ScratchDC Takes Off, Makes Georgetown a Regular Route

Spinach, black beans, goat cheese, Swiss chard and brown rice. All carefully measured and neatly packaged before being loaded in the back of a small delivery truck. That's what a team of five people were doing in the kitchen of a Maryland bar during it's closed, daytime hours. 

The kitchen makes a home base for ScratchDC, a small startup company that delivers preprepared, uncooked meals throughout the city.

The ingredients measured out in that kitchen, made up the company's vegetarian rollup, "one of our favorite vegetarian meals," said Ryan Hansan, the company's founder. 

Each day, ScratchDC offers a new meal for two, using mostly organic, locally sourced ingredients. This week, that includes spinach farfalle with cauliflower and kale, and an entire Thanksgiving meal, which actually serves four.

All of the recipes used are taken from friends, family and customers; tell them on Facebook about a meal you would like to eat and you just might get it, Hansan said. 

Hansan started the company a little more than a year ago with a vision to give people exactly what they need to make a single meal without wasting a lot of ingredients, time and money, he said.

"I was frustrated with cooking great meals," Hansan said. "You have to find a recipe, go to the grocery store, and you always buy more than you need. In an ideal world, you would use all the ingredients up, but nobody has time for that, and nobody wants to eat the same thing every day." 

Hansan quickly went from frustrated with prepping for his own cooking projects to worrying about prep for his customers' meals. 

"Wherever people want it, they can get it," Hansan said. 

That includes anywhere in Georgetown, although when the company first launched, it avoided the area because of traffic. In the beginning, "it was just me delivering," Hansan said. Now, there are more drivers and a couple customers in Georgetown who have food delivered every day. 

And although they've "just been winging it," Hansan said, the team of eight employees is already moving to a bigger space of its own and has been talking to investors about expanding to other cities. In the near future, Hansan plans to hire more drivers to cover more area in D.C., Virginia and Maryland (psst... they're hiring). 

"In the beginning, I was just like, 'let's make meal kits and deliver them to people,'" Hansan said. "We're all still kind of Jacks of all trades." 

But the team is learning everyday, and the business model becomes more clear. Still, the point is to be "as convenient as possible" always, he said. 

The company also has a charitable side. It donates a meal to two families per week through So Others Might Eat, which provides daily meals to homeless people in Washington, D.C.

And leading up to Thanksgiving, ScratchDC is collecting canned food from its customers to donate to D.C. Central Kitchen-- soon-to-be ScratchDC's new neighbor. 

Learn more about ScratchDC, take a look at next weeks meals or place an order at scratchdc.com.