Hadi Rashid

Co-founder, Lunchbox

Born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, Hadi made a name for himself at his elementary school where he sold his mother’s chicken sandwiches for 30 rupees each. After inevitably getting caught, his family got him a job at a local butcher shop where Hadi eventually saved up enough for a playstation 1 at age 12 only to leave it behind the year after in the move to Queens, New York.

After completing high school, he took a job at a restaurant in New York City where Hadi learned how to operate a restaurant, flipping burgers, mopping floors and delivering food occasionally, doing every job—something that HQ valued and helped him work his way up to a District Manager.

Inspired by the founders of Bareburger, Hadi took a shot at startups. Two bad ideas later the team disbanded but would eventually come back when LevelUp sold to Grubhub for $390M, leaving restaurants without a champion against the “Grubhubs”.

Lunchbox needed cash so the founding team could quit their day jobs, Hadi spent his savings on an options call on the popular stock trading app – Robinhood. Salesforce helped Hadi keep his new Model 3 and the cash to make a run at Lunchbox with friends.

Lunchbox got seed-funded by 645 ventures and Primary ventures on January of 2020. Along with it’s online ordering offering, which saved restaurants $21M since the company’s inception, they launched helpmainstreet.com which helped restaurants sell gift cards to prospective guests giving them a cash infusion during the pandemic.

The company has now grown to 233 employees in the U.S. and Canada, innovating guest platforms and marketing systems for restaurants to sell better to their guests.