Ask any corporate CFO who manages multiple offices and large, remote sales forces how they manage their spending on meals for corporate events, and you're likely to get a shrug of the shoulders. In an era of micromanagement of nearly every corporate expense line, it's still a challenge for many corporations to know who's spending what on delivered meals.

One web-based corporate catering service sees huge opportunity in the need for control over business meetings and the meals that fuel them. Vmeals (www.vmeals.com), a leading online meal ordering service, offers a single point of real-time information for harried corporate accountants.

"In businesses as varied as pharmaceuticals, financial services and consulting, which rely heavily on catering services for client meetings, spending on food is highly fragmented," said W. Carter Hoerr, chief executive of Vmeals.  "Companies have multiple credit cards in the hands of office administrators and field salespeople. Budgets are a moving target because catering invoices are coming from many sources, making invoicing a nightmare and monthly expense reporting late and unreliable.

"Our technology gives our corporate customers a level of budget control that has not been available to corporations before," said Hoerr. "That includes meals ordered in multiple cities by multiple offices from multiple restaurants. It includes meals paid by either invoice or credit card. Finally, our technology provides critical information about each meal order, including date, time, delivery location, buyer, number of attendees, total cost, and more."

The current economic downturn has increased demand for technology to control meal expenses. Even as spending on delivered meals slumped across some customer segments in 2009, Vmeals increased its investment in technology, marketing, and customer service to meet the demand.  "We felt that it was critical to continue investing in our brand and web services," says Hoerr. "As the economy strengthens, we are in a strong position to provide our customers with expanded choices, better service and even more spending controls."

Vmeals customers in more than 30 metropolitan East Coast and Midwest markets have an easy-to-use catering service that allows them to customize menus and business meal services with a variety of quality local and national restaurants and food services.  Vmeals customers can place a single group order or allow meeting participants to order from a selected menu.

"The advantage to our service is that a meeting planner can visit the Vmeals site and see menus and pricing information for a variety of local restaurants at once, rather than having to spend time contacting each one," Hoerr said.  "It's a convenient service that adds flexibility to planning and adds interest to business meal choices."

About Vmeals:

Vmeals, LLC (www.vmeals.com) is an online service for business people who order group meals for meetings and events. The Vmeals website features menus and delivered meals from a wide variety of over 1,400 local restaurants and caterers in 30 U.S. cities. Vmeals customers include Fortune 1000 offices, professional services firms (investment banking, law, accounting, technology, consulting, and training), pharmaceutical sales reps, colleges, non-profits, and medical centers.

The web-based Vmeals system handles all aspects of the delivered meal transaction – marketing, customer acquisition, menu presentation, pricing, order processing, payment, and customer service – except the actual preparation and presentation of the food.

SOURCE Vmeals, LLC

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