Hasty brings on-demand healthy food ordering to iOS [Interview]

In the fast-growing world of mobile food ordering, users already have a few options for finding unhealthy or even junk food right from their device of choice. When it comes to healthy eating options, however, the selection isn’t as large. Enter Hasty, an on-demand healthy eating app that allows users to order healthy food from their favorite restaurants and have it delivered without any extra work. Hasty is currently available in beta on iPhone, supporting restaurants throughout San Francisco. The app sees Hasty approaching restaurants for inclusion in the service, and asking those restaurants to regulate certain dishes to fit with the app’s healthy-eating approach. This could include removing MSG from a dish, or giving one item a steamed preparation instead of frying it, as examples. Once Hasty has made the partnership, its staff tests every dish and takes high quality photos of each dish for the app. The app supports browsing based on one or more dietary preference, like paleo, vegan, gluten free and others, and provides full nutrition facts about each item in the particular dish, including sides. We had a chance to chat with David Langer, Founder and CEO of Hasty, to learn more about the process of adding restaurants to Hasty, and when users might be able to expect a launch in other cities and on other mobile platforms (like Android). [contextly_sidebar id="3f1e6b8d75387b740af55c30339a2645"]Inside Social Games: What has the response been from restaurants when approached about including their meals on the Hasty app? Are you finding that restaurants are willing to change certain dishes on their menu to specifically fit in with Hasty’s healthier eating focus? David Langer: We have a very high success rate signing up restaurants to Hasty. Every restaurant wants to have more customers without having to do any extra work. Not only does Hasty provide restaurants with more customers but being selected by Hasty is a status symbol that a restaurant is supplying some of the healthiest and best quality meals being delivered in their city. Restaurants regularly get requested to tweak the way they cook certain dishes on their menu for customers with allergens or specific diets. Hasty simply standardizes something they are already used to doing on an ad hoc basis. ISG: Once cooking methods have been changed to fit with Hasty’s standards, what system is in place to ensure restaurants continue to use those same methods, rather than ‘breaking the rules’? DL: Every restaurant goes through a stringent sampling process before being included on Hasty and our team regularly samples the food to ensure the agreed standards are being upheld. If any restaurants are not complying or not able to comply, we remove them from the app. ISG: What’s the timeline for opening the app up to the public at large, and outside of San Francisco? DL: We will be opening up the app to the public very soon but don’t have a specific date set. Similarly, we want to be outside San Francisco as soon as we can as there is a lot of demand but we don’t have a set timeframe. We want to ensure that everyone will have a high quality experience with the product and available restaurants, so we aren’t rushing this. ISG: Would Hasty be open to crowdsourcing new restaurants and dishes in order to speed up growth? DL: Yes, this is something we are considering. We just need to ensure all our current quality standards are adhered to while doing something like this. ISG: Given review site Yelp’s increasing focus on food delivery services (like Eat24 and Delivery.com), would Hasty be open to a future partnership with a company like Yelp, or is Hasty more interested in independently changing the market? DL: We want to make healthy food available on demand in as many places as possible. We are open to working with the right partners to help us achieve this. ISG: Are there any plans to add dish reviews or other social features to Hasty? DL: Yes, we will be adding dish reviews soon – this is one of our most heavily requested features. We also have some social features on the roadmap. ISG: What’s the status on the Android version of the app? DL: We are currently 100% focused on iPhone but want to get to Android as soon as we can. We have received a lot of demand. ISG: Will Hasty release an API for other services to use its data (for example, Foursquare users could check in to a cafe and see healthy eating options available at that restaurant)? DL: There are a lot of interesting things we could do with the unique dataset we are building but have not announced any set plans. Hasty is now available in beta on iOS. For more information or to sign up for inclusion in the beta, check out the app's official website.

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Hasty brings on-demand healthy food ordering to iOS [Interview]

Brandy Shaul

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Brandy Shaul