Philadelphia Business Journal

EatNow for Net takeout

November 21, 2005—SeamlessWeb Professional Solutions Inc., was formed in 2000 by former law-school classmates Jason Finger and Paul Appelbaum. It received money from the King of Prussia-based Eastern Technology Fund as part of an initial $2.5 million financing from family, friends and individual investors.

SeamlessWeb targets a market that is as hungry and convenience-starved as college students: Workers in professional service firms.

SeamlessWeb provides companies with a number of restaurants from which their employees can order takeout food or catered meals over the Web. Instead of having to pay bills to all those places or reimburse their employees, the firms pay it once a month and it pays the restaurants.

SeamlessWeb also provides customers with an invoice they can upload to their accounting systems that details the clients, departments and/or individuals that should be billed for each order. In addition to only allowing authorized employees to place orders, SeamlessWeb’s software enforces its customers’ policies on price limits and can bill their employees’ credit cards for orders when necessary.

With $50 million in revenue last year, SeamlessWeb recently was named the fastest-growing technology company in the state of New York and seventh fastest-growing tech company in North America by Deloitte & Touche USA.

It’s in nine markets, including Philadelphia, and recently began serving individuals in Manhattan. It has looked at serving colleges and is trying to decide whether it wants to do that and, if it does, how it can do that best.

Not surprisingly, its CEO thinks ordering food over the Internet is the wave of the future.

"Over the long term, everyone will be ordering food online in the same way that everyone places orders for airline tickets online now," Finger said.

"It’s easier, it’s faster, it’s more efficient and you can build in all the Web-based niceties that aren’t available for placing orders over the phone, in terms of storing favorites and ... viewing online ratings and reviews."

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