Momofuku's delivery-only app is expanding
Delivery is working for Momofuku.
The popular New York restaurant empire just fully launched its delivery-only restaurant, Ando. Six weeks later, demand is high enough that its needs to expand.
The lunchtime menu has been available only to customers in New York's office-heavy Midtown East neighborhood, and only through an iOS mobile app. Ando is launching a web app today to reach new customers.
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"If we had a [physical] line out the door, it would be almost four miles long," said Ando General Manager Anoop Pillarisetti, although the company isn't sharing specific numbers. "It's been pretty stunning."
The web app's goal is to make ordering accessible for both desktop and Android users.
Ando makes its food (designed specifically to taste better later, after delivery) in an undisclosed Midtown location. David Chang, the famed Momofuku restaurateur, designed the menu with chef J.J. Basil. Its most popular items are a $12 cheesesteak and $11 fried chicken.
Ando's two main priorities are food and technology. UberRush handles the logistics of delivery. (Ando co-founder Hooman Radfar is an Uber investor, and comes from a tech background.)
Its Midtown-based users are a mix of businesses and individuals. Some already love Momofuku, but others just want food delivered for lunch. The more fanatical customers have posted up in a Midtown Chipotle to order Ando since they live or work outside the small delivery zone, Radfar said.
A bonus for Ando is that it doesn't have to completely win over customers to its app to be a success.
"Where this business is very different than traditional tech-only businesses is that everyone eats," said Radfar, who has invested in Sweetgreen and other restaurant concepts. "We've seen a lot of overlap between us and other folks. People like to eat different things on different days of the week."
So does Ando's success prove the viability of delivery-only concepts?
For Momofuku at least, streamlining its delivery efforts through a focused concept rather than high-end restaurants that were never going to excel at delivery has proven wise.
"If you go to Seamless, it provides you with choice, but most of the food is not designed to hold for delivery," Radfar said.
Making food better when it's delivered is the "last mile of innovation that needs to occur," Radfar said.
For now, that's still happening just within Midtown East.
Emma Hinchliffe is a business reporter at Mashable. Before joining Mashable, she covered business and metro news at the Houston Chronicle.
