Onvo foodservice chief says lunch buyers want fast, two-platform food at a price they can judge

Benjamin Lucky, senior director of foodservice for Onvo, says the chain is building its lunch menu around guests who want food fast and convenient, delivered in two platforms, and who walk in already knowing what value should cost. Onvo runs more than 40 stores across Pennsylvania and New York.

The lunch daypart is the opening a lot of operators have been circling. It is also where a weak program fails. Today's lunch customer is pickier about quality and freshness than the gas-station-hot-dog crowd ever was, and a reheated tray is not going to move them off the drive-thru down the street.

The two platforms

Lucky's framing matters because it tells you where the capital goes. Two platforms means you are running made-to-order and grab-and-go side by side, not picking one. That means a kitchen build and the labor to run it, with a cold case added for the grab-and-go side. It is a real decision for a 40-store operator deciding how much foodservice to put behind the register.

Fast and convenient is table stakes, so that alone will not set Onvo apart. Convenience stores are already fast. What Lucky is pointing at is quality delivered at that speed, which is the harder trick and the one that keeps a lunch guest coming back instead of treating the store as a last resort.

Value they can price

The sharpest line in the interview is that guests know what value is. They already know what lunch costs at the fast-food place and the sandwich shop, and they walk in with a number in their head. An operator who misreads that number loses the sale and the trip.

For jobbers and single-store operators weighing a foodservice push, that is the part to sit with. Foodservice carries margins the forecourt cannot touch when pump spreads are thin, but only if the program clears the quality bar and holds a price the customer already considers fair. Miss either and the kitchen loses money.

Onvo's footprint gives it room to test across two states and spread the fixed cost of a real program over 40-plus locations. A two-store operator does not get that cushion, which is why the build-versus-buy math looks different depending on how many doors you run.

What to watch

Whether Onvo rolls the two-platform approach across all 40-plus stores or keeps it to higher-traffic sites will show how confident the chain is in the lunch economics. Watch where other regional chains land on made-to-order versus grab-and-go, and whether lunch foodservice margins hold up as food costs move. The operators who get the price-to-quality read right could take real share at midday.