Lunchbox is naming James Walker CEO, arguing that the longtime industry executive will be better able to help the online ordering company expand its reach, the company announced Monday.
Walker will take over as CEO from Nabeel Alamgir, Lunchbox’s founder and CEO, who will become executive chairman.
The CEO move comes as Lunchbox is shifting gears on its growth. Company executives told Restaurant Business that they’ve been added as the off-premises ordering partner for Shift4 Payments, which will provide an investment in Lunchbox.
Terms of the funding deal were not disclosed. “I think we can safely say that it’s a significant investment in the future of Lunchbox,” Walker said. The funding is “certainly helpful,” and will help fuel investments in AI and other technology, but Walker said the bigger deal is the partnership with Shift4.
“It’s being aligned and truly partnering with this best-in-class global organization that’s going to open more doors for us and allow us to synthesize our go-to-market strategy,” Walker said.
Alamgir was raised in Bangladesh and moved to New York City as a teenager. He started Lunchbox in 2019. The company enables restaurant chains to create online ordering and marketing systems. It has grown in the years since as digital orders have become more important to global consumers.
Walker has worked with a number of restaurant chains over the years, including Cinnabon, Nathan’s Famous, Subway and Frisch’s. He’s been a member of the Lunchbox board for a year.
Alamgir acknowledged that it’s tough to hand over the CEO job to someone else. “It’s really hard for a founder to say I shouldn’t be the CEO anymore,” he said. “That’s really hard. That’s emotional. That’s giving up control. But what’s more important is getting this right, and if that means I need to step back to a different role, let’s do that right.”
But he has also worked to get Walker into the CEO job for a year. Alamgir believes Walker will be good for Lunchbox’s expansion. Walker has extensive connections in the restaurant business around the world and could help expand the company’s reach.
“James has brought 2,000 doors to meet us between 15 brands in the last 10 days,” Alamgir said. “That would take me two quarters, maybe. James has such a great understanding of not only the enterprise, but our customers, their food.”
“His job is customer-facing, external facing,” Alamgir added. “My job is internal facing. My job is to focus on the technology that needs to be successful. His job is to say hello to all our current partners, hello to all our new partners.”
The Shift4 partnership gives Lunchbox “more stability, credibility,” Alamgir said, while Lunchbox can give the point-of-sale company more insight into online ordering. “We want this incredible, large organization to give us more validity,” Alamgir said.
That could also fund Lunchbox’s AI efforts. The company is building and testing more AI capabilities, including a conversational AI tool for phone-in orders, so AI picks up the phone rather than one of the company’s call centers in the Philippines, Bangladesh and Ecuador. “We want to replace some of that with AI,” Alamgir said.
Lunchbox is also working on an AI suggestion tool, which uses the data it has on customers’ ordering patterns to suggest items they like, such as vegan items if they’re meatless or spicy food if they prefer a bit of a kick. The company is also working on a tool to help corporate staff source products when the need arises.
“We’re not just focused on AI because it’s shiny,” Alamgir said. The company is instead focused on AI tools “that solve real problems for restaurants, and we want to build on that.”
UPDATE: This story has been updated to correct that Lunchbox was started in 2019.
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