Give your staff a lunch subsidy, says YK-based food delivery firm

Quickplate, a homegrown Yellowknife answer to Doordash, says it wants to help the city’s businesses give their employees discounts on meals.

Citing concern at the local cost of living, Quickplate founder Sean Watson told Cabin Radio he believes a lunch benefit – putting company money toward workers’ lunches – “will soon be a standard practice and will serve as a compelling selling point for attracting top talent to your business.”

Watson said his company can make it easy for firms to set aside, say, $50 bi-weekly that gets credited to an employee’s Quickplate account, and which they can then spend on meals through the service.

The idea is part of Quickplate’s broader effort to distinguish itself from established global services like Doordash, Skip and Uber Eats, all of which have now put down roots in Yellowknife (a city that initially resisted them).

“About a year ago, I started doing deliveries and I saw an opportunity where we had various restaurants here who they didn’t necessarily have a dedicated delivery driver. They were offering only pickup to their customers. I thought maybe I could have all these restaurants consolidated under a single umbrella, and then they could use our tech for delivery of their meals,” said Watson earlier this month.

“As a company, we try to think of creative ideas and try our best to provide more benefit to local residents. One thing we’re thinking about is: how can we make the workplace benefit from our services?

“What if we provide a lunch subsidy to employees? We know the cost of living is pretty high here, and we have staff ordering lunch through Quickplate and other platforms daily. Maybe if the employer could subsidize a portion of that amount, that could make it easier for the employees to afford to order meals online.”

So far, Quickplate offers delivery from various restaurants that, like the company itself, are unique to Yellowknife: Bluebell, Sushi North, YK Wood Fired Pizzeria and Coyote’s Family Steakhouse. The downtown B7 convenience store is also listed. Watson says he’s working to add more.

He hopes ideas like the lunch benefit – and a new loyalty plan, Cuisine Connoisseurs – help Quickplate to stand out in a field that’s increasingly crowded. (Uber Eats only just arrived a month or two ago.)

“We’re trying to be different from the competition. We’re providing the same type of service in terms of ordering food and getting it delivered, but we’re trying to add to that,” Watson said.

“We’re brainstorming all the time.”

At the moment, ordering takes place online via the Quickplate website. Watson said a mobile app is on the way.

“We’d love for people to come out and support us, because when they support us, they support the local restaurants due to the better rates that we’re providing to them,” he said.

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