch and go get real food?”

“But I peeked into the box and said, ‘Wow, this actually looks good,’ ” she recalled. “That was my introduction to Phoodeez.”

Now Rae’s venture capital firm, Project 11, is leading a $600,000 investment round in Phoodeez, a Boston startup that caters corporate functions by supplying food from multiple local restaurants that specialize in different types of cuisine.

Instead of preparing Mexican, Italian, and Mediterranean dishes in one kitchen, Phoodeez might serve up burritos from the MexiCali Burrito Company, pasta from Trattoria Andiamo, and baklava from Aceituna Café.

The theory is that a caterer can provide a better spread from a bunch of specialists than from one generalist trying to cook everything.

Phoodeez co-founders Christine Marcus and Sal Lupoli — known locally as founder of the Sal’s Pizza chain — have been bootstrapping since they launched the company in 2012.

By Carl Borchers  ·  October 6, 2014  ·  BetaBoston  ·  Original Article