Welcome to the Arena from ICR – Conversations with Today's Innovators & Business Leaders

What if instead of a corporate cafeteria, your employer brought a different local restaurant to your office every day? It’s a simple idea, but the execution is surprisingly complicated. 

Orazio Buzza is the founder and CEO of Fooda, a leading workplace dining platform serving offices, hospitals, distribution centers and other workplaces across the US. Before founding Fooda in 2011, Orazio was part of the founding team at Echo Global Logistics, where he served as president and COO and helped take the company public. 

Today, Orazio walks us through how Fooda went from a single pop-up program at a Chicago office to a national platform, how they rebuilt the company almost from scratch after losing 95% of their business during COVID, and why food has become table stakes for employers trying to attract the best talent. 

Highlights:
  • Echo Global Logistics and the IPO (1:54)
  • The origin of Fooda (4:12)
  • The three-sided marketplace (6:06)
  • The scale of the business today (12:35)
  • City-by-city expansion (13:20)
  • Losing 95% of business in COVID (15:00)
  • Return to office and food as a perk (19:07)
  • Technology and Fooda OS (22:33)
  • Goals for ‘26 into ‘27 (27:20)

Links:
Orazio Buzza LinkedIn
Fooda LinkedIn
Fooda Website
ICR LinkedIn
ICR Twitter
ICR Website

 

Feedback:
If you have questions about the show, or have a topic in mind you’d like discussed in future episodes, email our producer, joe@lowerstreet.co

What is Welcome to the Arena from ICR – Conversations with Today's Innovators & Business Leaders?

In the increasingly crowded and competitive corporate and financial ecosystem, it’s harder than ever for companies to break through the clutter and be heard. The media, investors, agenda-driven influencers, even customers and competitors, are defining your business story on their terms. Therefore, it is imperative that companies take control and proactively drive the conversation with stakeholders in an effort to build & maintain equity value.

In Welcome to the Arena from ICR, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of ICR, Tom Ryan, interviews key business and financial players who influence the fate of public or aspiring public companies in the capital markets. As a former Wall Street Journal ranked sell-side equity analyst and the founder of one of the largest strategic communications firms in the world, Tom understands what it takes to navigate this complex environment.

This is a forum for CEOs, CFOs, institutional investors, sell-side analysts, financial journalists, private equity professionals and other financial community participants to share their stories and give advice in an open and candid conversation.

For more information, visit http://www.icrinc.com