At left, Kevin Abt, and Stephen Dill, right,
of Restaurants to You.com, in their Stoughton office.

Business connects catering clients
to restaurants

SHARON - On Wednesday, two local entrepreneurs coordinated food delivery to 20 Waltham office employees, a group of 50 in Providence and 70 attendees of a surprise 70th birthday party in Acton.

Sharon residents Kevin Abt amd Stephen Dill, who run Restaurants to you.com, coordinated the effort from their basement hub in a Stoughton office park. Abt is chairman and CEO; Dill serves as the Providence partner.

Twenty-one years ago, Abt had an idea; that idea became Takeout Taxi – a trailblazing meal delivery service now operating in more than 200 markets nationwide. Two years ago, he had another idea, what he calls “the culmination of 20 years of experience.”

In 2006, Abt – who sold Takeout Taxi in 1997 – started Restaurants to you.com, a multi-restaurant meal delivery service for corpo-rate and social gatherings.

“That’s how ideas grow,” he said. “They kind of amalgamate themselves.”

“Restaurants’” generally requires 24-hours notice, and typically delivers meals for 10 or more people. The buffet-style catering ser-vice includes more than 100 menus from restaurants in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The menus – and the tools for ordering from them – are available online at restaurantstoyou.com.

“The majority of companies in multi-restaurant delivery focus on bringing individual meals to individual diners,” Abt said.

“Those companies who have attempted to deliver for large groups do a poor job of ‘dressing for success.’ They don’t understand that groups have different needs and so they deliver disappointing results both for customers and for the restaurants they represent.”

“Restaurants to you” started two years ago serving the Metro Boston area. It now delivers meals for large groups south to Provi-dence, north to North Shore communities and west along Rte. 9 to Worcester.

Sales tripled in 2007, from 2006, Abt said. The company is on pace to quadruple 2007 sales this year, he said. Reluctant to divulge specifics, he said this year’s sales will reach “seven figures.”

One significant factor in this growth has been Dill, who Abt brought aboard to plant the company’s flag in the Providence area. The two are friends from way back, having met when both were members of a local business-networking group a decade ago.

Joining together made sense to Abt, 51, and Dill, 53; it enabled them to “leverage each other’s skills,” Abt noted.

“If you think about it, there are fewer and fewer people in corporate organizations whose job it is to [arrange for food],” Dill said. It often falls to someone with no experience or training to arrange a meal for dozens of coworkers.

“It’s our job to make that person shine,” Dill said. They may only provide the number of people and the address, he said. Or they may request Italian, or vegetarian. Ethnic foods aren’t a problem; neither are dietary restrictions, he said.

“We haven’t been stumped yet,” Dill concluded.

Abt showed a month’s calendar submitted by a salesman for a drug company – a significant market for the company. A handful of meetings were listed, along with notes hinting at the types of meetings. One note was “NO BEEF,” another: “BOSS [IS] WITH ME.”

According to Abt, the biggest meal they’ve arranged was for around 400 people. The average meal is for 30 to 50 people.

Staff Writer Jeb Bobseine can be reached at jeb@walpoletimes.com or 508-668-0243, ext. 13. For more Sharon news, visit http://www.wickedlocal.com/sharon.

Article source: Wicked Local