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Comment by tansey | Hacker News Reader

I've heard some pretty terrible stories about the vegetarian options offered by ZeroCater. It seems that many times they give the omnivores a full meal and then the vegetarian meal is the same meal without the meat, meaning it contains virtually no protein.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I am sensitive to other people's preferences. Has the situation changed lately?

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I am the lead developer at ZeroCater, was a vegetarian for 3 of the last 4 years, and I can honestly say I that never had access to vegetarian lunch options remotely close to the variety and quality we provide to our clients.

We currently offer 4335 vegetarian options from 190 vendors, ranging from a Quinoa Salad with Green Apple, Crumbled Gorgonzola Blue Cheese, Candied Walnut and Organic Baby Spinach to a Roasted Pepper and Mushroom Calzone or Green Chile Mac & Cheese.

Our most common complaint from vegetarians isn't the lack of options; it's that the omnivores took all of the vegetarian food before they got to it.

Reading the article made me smile. Reading your comment made my day.

Looking forward to trying your service someday. :)

I'm not sure how involved you guys get with the post-delivery processes (i.e. what the companies do with the food after it's delivered), but here's an idea you can communicate to try and solve that: One of the things I asked our lunch caterers to do was to put the vegetarian food at the very end of the lunchline. People tend to pile their plates with the food they see first (I believe Google modified its lunchlines to include healthier food at the start of the line due to this phenomenon [0], which is what gave me the idea) so if the vegetarian food is at the end, the omnivores will have less room on their plate for what they sometimes perceive as side dishes.

It worked. Our vegetarians always have food to eat now (there's even leftovers).

Of course if you don't have an ordered line, just have a vegetarian volunteer run over and horde/separate all the vegetarian food before the others get to it. This is what we do for dinner.

[0] Source: http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/badaily/2013/...

Edit: Added source for the Google article

As a vegetarian fed by ZeroCater, it feels like a lot of the time the thinking goes something like 'we have 20 meat-eaters and 3 vegetarians - let's get 20 lamb/chicken shish kebaps and 3 vegetables ones!' It sucks to have to make a meal out of sides, and it seems like the meals are structured most of the time such that quinoa salad or mac & cheese are perceived as being sides. And I don't think the solution is to tell meat-eaters not to eat vegetables - everyone deserves them. Anyway, I have to be very aggressive about getting to the front of the line for food. Also, sometimes the vegetarian option is just lo mein or a green salad - it rarely meets what I would consider a minimal nutritional standard of ~10-20 grams of protein. I pack protein powder to supplement my lunch. To be fair though, it is tasty!

I'm curious, what's wrong with 20 meat/3 veg for these single-serve meals? Most meat-eaters wouldn't be happy being forced to eat the vegetarian option, that's bound to happen unless you provide more food than necessary. The rest of what you said only applies to a lunch not served in individual portions.

Because people help themselves to food, everyone takes like 1/2 meat and then the first six people take 1/2 veg as well. I agree, for single serving meals like sandwiches that are not easily dividable, it makes sense to only have a few vegetarian ones. But those meals are usually at least 60% not-meat for meat-eaters (bread, rice, veggies, whatever). Basically every other meal is not single serving, and the veggie entrees are seen as just another side. It's usually family style.

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