案例库 · 战略与领导 · 战略决策 · 2013–2017
这条还没译成中文，下面是英文原文。
Sprig raised $57M to cook and deliver dinner — it was losing $850K a month before it quit
Sprig owned its kitchens and delivery fleet to control quality. That also meant it absorbed every cost, and it was losing $850,000 a month by the end.
Sprig · 2017-05-26
怎么回事
Sprig launched in San Francisco in November 2013, founded by Gagan Biyani, chef Nate Keller and Bryan Marks, cooking meals in its own central kitchen and delivering them with its own drivers rather than partnering with restaurants or a marketplace of couriers. It raised a $10 million Series A in 2014 led by Greylock Partners, then a $45 million Series B in April 2015 led by Social Capital and Greylock at a roughly $110 million valuation — around $57 million total — and expanded from San Francisco into the wider Bay Area and Chicago.
Owning the entire chain, from ingredient sourcing to the last-mile delivery, meant Sprig carried every cost of production and logistics itself, with no restaurant partner or gig-driver network to absorb any of it. Chicago operations were paused in July 2016. Even after retreating to San Francisco alone, the company was reportedly losing about $850,000 a month. In its final weeks it tried a walk-in café at its headquarters and started delivering through Caviar — moves press coverage read as signs of a company running out of options, not recovering.
Sprig shut down on May 26, 2017, laying off roughly 200 employees with two months' severance. CEO Gagan Biyani wrote in the shutdown announcement that 'the complexity of owning meal production through delivery at scale was a challenge.' It closed the same year as comparable owned-kitchen delivery startups Maple and SpoonRocket, while Munchery, running a similar model, was separately reported to be losing even more.
为什么会这样
- Vertical integration eliminated partner margins but also eliminated any partner absorbing cost risk — Sprig alone carried the full expense of kitchens, cooks and drivers.
- Retreating to a single city reduced total losses but did not fix the underlying per-order economics, which stayed underwater even at smaller scale.
- Late pivots to a walk-in café and third-party delivery through Caviar came only after the core model had already failed to reach profitability, too late to change the trajectory.
- Competing against asset-light delivery platforms like Uber Eats, which carried none of Sprig's kitchen or fleet overhead, meant Sprig's cost structure was never going to match theirs.
教训
Owning the whole chain from kitchen to doorstep means owning every dollar of loss along it. Sprig controlled everything, and had nothing to spread the cost onto once that stopped working.
后来呢
Sprig's roughly 200 remaining employees received two months' severance. The founders' vertically integrated bet did not survive contact with asset-light competitors like Uber Eats, and the owned-kitchen delivery category it belonged to — alongside Maple, SpoonRocket and Munchery — largely disappeared within a few years of Sprig's shutdown.
资料来源
- TechCrunch — On-demand food startup Sprig is shutting down today (May 26 2017)
- TechCrunch — On-Demand Food Delivery Service Sprig Has Raised $45 Million (Apr 15 2015)
- Eater SF — Food Delivery Startup Sprig Shutting Down Immediately (May 26 2017)
- SFist — Sprig Shuts Down Its Once Popular Food Delivery App: 200 employees, two months' severance
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