Companies are offering free employee lunches to boost productivity, morale, and well-being; at the same time they’re helping to fight hunger in Washington, D.C.

Would you buy your employees a free lunch if it meant greater workplace productivity? Lunch is an important meal that holds some serious potential for businesses that seek to boost workplace productivity, culture and teamwork.

At some of the most successful companies in Silicon Valley, like Google, free lunch as a perk has been standard operating procedure for some time and it has enhanced their competitive edge in the market. Simply put, free lunches for their teams translate into increased business success and profitability. Not only does a free meal increases employee happiness, it also becomes one of those braggable benefits, helping to recruit and retain top talent.

Free lunch may sound expensive, but doesn’t have to be, says Shy Pahlevani, founder of HUNGRY.This Washington, D.C. based startup developed a unique office and catering service, that connects top chefs making incredible food to offices across the city.

“Our unique business model enables us to deliver top chef made food, directly to your desk,” Pahlevani says. “We deliver meals that are made daily by local chefs and delivered to offices around D.C.”

With a recurring lunch plan, employees order from menus prepared by top local chefs. The food is then delivered to the office any day of the week. Menus can be customized to meet health and dietary restrictions, including vegan, vegetarian, paleo, dairy-free, and gluten-free options.

After each meal, employees provide feedback to help office managers decide which dishes worked best.

“Think about the last time everyone on your staff got what they wanted from office catering,” Pahlevani says. “Either the order wasn’t easy or it was really expensive. We created HUNGRY to provide companies a better option.”

Free lunches are now becoming a standard workplace perk for some of the highest employee-rated companies nationwide. A free meal can save employees’ time, helping them to work around meetings and deadlines. Office meals also break the monotony of daily routines, like the “lunchtime rush hour.”

Take for instance Washington, D.C. It’s a city filled with plenty of fast-casual options, including up-and-comers like Sweetgreen and Beefsteak. In this market, competing for consumers’ lunch can be tough, and pricey. In fact, diners spend on average a minimum of about $12.29 per day on food.

“We offer companies an ability to provide their teams high quality, healthy meals in a way that helps foster team building,” Pahlevani says. “Rather than have your team leave the office and go in different directions for 60-90 minutes every day, you can provide them an incredible meal from a top chef (which they will greatly appreciate) and instead they will enjoy lunchtime bonding and talking with their co-workers. It also saves everyone time which enables them to accomplish more each day in the office.”

At the same time, this delivery option feeds into the corporate social responsibility of leading Fortune 500 companies. For every two meals purchased through HUNGRY, one meal is donated to fight hunger in the D.C. region via a partnership with the Arlington Food Assistance Center.

“A free lunch is not just a good return on investment for employee satisfaction,” Pahlevani says. “It’s a way to impact the community by supporting local chefs and fighting hunger.”

The preceding promoted post was written and sponsored by Clarendon-based startup HUNGRY.


Wandering duck near Four Mile Run (Flickr pool photo by Dennis Dimick)

CivFed Approves Marijuana Resolution — The Arlington County Civic Federation has approved a resolution in support of legalizing medical marijuana in Virginia. [WJLA, InsideNova]

Beyer Opposes ‘Holman Rule’ — Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) has joined other local legislators in opposing the proposed reinstatement of the “Holman Rule,” which would allow a legislator to offer an amendment that would “reduce the salary of any federal employee, or eliminate a federal employee’s position without hearings, testimony, or due process.” [Federal News Radio, House of Representatives]

Ray’s Hell Burger Still Among the Best — Rosslyn-based Ray’s Hell Burger is on Food & Wine’s list of the best burgers in the United States. [Food & Wine]

Flickr pool photo by Dennis Dimick


Snow man painted on a restaurant window in Shirlington

W-L Student Pens Open Letter on Boundary Changes — The boundary changes approved by the School Board on Dec. 1 will decrease socio-economic diversity at Arlington’s high schools, despite diversity being a stated “core value” at Arlington Public Schools. That’s the argument made by a Washington-Lee student in an open letter to the School Board, published by the Crossed Sabres student newspaper. The article has been widely shared online and, we’re told, has broken traffic records on the newspaper’s website. [Crossed Sabres]

Rollover Crash Last Night — A crash involving an SUV that flipped on its roof was reported near the intersection of Little Falls Road and N. Glebe Road just before 8 p.m. last night. Another crash, involving a person potentially trapped in a vehicle, was reported on Old Dominion Drive just over the border in McLean, around 6 p.m. [Twitter, Twitter]

AFAC Collecting Lots of Donated Food — Holiday-time food collections are bolstering supplies at the Arlington Food Assistance Center. Just yesterday AFAC said it had received around 3,900 lbs of food from property owner Vornado and 1,900 lbs from apartment operator Dittmar. Dittmar says its total holiday food drive goal this year is 5,500 lbs. Other organizations collecting food for AFAC include local real estate agents that have formed a group called Arlington Realtors Care. [Instagram]

More Special Needs Students at APS — The percentage of special needs students at Arlington’s public schools has remained steady, but due to enrollment growth the number of special needs students has increased, presenting budgetary and instructional challenges. [InsideNova]

Cruz and Cornyn’s Queso Comes from Ballston — When Texas Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn needed some authentic Texas-style queso to square off in a taste test against cheese dip from Arkansas, they went to Uncle Julio’s Mexican Restaurant in Ballston. (The restaurant chain is based in Texas.) Unfortunately, the Arkansas cheese won the competition. [Roll Call]


Startup Monday header

Editor’s Note: Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

(Updated at 6:55 p.m.) A Clarendon startup is aiming to bring healthy, chef-cooked meals to the masses.

Hungry, which has up until now been quiet about its plans, is preparing to formally launch this fall. The company — which has a sunny, open office in MakeOffices Clarendon, above Pacers — can be described as a sort of Uber-for-food.

Hungry iPhone appCurrently, that’s a crowded category with lots of well-funded companies. Except whereas companies like Grubhub deliver food from restaurants, companies like Munchery deliver refrigerated food they produce in large commercial kitchens, and companies like Blue Apron deliver ingredients and meal recipes, Hungry is delivering meals prepared by individual professional chefs in their own commercial kitchens.

Hungry was founded by brothers Shayan and Eman Pahlevani, who previously co-founded Rosslyn-based LiveSafe. With LiveSafe on a solid path to success — a trio of billionaire backers, some $15 million raised, a growing list of clients — Shy and Eman decided to focus their entrepreneurial energies on a new challenge: what to do about lunch and dinner.

The idea came while Shy and Eman were still at LiveSafe. They were tired of the same old lunch options in Rosslyn, and then after a long day at the office they wanted better and healthier meal options for dinner. With a young daughter at home, Shy was particularly inspired. Cooking at home was time-consuming and ordering out often meant high-calorie meals from restaurants. Their idea: leverage the so-called sharing economy to let chefs make extra money on the side while consumers get better meals.

Hungry iPhone appBut Hungry’s appetite for innovation and growth doesn’t stop at individual dishes. The company hopes to be a full-blown food marketplace: its platform can be used by restaurants and chefs to order ingredients from artisan producers, by consumers to hire private chefs for special occasions at affordable prices, and by people or companies seeking food for events — from catered meals to wedding cakes.

(Last week, while ARLnow.com visited its offices, Hungry was preparing to provide food for a private event held by a buzzed-about, Clarendon-based startup media company.)

The company currently has 23 full-time employees, some 80 active chefs, $250,000 in startup capital and Chef Patrice Olivon serving as an advisor, Shy said. Its staff includes drivers — rather than outsource that task, Hungry plans to deliver its own meals, hiring one driver for every five active chefs on the platform.

Shy describes Hungry as a hyperlocal platform that’s focused on a “premium experience” — users can only order from Hungry-approved professional chefs that are within a 10-15 minute drive of the delivery destination, to keep the company’s promise of “authentic, one-of-a-kind fresh-cooked meals, delivered hot.” Users can specify which types of food they’re looking for along with dietary restrictions and preferences.

“Know your chef, know your food,” is another of the company’s credos.

Hungry plans to use content marketing to help attract customers. It’s been producing share-worthy videos, including the kind of short-form cooking videos made famous by BuzzFeed’s Tasty brand, with the hope of reaching consumers through their social media feeds. Targeted ads and email newsletters are also part of the plan, but that’s only half of the marketing battle — chef recruitment is equally important.

(more…)


Salsa dancing at Crystal City's Sip and Salsa event on SundayCrystal City’s annual outdoor food and wine festival, Sip and Salsa, will return on Sunday.

The event, held from 2-6 p.m. in the parking lot next to 220 20th Street S., features “delicious wines from Spain, Portugal, and Argentina together with food tastes from restaurants in Crystal City and the region.”

There’s also live Latin jazz, wine lessons from the Washington Wine Academy, and free salsa dancing lessons from Columbia Pike’s Salsa Room.

Crystal City says Sip and Salsa ” is the D.C. region’s only inside the Beltway, outdoor wine festival with the ease of safe and responsible transit access.”

Food and drink tickets are $20 online, while food-only tickets are $10.

The local professional football team, it should be noted, won’t be playing Sunday — the Redskins will face the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday night.

Disclosure: Crystal City BID is an ARLnow.com advertiser


Startup Monday header

Editor’s Note: Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

Growing up in Northern Virginia, Joe Smiley rode on food trucks with his church handing out warm meals to people in the community.

Craavings“I was always struck about how many people in my own community lacked basic necessities, including a warm meal each day,” Smiley said, adding, “These volunteering experiences were instrumental in planting a seed in my mind that there had to be a better way that I could help out using my technology background, as well as my experience consulting in the food and beverage sector.”

Combining his experiences, Smiley came up with the idea for Craavings — a no-cost online platform designed to help people find their favorite foods while providing meals to those in need.

Unlike restaurant rating platforms, Arlington-based Craavings enables users to quickly search and discover the best individual dishes available nearby by searching across all restaurants in an area or within a single restaurant. There are more than 30 million menu items in Craavings’ database, which covers the majority of the 1 million restaurants in the U.S. and parts of Canada, according to Smiley, founder and CEO of the company.

Users can save foods — or drinks — they try by completing ratings or reviews of menu items for future reference. In addition, a newsfeed feature focuses on social networking so that users can see what their friends and family like or dislike.

But the platform is about more than just finding your favorite foods. Users collect points through Craavings by signing up for an account, completing ratings and reviews, adding photos and marking favorite menu items.

“We’re making a pledge to provide a meal to someone in need — right here in the U.S. — every time you earn 15 points on this app,” Smiley said. “Find your craavings and help others who are in need. Win-win.” Craavings has pledged more than 750 meals so far, via volunteer work, food drives and donations, according to its website.

After launching a beta version of the website two months ago, Craavings already has thousands of registered users, Smiley said.

For now, he said the company’s primary focus is finding angel investors to aid in further development of the platform, as well as begin marketing in the D.C. and New York City metro areas. “We’re also looking for business partners and anyone who can help market Craavings in their cities and communities,” Smiley said.

In addition to improving the web interface and building out the mobile app, he said the company plans to add nutrition information, advanced filtering, loyalty management and new menu items and restaurants (including food trucks).


Pancho Villa Mexican Cuisine has opened in Rosslyn.

The restaurant is located at 1850 N. Fort Myer Drive, former home to the short-lived Secret Chopsticks restaurant. The space is largely unchanged, save the new purple paint job.

Pancho Villa had its soft opening this past Thursday. According to district manager Marta Hernandez, there was a big turnout.

“So many customers came into the restaurant and we received so many compliments about the food and service, it was a big success,” said Hernandez.

The Mexican cuisine served at Pancho Villa is made from scratch, said Hernandez, and the chips and salsa are made fresh everyday. “The food here is made with lots of love,” she said.

Pancho Villa has other locations around Virginia and one in North Carolina. While the restaurant expects to have its official grand opening celebration in 3-4 weeks.


Seven Arlington students graduated Friday from a culinary program that trains individuals who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless in the skills necessary to get a job in a commercial kitchen.

This was the sixth incarnation of the D.C. Central Kitchen’s Culinary Training Program, which meets locally at the Fairlington Community Center. The graduation ceremony was held in Rosslyn Friday afternoon and the Arlington students were joined by eight other students from the Central Union Mission, a homeless shelter in D.C.

One of the speakers at the ceremony was Napolean Boakye, a graduate of the fifth Arlington class. He first found out about the program while living in the Carpenter’s Shelter in Old Town Alexandria. As a result of the program, he was offered two jobs in the culinary field and he now works with the National Youth Escape Arena in Maryland.

“This job training sponsored by Arlington County positively influenced me and prepared me to change my way of thinking and my life,” said Boakye. “I said to myself, never again. I’m tired of failure. I’ve been there, done that, I’m moving on to success.”

Two students won the program’s Ron Swanson Life Skills Award: Bryce Churchman from the Arlington program and Gary Lucas from the D.C program.

Along with culinary classes, the students also receive self-empowerment classes and get to train outside of the classroom, with each student receiving a month-long internship. Some of the internship sites included the Key Bridge Marriott, Mess Hall in D.C. and Nando’s Peri-Peri.

The graduation rate for Arlington students ranges between 85 to 90 percent and graduates have an 90 percent job placement rate.

Photos by Jackie Friedman


ARLnow is partnering with Taste of Arlington to highlight some of the festival’s most mouth-watering dishes this year.

If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, get them online and save $5 over the price at the event itself, which is taking place starting at noon on Sunday. (Sunday’s forecast: mild and dry.)

Yesterday we stopped by our fourth and final “tasting table” selection, Ballston’s Pepita Cantina (4000 Wilson Blvd), to get a preview of the suckling pig taco they’re bringing to Taste of Arlington.

Here’s what Pepita’s manager, Chris Boitel, had to say about the dish.

This taco is served on a corn tortilla, with an apple purée, roasted pork, topped with a habanero mustard, finished with a diced apple and pickled mustard seeds salad. This dish is sweet, spicy, and savory. All though pork can feel like a heavy or hearty choice, our pig taco is light and refreshing.

This dish debuted as a special for our Cinco De Mayo party on May 5th. We decided that it was so good we would introduce it at the Taste of Arlington. Executive Chef Juan Rivera will be serving this on our upcoming summer menu.

We love the taste of Arlington for its competitive nature as well and the positive effect it has on the community. Restaurants take food seriously in Arlington and so do we!


(Updated at 2:55 p.m.) The new Garrett Popcorn Shop opened today at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City — and customers are lining up faster than they can pop the kernels. Some even brought homemade signs to mark the occasion.

Located in the former Johnny Rockets space, near the Metro entrance on the food court level, it’s the Chicago-based company’s 50th location and its first in the D.C. area.

To celebrate today’s opening, Garrett is offering $1 treat bags, $19.49 gallon tins of mixed popcorn and free D.C. tote bags to the first 200 customers (excluding those just buying the $1 treat bag.)

Those specials, and the allure of cheesy, buttery or crispy sweet popcorn from the Windy City, apparently was enough to convince customers to wait in an enormous line that stretched halfway through the food court.

A group at the front of the line insisted that they had been waiting for two hours. Was that worth it?

“Oh yeah, their popcorn is the bomb,” one of the women said.

At the very least, posts on the company’s Facebook page seem to confirm that the line is indeed as long as it looks.

Wrote one devoted popcorn fan: “The line isn’t moving. I’m like the 300th person in line. Did you guys run out of kernels?”


View More Stories