Veronica Weber
Veronica Weber
ed and used to help the customer have a seamless and happy meal experience whenever they want,” she said. She contrasts that with calling for take-out where you have to repeat your order every time. Gobble’s model appears to be paying off. “We heard from our customers that they love the homecooked food on Gobble. That’s why we started, but it’s wonderful to hear. They order multiple times per week because of the way the food is cooked, when the ingredients are purchased, the quantity they’re cooked in,” she said. Gobble has meals left over at the end of the day, but that doesn’t appear to concern Garg. “Olive Garden aims to have 9 percent waste every day. ... In the food world, the rule is, you should have leftover meals. If not, you have under-prepared for demand. The goal is not to sell out, but figure out how many meals you’d like left over,” she said. Leftover meals are donated to a local homeless shelter, she added. Although the company isn’t breaking even yet, Garg says that “every day we’re selling more meals.” For now, she’s focusing on customer service and recruiting new chefs, constantly increasing the variety of food offerings. The chefs set the entree prices. So far, she has recruited more than 40 chefs, who present their proposed dishes at chef tastings — now at the California Avenue office rather than her home. Most work part-time, creating their specialties in nearby commercial kitchens, delivering to hubs where drivers then drop them off to customers. Among them is Chef Mara, whose real name is Mara Lisa Ferraro. The mother of two lives in Burlingame but cooks in a commercial kitchen in Redwood City two days a week. Ferraro grew up with Italian family cooking. “My grandmother was an avid cook; she cooked for family and friends. As a little girl, I watched my mom and grand-
mother cook,” she said. She augmented her love of cooking with travel to Italy, visiting different regions and checking out how they prepared different styles of Italian food. Now she prepares 30 to 40 meals a week, shopping and cooking on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Among her favorite dishes is chicken parmesan, two large chicken breasts in a tomato sauce, served with peas and a slice of sourdough to sop up the sauce. Friends told her they were looking for home-cooked meals, but not necessarily from restaurants where they are cooked in mass quantities. Gobble chefs offer small-batch cooking. “It loses a little flavor in larger quantities,” she said, noting that there’s more control. “We’re putting a little more TLC into our food.” Ferraro bakes her dishes, then packages them in airtight, microwaveable containers (with clear heating instructions), then drops them off at her California Avenue hub. Besides the cooking, what she loves is setting her own hours, deciding how many meals she wants to make each day. It’s not exactly earning a living, but “for me, it’s extra spending money. You have to really do it every day to make it work financially. Not everyone is looking for that,” she said. “For me, right now, I have a 6-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter. It’s a perfect balance. I wanted to get back to work,” she added. “A lot of people don’t have time to cook, or their kids’ schedule — they run around and come home at 5:30. It’s wonderful to have healthy choices. “When I used to travel and worked in sales, I would come home and not want to eat in another restaurant for two weeks,” she said. N Palo Alto Weekly Associate Editor Carol Blitzer can be emailed at cblitzer@paweekly. com.
Above: Mara Ferraro’s chicken Milanese with bowtie pasta and pesto with baby carrots was recently approved as a Gobble offering. Left: Her eggplant and spinach parmigiana is served with mixed greens and bread.
MAY 1, 2012 | PALO ALTO, CA
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