Stephen Tse works long hours at a startup. And that means no stopping for dinner. A few weeks ago, he would've eaten pizza, but now he will eat something that's actually healthy.
"Nothing oily or overcooked or anything like that," said Tse.
Tse shares an office with Sprig, a dinner-on-demand food service. And he's one of their first customers. Sprig is an iPhone app where you push a button and a healthy meal shows up, usually within 20 minutes.
The magic doesn't start when you push the button. It actually started hours earlier when they took a vacuum sealed bag of ingredients and put them into a steaming hot bath of water. In order to change the way your food gets to you, Sprig had to change the way they cook it.
Nate Keller is Sprig's executive chef. He learned to do the concept when he was executive chef at Google.
"Cook for incredibly large amounts of people and yet keep the quality the same that you would find in a restaurant," said Keller.
Sprig cooks almost everything sous vide - French for under vacuum pressure.
It keeps all the moisture and flavor locked in so they don't have to slather it with sauce. They cook it almost all the way.
"And then we'll finish it on the stove to give it that nice crispy crust," said Keller.
And the last bit of cooking happens right when you order, meaning it's hot, fresh and out the door in a few minutes.
"We just don't use a lot of extra butter. We make sure that we, you know, don't laden our food with salt and sugar," said Sprig CEO and Co-Founder Gagan Biyani.
Biyani says he founded Sprig to solve a problem.
"I come home from work, I'm tired. I don't particularly always have time to cook and I wanted a healthier option," he said.
But never mind the local, seasonal produce and the creative menus, Biyani's most proud of the price: $10 per meal plus a $2 delivery charge.
Right now, it's only in San Francisco, east of Golden Gate Park and only Monday through Thursday, 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
