Sprig Stops Food Delivery To Chicago, Begins Laying Off Staff

Sprig, the mobile app that allows customers to find and order “delicious meals” made with “honest ingredients” that can be delivered to their doorstep quickly, is changing up its delivery model and pausing operations in Chicago, according to TechCrunch.

As part of this reorganization, Sprig will be laying off seven employees in its marketing and operations team; Sprig has also let go of its local drivers and kitchen staff in Chicago.

The problem, according to TechCrunch, is that customers are getting frustrated with the lack of meal options available to them in their area. In theory, Sprig drivers are equipped with a number of “healthy” meals and assigned to an area so that customers who use the app to order a dish can receive their meals quickly — sometimes in as little as several minutes — but the problem lately is that customers are finding out that the most popular dishes in their area tend to sell out the quickest.

“We set out to build an impactful service, and as part of that, getting the model right is critical, and I think we have a really good model right now, but there’s an opportunity to build a great model,” Sprig CEO Gagan Biyani told TechCrunch.

Sprig, based in San Francisco, will begin testing its new logistics model in the next few weeks, which will provide new features, such as group ordering and more variety and availability in its meals. But the company just wants to focus its efforts on the San Francisco market at the moment, Biyani told TechCrunch.

“This is totally a logistical change,” Biyani told TechCrunch. “It’s about moving food around a city where you have high density of customers and people want your product at a given time frame. It’s very operationally intensive. The change is about becoming more efficient.”