"I had so much stress around the delivery, and now that's totally removed."
Introducing Livite !
The business
Who is Livite, and how did the business grow?
Livite is a restaurant in Brookline, now in its ninth year. It started as a juicery run by two founders and lost money for six months before Anthony’s parents took it over — his father from a hospitality career, his mother from dietetics. From there, Livite grew slowly and steadily rather than through any single breakout moment.
Anthony, the current owner, joined Livite full-time about five years ago after a short stint in an office job. Since then, the same single storefront has grown to roughly five times the revenue it did when he started — with no second location and no major expansion, just steady compounding. Livite’s catering program, where Metrobi comes in, is newer still: it didn’t exist in any real form until about a year and a half ago, and remains a deliberately small share of Livite’s overall revenue while the business works toward opening a second store.
📍1644 Beacon St, Brookline, MA
Livite at a glance
Details
Livite
Challenge
Livite needed a more reliable catering delivery partner after DoorDash, Uber Eats, and a single self-managed driver led to missed pickups, poor communication, and no way to know an order had failed until the customer called.
Solution
With Metrobi, Livite gained a vetted pool of drivers, live tracking, and an API-connected workflow — letting Anthony book a driver in about 30 seconds.
Result
Catering revenue grew roughly 5x in 18 months, reaching about $20,000/month, while delivery complaints dropped to near zero and Anthony no longer needs to track deliveries himself. Over Livite’s five months with Metrobi, the platform has completed 230 dropoffs across 115 routes, with a 100% completion rate and zero returns.
The Challenge
Why did Livite's catering deliveries keep failing?
Livite’s catering orders most often went wrong at the delivery step: drivers on DoorDash and Uber Eats would pick up other orders mid-route, skip contacting the customer, or drop food at the wrong office — leaving Anthony fielding calls from clients asking where their lunch was, fifteen minutes before a meeting.
Before that, Livite ran catering through marketplaces like EasyCater and Forkable, which took a 20% cut of every order and wouldn’t let Livite adjust its own prices — a hard trade-off on a restaurant’s already thin margins.
Livite’s next attempt was a single trusted driver, coordinated by text and a shared Google Sheet. It worked at first, but it didn’t scale: there was no backup if that driver was unavailable, no real tracking, and no way for Livite to know an order had fallen through until the customer called the store directly.
The solution
How does Livite book catering deliveries with Metrobi?
Unlike DoorDash or Uber Eats, where Livite had no say over which driver showed up, Metrobi gives Livite a vetted pool of drivers and live tracking on every order — so a canceled driver gets replaced before it becomes the customer’s problem, not after.
Anthony built an automated workflow around the Metrobi API: once an order is approved, the workflow calls Metrobi directly to search for a driver and book the delivery — turning what used to take manual coordination into seconds of hands-on time.
Upload the order
Anthony enters the route details into his workflow.
Auto-drafted & matched
Details land in Notion, and a driver from Metrobi's network is requested.
Approve & adjust
Anthony reviews and fine-tunes — usually the system gets the order 90–100% of the way there on its own.
Team visibility
Managers see driver ETAs directly, so no one is asking "is he here yet?" during a lunch rush.
The results
How much has Livite's catering revenue grown since switching to Metrobi?
Livite’s catering revenue grew from roughly $2,000–$5,000 a month in the program’s early days to around $20,000 a month now — a 5x increase over the catering program’s 18-month life, with Metrobi handling deliveries for the most recent 5 months. Even with a single storefront that caps how much volume the kitchen can take on, the growth has continued to hold.
In their words
Anthony Nagle is part of the second generation of the family behind Livite, working alongside his parents to operate the restaurant.
How do delivery marketplaces like DoorDash or Uber Eats compare to a dedicated courier for restaurant catering?
For time-sensitive catering, marketplace drivers can be a liability rather than a convenience. Livite found that DoorDash and Uber Eats drivers would pick up other orders mid-route, skip contacting the customer, or drop food at the wrong office — and there was no way to know an order had gone wrong until a client called asking where their lunch was, sometimes fifteen minutes before a meeting. A dedicated courier network with a vetted driver pool and live tracking catches problems — like a driver canceling — before they become the customer's problem, rather than after.
What's the difference between per-stop and per-route delivery pricing?
Per-stop pricing charges for each individual delivery, regardless of how those stops relate to each other geographically. Per-route pricing — what Volgin calls "more like a freight line" — prices the full route as a unit, which better reflects how a business like Volgin actually distributes across a city like Houston rather than treating each customer as an isolated, unrelated delivery.
Are catering marketplaces like EasyCater or Forkable worth it for restaurants?
It depends on your margins. Livite ran catering through EasyCater and Forkable before switching delivery models, and found the marketplaces took a 20% cut of every order while also not allowing Livite to set its own prices — a difficult trade-off on a restaurant's already thin margins. For restaurants that already have their own customer base and just need reliable delivery (not order acquisition), a dedicated courier service without a per-order commission can preserve significantly more margin.
How can restaurants automate catering delivery bookings?
Livite built an automated workflow around the Metrobi API: once a catering order is approved, the workflow automatically calls Metrobi to search for and book a driver — no manual coordination required. Order details land in Notion, a driver gets matched, and the owner just reviews and fine-tunes from there; the system gets orders 90-100% of the way there on its own. What used to require active manual booking now takes about 30 seconds of hands-on time per order.
How much can a dedicated courier reduce delivery complaints for a restaurant?
At Livite, delivery complaints dropped to near zero after switching to a dedicated courier network with vetted, accountable drivers. The operational shift was significant enough that the owner, who used to watch every delivery live on the tracker out of necessity, now checks in only occasionally, usually after the fact — a sign of trust built from consistent, reliable execution rather than the anxious monitoring the old system required.
