BurgerBox.com
Chuck Solari was a lawyer and real estate developer who had spent years running a Boston restaurant on the side. Boston Burger Company opened in 2009 and grew into three locations with about $5.5 million in 2015 revenue. The restaurants, however, could only serve so many seats in so many hours. Many of the business's customers were tourists and college students who left Boston and kept asking for the burgers back home. That demand, along with a booming meal kit industry, pointed toward a product that could ship beyond Boston.
Chuck began researching the idea around February 2016. The team built the processes and systems to package and ship the kits, using the burgers it was already making in-house. That kept upfront costs low, since the team did not have to finance new food production. Shipping required testing. Dry ice did not suit items that did not need freezing, so the company used gel packs in insulated liners and spent months working with its supplier to get the packaging right. Chuck described the team as having "the science down" by launch.
The source does not describe the first purchases directly. Orders came in through the website, and the company sold about 100 kits in its first month and about 150 in its second. Chuck offered two options: a monthly box with a new, unusual burger each month, and individual kits such as the Hot Mess and Mac Attack burgers. The Mac Attack and Hot Mess had already been praised by Guy Fieri and Rachael Ray, which gave the kits a built-in story.
The main advantage was that the product already existed. Chuck said the company was "selling stuff that we're already doing," so it did not have to front much money to make the kits. Chuck also used Hotjar to see what visitors did on the site, which helped the team find ways to keep people on the site longer and move them between pages. Early on, the team was still learning "what works, what doesn't work." The source does not describe any major problems beyond that.
About three months after launch, Chuck said the kits were heading toward roughly 400 orders in a month. At an average of about $40 per kit, the host estimated monthly revenue at about $16,000. Chuck was still expanding BurgerBox.com while running the restaurants.
- •Demand came from existing restaurant customers who had already asked for the product, so the first buyers were pre-qualified and the marketing cost was low.
- •Using burgers the restaurant already made meant the kits required little new production capital, which is why the business could start quickly and cheaply.
- •Built-in celebrity endorsements from Guy Fieri and Rachael Ray gave individual kits a credibility story that a new meal kit brand would not have had.
- •Monthly subscription boxes with a new burger each month gave customers a reason to return, which supports recurring revenue.
- •Strong unit economics from the restaurant, where food costs stayed under 30% of revenue, suggested the kit margins could support shipping costs.
- 1.Start with the product you already sell in a physical location, and identify customers who already ask for it in other places.
- 2.Test your packaging and shipping for several months before launch, and pick cooling methods that fit each product's actual storage needs.
- 3.Offer both a recurring subscription (such as a monthly box with a new item) and one-off purchases, so you can capture both loyal and occasional buyers.
- 4.Use the endorsements and press you already have to frame each product, and track on-site behavior with a tool such as Hotjar to improve page flow.
- 5.Track weekly order counts from launch and compare them with projected volume, as Chuck did when tracking the 100, 150, and 400 order months.
Similar Companies
Zoom
$12.0M/moZoom is a freemium SaaS video conferencing platform founded by Eric Yuan in July 2011 after he left Cisco to build a next-generation collaboration solution. The company has grown to 850,000+ paying customers across individual, SMB, and enterprise segments, generating over $12M in monthly recurring revenue with approximately 100% year-over-year growth. Rather than focusing on customer stickiness or aggressive growth targets, Zoom emphasizes customer happiness and organic word-of-mouth acquisition, which has proven highly effective in driving viral adoption.
Plunge
$10.0M/moPlunge is a hardware company that manufactures and sells at-home cold plunge devices. Founded in 2020 by Ryan Duey and Michael after their brick-and-mortar float therapy and sauna businesses were impacted by COVID, the company grew from $270k in first-year revenue to $120M+ ARR in four years. Their success is driven by influencer gifting, organic word-of-mouth, and highly efficient paid advertising (7-10x ROAS on Facebook and Google).
G2
$5.0M/moG2 is a leading business software review website and marketplace founded in 2012 by Godard Abel. The company has scaled to over 500 employees and raised $257 million in capital, achieving unicorn status at a $1.1 billion valuation. G2 generates over $5 million in MRR today and targets $100 million in ARR next year through its core G2 Marketing Solutions for vendors, plus complementary products like G2 Track (SaaS spend management) and G2 Deals (marketplace procurement).
Active Campaign
$4.2M/moActive Campaign started in 2003 as an on-premise email marketing solution built by Jason Vanderboom to fund his fine arts degree. After 10 years and 8 employees generating a couple million in revenue, he transitioned to a SaaS model starting at $9/month. The company now has over 60,000 customers generating over $50 million annually and employs 330 people, growing primarily through organic adoption, partnerships, and focus on the SMB market despite pressure to move upmarket.
NutriSense
$3.3M/moNutriSense is a direct-to-consumer metabolic health platform that pairs continuous glucose monitoring devices with proprietary software analytics and dietitian coaching. Launched in September 2019 with pre-sales in keto and Oura Ring Facebook groups, the company grew from under $1M MRR a year ago to $3.3M MRR today (3x growth), with 15,000-16,000 active paying customers and 170 employees. The business has raised $32M in funding across multiple rounds since a $250K seed in early 2020.