RFP responses run by two people instead of five

Ordo wins school districts through RFPs: public bids typically worth $3M to $30M, each proposal over 100 pages and written from scratch. The year before, five people brute-forced 91 submissions, often working late. The RFP software on the market was text-heavy and couldn't show photos of the food Ordo serves.

RFP Gremlin, an internal app that takes an RFP from end to end. It reads a district's documents, summarises them, and fills in set fields such as hot or cold lunch and which days need service. It flags risks like a district running a financial deficit, which tells the team whether to bid or to lead on price. Answers drop into structured templates in a Word-style editor, and reusable sections (for example, one for Atlanta-area schools) can be saved. Hunter built it with his co-founder Sheila, Ordo's chief product officer, in four and a half weeks.

Two people now run the RFP process. Hunter says a lot more RFPs went through it this year with far fewer people, and the proposals look better. He says they don't measure it precisely, because the output looks the same as the manual work.

Each bid is a chance to win a contract, so the number a team can finish caps its revenue. The team stops retyping the same district details and spends its time on what's specific to each bid.