Chef Shuttle, the restaurant meal-delivery service based in Little Rock, has sold to Bite Squad, a restaurant meal-delivery service based in Minneapolis.
Ryan Herget, founder and president of Chef Shuttle until its sale, told Arkansas Business the deal closed a few weeks ago. He declined to reveal a purchase price.
"Bite Squad had reached out to us," Herget said. He called Chef Shuttle, which operates in three metro areas — central Arkansas, northwest Arkansas and Memphis — one of the most successful meal-delivery services in the South.
"That was our goal all along — to position ourselves where we could reap the financial reward when the industry consolidated, and Bite Squad saw an opportunity with Chef Shuttle and took it," Herget said.
Chef Shuttle has 28 employees and more than 200 drivers, he said, and "most everybody will stay employed with Chef Shuttle." Chef Shuttle represents about 450 restaurants.
Herget bought the Chef Shuttle name in 2014 with friends Kyle Crossland and Wes Kirtley. Crossland and Kirtley left the company later that year, Herget said.
Brothers Jason and Stephen LaFrance invested in Chef Shuttle in 2014 and were his primary partners, Herget said.
"It was just time," Herget said of the sale to Bite Squad.
"When I started Chef Shuttle I had two goals I wanted to accomplish," he said. "The first goal was I wanted to create a company that made a difference, that made life easier. And the second was to be able to capitalize off of the growth in the on-demand space and hopefully when consolidation in the industry occurred, to be able to reap the financial reward from that. And the reason we sold is we accomplished both of those goals.
"We've served tens of thousands of customers, hundreds of thousands of orders," Herget said. "We've sold millions of dollars worth of food for our restaurants."
He said he stepped away from the operations of Chef Shuttle after the transaction was finalized and was no longer involved with the company.
Efforts to reach Bite Squad Wednesday were unsuccessful.
According to its website, Bite Squad operates in 16 states.
As for other ventures, Herget said that after he takes a little time off, "I'll be right back to the grind and on to the next one."