While Steven Hsiao and Anson Tsui were in their senior year of college at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009, they decided to start a delivery service for Vietnamese and Mexican food. They sourced fresh ingredients, prepared the meals and delivered it themselves to other students.

Neither Hsiao nor Tsui had much of a food background; they studied sociology and bioengineering, respectively. But looking at their peers in school, they saw an opportunity for a late-night delivery service.

"It was through that experience that we really understood how inefficient traditional delivery services are," Hsiao told Mashable. With that in mind, they decided to start a different kind of food business after college, one that would provide healthy meals to customers with virtually no wait time.

The startup, called SpoonRocket, launched in part of San Francisco just under a year ago, promising to deliver locally sourced lunch meals to customers in 10 minutes or less for $8, with no delivery fee tacked on. The catch is that SpoonRocket only offers two meal choices at a time — one vegetarian and one not.

On Thursday, SpoonRocket announced that it had raising an $11 million Series A round led by Foundation Capital, bringing the startup's total to more than $13 million. It is also expanding into all of the San Francisco area and is planning to introduce dinner options soon.

The plan is to use the additional funding to bring on more staff and chefs — doubling the number of employees to more than 100 by the end of this year — and expand into Los Angeles or Seattle in the coming months.

The founders had initially set out to raise $8 million to $10 million, but the funding round comes at a time when investor interest in the food space is running high.

Munchery, a startup that offers same-day delivery for meals, recently raised $28 million. Blue Apron, a service that provides recipes and fresh ingredients for meals, recently raised $50 million. And Sprig, a similar service to SpoonRocket, recently raised $10 million.

One investor in the food startup space previously told Mashable that the optimism here is based on the belief that food is inherently social and these startups enjoy a growth curve similar to that of Uber. Hsiao also alluded to Uber during the course of our interview.

"Uber is the taxi button on your phone," he said. "We are the food button on your phone." "Uber is the taxi button on your phone," he said. "We are the food button on your phone."

Of course, all the funding being pumped into the space means SpoonRocket has plenty of competition to achieve that goal. For now, the startup is betting that speed and price can help it stand out, though it's unclear if either or both will be sustainable as it expands into new cities.

Source: Mashable