“Transactional, mediocre food piled onto a conference table with little thought to quality, waste or the experience” — that’s what Jess Legge encountered whenever she experienced office lunches.
Legge and her coworker at the time, Kimberly Lexow, grew tired of these lackluster midday meals, so they set out to find a better solution together.
And hence, Sifted was born. According to Legge, she and Lexow founded the company with the aim to build food programs that reflect the culture and values of the people they serve. In addition to offering high-quality, chef-led menus, the company also provides organizations insights into employees’ meal preferences, attendance patterns, dietary needs and waste measurements.
Since its inception in 2015, Sifted has grown its national footprint and currently operates across seven U.S. markets. Legge shared that the company has built national culinary, operations and analytics teams that support distributed offices with a consistent, localized experience, yet the team has plans to stretch its influence even further.
“In the years ahead, we’re expanding to new cities and deepening our reporting, especially around food waste and carbon impact, so clients can see, in hard numbers, how their food program supports people and the planet,” she said.
As Sifted gears up for greater growth, it’s also embracing its identity as a LGBTQIA+-run business, leaning into its mission of helping all employees and customers feel seen and valued.
“That perspective runs through everything, from our hiring practices to the way we build inclusive menus,” Legge said.
Below, Legge shares more about Sifted’s mission and impact, the challenges her team has overcome and what the future has in store for the company.
About Sifted
Sifted offers scalable, workplace dining experiences without the need for an in-office kitchen. The company’s platform enables workplaces to offer their employees access to more than 300 global menus while allowing them to measure the success and impact of their in-office dining program.
Describe the mission of your company, Sifted. What problem were you trying to solve when you founded the company, and why was it important to you personally?
We started Sifted to bring intention and consistency to how companies feed their teams. At the time, we worked at a tech company that often brought in food; office meals were mostly transactional, mediocre food piled on a conference table with little thought to quality, waste, or the experience. We knew it could be different.
Sifted builds food programs that reflect the culture and values of the people we serve. We combine chef-led menus with a data layer that measures what people love, attendance patterns, dietary needs and waste, so every week’s service gets smarter — better food, fewer leftovers and an experience that actually brings people together.
What was the biggest obstacle in getting your business off the ground? How did you overcome it?
In reflecting over our 10 years, it’s hard to know which obstacle was the biggest. Early on, it was challenging to convince companies that food programs could be managed differently and that it didn’t have to be transactional, chaotic or wasteful. We were asking companies to broaden their view of the impact of regularly bringing teams together over food. This was a culture builder that needed to be planned, budgeted and tightly tied to company objectives.
As the company grew and the world changed, so did the scope of our challenges. Five years in, with hundreds of staff and kitchens across the country, everything changed with the pandemic. Within one week, all of our clients closed their offices. Not only did we have to shut down kitchens but we had to build other services that were relevant to pandemic times to ensure we remained an employee engagement partner to distributed teams. Then, as offices reopened, we relaunched Sifted on-site food programs, and the business has grown faster than ever before.
Share an anecdote that highlights the impact of your service.
Even as we’ve scaled, I still read the weekly staff surveys from every partner site. This note captured what we aim to do:
“I am Muslim & do not eat bacon but really wanted to try the Caesar parm sandwich. Sifted, being amazing as they are, made me a Caesar parm with no bacon! OMG THANK YOU for being so amazing and caring! Sifted always goes above and beyond. Every staff member greets me by name daily and is always so kind — truly a stellar team, 10/10 all around!”
That’s the impact we’re after: to feel like a natural extension of our partners’ teams and to care for the whole person at work. We do it by acknowledging differences, celebrating them through dynamic, inclusive menus, and pairing that with the operational rigor — names remembered, details honored and data that helps us improve week over week.
What growth has Sifted experienced since its inception? What growth is on the horizon?
Sifted began in a single kitchen in 2015 and now operates across seven U.S. markets, serving thousands of meals daily. We’ve built national culinary, operations and analytics teams that support distributed offices with a consistent, localized experience. In the years ahead, we’re expanding to new cities and deepening our reporting, especially around food waste and carbon impact, so clients can see, in hard numbers, how their food program supports people and the planet. Sifted’s growth has been propelled by our partners who often come to us and ask us to open up new cities to further support global parity for their food programs.
“Sifted’s growth has been propelled by our partners who often come to us and ask us to open up new cities to further support global parity for their food programs.”
Sifted is a proud LGBTQIA+-run business. How does this impact your company’s mission and impact?
Our experience as queer founders shapes how we lead and how we build culture. It’s made us intentional about creating workplaces, both our own and our clients’, where everyone feels seen and valued. That perspective runs through everything, from our hiring practices to the way we build inclusive menus.
