Each year, the Super Bowl is the ultimate test of many restaurants’ catering businesses and the systems powering them. Personally, I’ve seen brands leverage everything from Square, Tock, Resy, and Google Forms to third-party platforms like ezCater in addition to their existing on-demand ordering for takeout and delivery. But what happens when they all collide into each other? Higher-margin customers’ preorders get buried by a surge of lower-margin third-party demand during peak hours, triggering a downward spiral of second-order effects like delivery delays, undercapacitated kitchens, and hangry customers. As I embark on a quest to unlock third and first-party catering revenue for local LA restaurants, I am beginning to see the issues with the way systems are designed coupled with the way consumers are trained that are creating a major strain for operators. Luckily, a team of ex-Alinea and restaurant consultants have identified an opportunity for a restaurant-first, multi-modal catering called FamilyMeal that is also powering a new discovery platform called Disco. This week, HNGRY shares its experience working with third-party marketplaces like ezCater and looks to the future through platforms like FamilyMeal.