Cheetah: making an overnight direct to consumer pivot legible to the market

Cheetah built an app-based food supply service for independent restaurants and small businesses, offering next-day delivery and transparent wholesale pricing. In March 2020, Bay Area dining rooms closed almost overnight. Restaurant demand fell sharply at the same time consumers were struggling with grocery shortages, crowded stores and long delivery windows.

Cheetah had an operational answer: turn its refrigerated trucks into mobile fulfillment centers, open wholesale inventory to households, and place orders directly into customers’ trunks at contactless pickup sites. The market did not yet know the company as a consumer brand, and the new offer had to be understood quickly without abandoning the restaurant customers at the center of Cheetah’s identity.

• Translate a B2B wholesale platform into a simple consumer promise while the operating model was still changing.
• Build awareness quickly for a brand that had little consumer recognition and limited prior media experience.
• Keep Cheetah positioned as an ally to independent restaurants while explaining why consumers could now buy through the same supply chain.
• Connect the initial launch, a $36 million Series B, an Impossible Foods partnership and restaurant-recovery programs into one coherent narrative.
• Extend each news moment through owned and social channels without implying that earned coverage alone drove business results.

Cast Influence operated as Cheetah’s embedded communications team across positioning, public relations and social amplification.

• Brand positioning and messaging: distilled the pivot into a clear story about safe access, wholesale value and mobile fulfillment, while retaining Cheetah’s restaurant-first purpose.
• Public relations: developed the launch narrative, wrote and shaped announcements, built media lists, conducted proactive outreach, prepared spokespeople and coordinated partner communications.
• Social media guidance: translated PR moments into channel-ready messages, helped schedule posts, coordinated employee amplification and recommended recurring content around recipes, restaurant stories and community impact.

Frame the pivot around a consequence people could understand. The story was not that a wholesaler had added another channel. It was that a restaurant-supply network could give Bay Area households safer, faster access to food and supplies during an emergency, using an app and a fleet already built for local delivery.

Cast organized the program around three linked moves:

• Frame — make the new offer clear. Consumer messaging centered on contactless pickup, wholesale pricing, restaurant-quality products and refrigerated trucks as mobile fulfillment centers.
• Activate — create credible news moments. Launch the direct-to-consumer service, coordinate the Impossible Foods partnership, support the Series B announcement and develop restaurant-recovery stories.
• Compound — reuse attention across channels. Turn coverage into social proof, equip employees and partners to amplify, and feed audience and media response back into the next story angle.

• Built the launch message and March 25 announcement for Cheetah’s direct-to-consumer service, including the contactless pickup model and Cheetah’s continuing support for restaurants.
• Pitched the consumer utility story to local broadcast, food, lifestyle, business and technology media, then expanded the narrative as pickup capacity grew.
• Coordinated with Impossible Foods on the first consumer channel for its third-pound burger patties, aligning announcement language, spokesperson preparation and media outreach.
• Supported the $36 million Series B story with message development, embargo outreach, briefing documents and interviews.
• Developed customer, chef and restaurant-recovery angles so the program did not become a one-announcement campaign.
• Converted media wins into social posts and employee amplification, while recommending owned content and a dedicated press section for the website.
• Maintained a live coverage register and used market response to shift emphasis back toward restaurants as reopening changed consumer demand.

Cheetah reported daily app downloads rising from under 50 to roughly 300 to 400, a 300 percent increase in website traffic, expansion from two to ten contactless pickup locations in four weeks, and average day-over-day sales gains of 10 to 15 percent. These are client-reported figures from the launch period.

Where the story landed. ABC News, Forbes, Food & Wine, Martha Stewart, TechCrunch, Cheddar, Adweek, Eater SF, Built In and Modern Restaurant Management.