The HUNGRY Entrepreneur: Jeff Grass’s Adventures in Sales

The first time I met Jeff Grass in person, Will, Asad, and I were leading a training for his team at the national workplace food platform HUNGRY called “Best Practices with the Science and Art of Storytelling. ” It was not HUNGRY’S first Maestro training, but it was my first time at the HUNGRY headquarters in DC. The workspace is open and airy, its offices defined by windows, not walls. The main room had a buffet going for lunch from a HUNGRY Chef, and coffee and snacks set up in an alcove nearby. In other words, they practice what they preach.

What HUNGRY offers its clients is a food experience that’s different from “Let’s order pizza or Panera again.” The company’s goal is to work with local chefs and restaurants in each of their operating cities to prepare meals that feel like experiences for office teams. HUNGRY representatives help clients curate menus that offer their workers variety. They pride themselves on making sure everyone on the team has something to eat, accounting for any dietary restrictions with a large array of options. They have more than 1,500 food partners across 19 cities throughout North America.

The company resides in both the culinary and tech spaces. When I asked Jeff what he wishes people knew about him and HUNGRY, he said, “Sometimes we get, ‘Oh, you’re a catering company,’…but we’re much different and so much more than a traditional caterer. Or you get, ‘Oh, you’re a tech company,’ and you’re like, “Yes, but there’s more to the story, like our ethos of ‘Obsessive Hospitality’.” HUNGRY’S mission is vaster: “to deliver happiness and well-being to the workplace.”

THINGS CHANGE

At first, for Jeff, the dream was McKinsey. “I had a pretty clear plan that I wanted to become a strategy consultant and work at the top strategy firm in the world—McKinsey,” he told me, “and so the path to do that was to go to a top business school, and I was lucky enough to get into Wharton…” The next step seemed to fall into place, as well. Jeff interned at McKinsey’s Atlanta office the summer after his first year. He and his good friend from business school both received and accepted offers to work for the firm upon graduation. But Jeff and this same friend of his had also had an idea for a business called PayMyBills.com, an early player in the online bill-payment and presentment space during the first dot com boom. During their second year of business school, that tempted them even more than McKinsey, so they backed out of their jobs at McKinsey and instead became entrepreneurs. Three companies and three exits later, Jeff was the CEO of HUNGRY.

This isn’t exactly where he always saw himself. “I had never planned on becoming an entrepreneur. It wasn’t cool in my family. My dad worked for the federal government for 40 years. My mom was a social worker. So the idea of starting and owning a business was not really something I thought about growing up.” That said, there were things about his personality that he now retrospectively identifies as entrepreneurial in spirit. He created small businesses with friends (like lawnmowing). At Travelers Group, the first company he worked for out of college, he started a technology bonding option for large tech businesses that were bidding on state and local projects.

BACK TO THE BASICS

Sometimes, entrepreneurship is thought of as a kind of exotic animal that transcends other types of business. “Being an entrepreneur is a lot about sales,” said Jeff. “It’s not just developing an idea, but convincing others your idea is a good one—even before it’s fully formed and before you have any proof points at all. And so you’re selling your vision and just a concept initially. Fundraising is very much a sales process. It’s going through a process of effectively articulating your value proposition to potential investors to get them to invest in your business…You may not think of it as sales, but as an entrepreneur, you definitely have to be good at selling to be effective.”

Once you do sell your idea, being the right kind of leader gets very important very quickly. For Jeff, being a good listener is primary. “You need to understand your team, understand the challenges they’re facing.  In sales, far too often, salespeople talk first and don’t listen well. We preach a lot, ‘If you’re talking more than half the time, you’re talking way too much.’”

This idea tracks with Jeff’s development as a sales leader. “I have become more people-centered over time. At my first company, [I never] thought much about culture or environment, while at HUNGRY we try to be very intentional around culture, environment and the values that we live by. It makes it easier from a management perspective, because you’re not dealing with every issue or challenge as a one-off. We simply have nine core values, and you need to be aligned with them.  It helps create clarity for all.”

This also ties to what HUNGRY itself boasts: More important than what we are, says their website, is who we are. The who they’re talking about are their chefs, community, clients, and team. The company tries to have a positive impact (as does Jeff in his personal life) while building a successful business.

Although Jeff has changed as a leader, and although his days—and lunch plans—look a little different than they might have at McKinsey, the throughline of Jeff’s ambition remains. You don’t have to look further than the HUNGRY website in a section called Our secret plan to find this: In the coming months and years, you’ll see HUNGRY launch operations in every major city in the country…

You can learn more about Jeff here. Be sure to congratulate him while you’re there!