April 3, 2017

Meet Emanuele Ponzo of CRATEFUL in Downtown Los Angeles

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Emanuele Ponzo.

Emanuele, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was a professional soccer player until 10 years ago, after a bad injury on my back, I decided to found the first company in Rome Italy with my brother Alessandro in the legal firm department (I studied law in Italy) We were in success in short time and we developed more business in Real Estate and in event industry as well. While we were growing, we decided to expand our business in Malta. In 2012, I started to be a consultant of important Companies in Europe in the food Industry. I developed the marketing strategy, acquisition clientele and sales as well. I achieved my goals to bring in success to 4 companies and started to plan to come in LA with my lovely wife Olga in 2014.

I moved to Los Angeles with only one goal: to start a business and build something unique. I am a born leader, and that allows me to create and manage very successful businesses. It was not easy to develop what Crateful is today, especially due to the fact that Los Angeles was such a new place for me and I did not know anything about it, not even the language. When I arrived in LA, I started immediately with my wife, how we can open something very nice here in this market. We met Andre and his wife Angela in elevator and we discovered we were living in the same floor.

As I mentioned I am a Leader, I know how I have to motivate my Team to work well, I am very good sales person. My wife is creative and she was born in Moscow and then moved to Rome so she has also the experience in different countries and culture. Andre with amazing experience, great knowledge in operation and web development. His wife is very meticulous and knows very well the food industry because she owned with her aunt a culinary school.

We developed Crateful to mix all our experiences and we decided to launch the same time two sectors: Meal delivery service with famous Chef and celebrity nutritionist and luxury Catering. Our clientele is Ferrari, Dom Perignon, Ten Thousand, Kennedy Wilson, Hublot, Bulgari, Etro many galleries, and very important Private clients. We started as friends and family and then we acquired important investors and now we are growing a lot and we are ready for an important Venture Capital.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I think there are not business with issues and we met a lot in this on the first 14 months. We are foreigners, first big problem different language, culture, I did not know people, I did not rule LA. Staff, hire and fire quickly, develop network is not easy, sell product for a new company is not easy. Still now when you are growing a lot there are different issues but are better than wish to have more business!!!

Please tell us about CRATEFUL.
We have two sectors that are very complementary to each other. Meal delivery service: Different plans from the Chef (pescatarian option), vegetarian, Paleo, Fit, gluten free, dairy free).

We are the only company in LA gives the opportunity to choose when client wants to receive meals. For example, two times a week, stop for a month, and start again so very customized.

We have the opportunity to offer small, medium and large. We delivery daily, nice coolers and packaging. Food is healthy and tastes good as well. We are affordable.

The other part of the company is Catering. We do intimate seated dinner 15 to 100 people to buffet style event for 500/800 and amazing and cool tray pass events.

We are proud of our clientele and for the fact our client is recurring.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
More fund raising and better negotiations with suppliers.

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