Outside the big three on demand delivery companies, I'm not sure anyone else has reached into as many markets as catering specialist DeliverThat.
Aaron Hoffman joins us today to talk about DeliverThat and the opportunities available to delivery drivers.
At the end, I share some thoughts on my takes as a DeliverThat catering contractor. Overall my experience has been positive. There are a couple of things about how they do things that may not be popular.
Overall, I think DeliverThat is a true gig economy opportunity. As contractors in the delivery space, we work delivery by delivery. Because they do catering orders, there can be some very attractive deliveries. Other times, options from other platforms may be better.
You can sign up for DeliverThat here. If asked if you were referred, just let them know Ron Walter sent you!
More about the EntreCourier
Visit Entrecourier.com
Our Podcast page is at DeliverOnYourBusiness.com
Follow us on Facebook
Folow us on Twitter
Connect with us on Linkedin
Follow us on Instagram
Outside the big three on demand delivery companies, I'm not sure anyone else has reached into as many markets as catering specialist DeliverThat.
Aaron Hoffman joins us today to talk about DeliverThat and the opportunities available to delivery drivers.
At the end, I share some thoughts on my takes as a DeliverThat catering contractor. Overall my experience has been positive. There are a couple of things about how they do things that may not be popular.
Overall, I think DeliverThat is a true gig economy opportunity. As contractors in the delivery space, we work delivery by delivery. Because they do catering orders, there can be some very attractive deliveries. Other times, options from other platforms may be better.
You can sign up for DeliverThat here. If asked if you were referred, just let them know Ron Walter sent you!
More about the EntreCourier
Visit Entrecourier.com
Our Podcast page is at DeliverOnYourBusiness.com
Follow us on Facebook
Folow us on Twitter
Connect with us on Linkedin
Follow us on Instagram
There might just be the biggest gig economy company that you've never heard of, or maybe you have heard of them. Well, today we've got Aaron Hoffman, CEO of Deliver that. Joining us. Well, hello, Courier Nation, welcome to the Deliver on your business podcast, where you are the boss. We are all about encouraging you and equipping you to take control of your business as an independent contractor in the gig economy. When you're working with apps like DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, Instacart, Uber, Lyft and all of these other little guys. It's all about helping you to be the boss. Well, hey, my friends, I really enjoyed the opportunity this week to visit with Aaron Hoffman of deliver that, and they may be that one food delivery platform that is maybe in more markets than just about anybody except for DoorDash. Uber Eats or Grubhub. You know, they could be that number four, except for they're not the same type of platform as those companies. You know, they deal almost exclusively with catering. They do a little bit of grocery or they're branching out into some packaged stuff. But the main thing is catering orders. And so. My experience with them, really so far, I have been delivering for them for a few months, just off and on, and it's been positive for the most part. I haven't had any major complaints on any deliveries, I haven't had any real stinkers. And I'll be writing a review or two coming up here in the next couple of weeks. And just about my experience with them. But for right now, we'll get into the interview and then at the end, I'll just share some of my brief thoughts and a few of my opinions. What I like about them, and I'll talk a little bit about some of the issues that that I feel are out there. I'll mention a couple of those at the end, but for right now, let's dive into the interview with Erin. Well, hey, my friends, I'm excited to have a special guest on it with us this week. And you know, it just just kind of lay the background here. When I started out doing deliveries, you know, one of the perks of like accepting everything with Grubhub was they said, Well, you'll get an option at more the larger deliveries. So basically, you had to have a real high acceptance rate to be able to get some of those deliveries. And then it turned out they never gave you those anyway. And you know, every once in a while, I hear from people that love, like a DoorDash, some of their drive orders. But again, you have to jump through so many hoops. And here in my market, I've got, you know, I discovered and actually I understand there in a lot of markets came across deliver that and they tend to do a lot of delivery orders. Hey, guys, this is just an obvious edit that I'm throwing in here real quick because I just realized this didn't make any sense. What I just said, but it was actually that they tended to do a lot of catering orders. Now I'll let you get back to the episode as it was. And as I took a look at all of a sudden, I realized, Man, these guys are all over the place and the offers that I've done a number of deliveries, I've been trying to kind of focus a little bit more on doing some more deliveries so I can write some more about it. And it's just like, OK, this is this is an option. People need to know about this. These guys are all over the place. And as much as I'd love to see somebody come along and compete with Grubhub and DoorDash and some of these others and stuff like that, I always love the opportunity to visit with folks about what they're doing. And so I am real glad to have Aaron on from deliver that. And Aaron, I'll just turn it over to you and tell us, I guess, kind of maybe the elevator pitch for deliver that what you do and maybe how you got started with all of this? Iran, first off, thank you for having me on your show to talk about delivery and thank you, obviously for being a part of the delivery that family. Sure. You know, I started this business in my dorm room when I was 19 with my best friend. So before I can give you the even the elevator pitch, you should probably learn a little bit of your history about myself actually founded. I'd love to hear it. Yeah, I especially like that story, right? Right away. I mean, and that resonates everyone. So all you hear, people talk. Maybe we should start our own delivery company and you start, Yeah, OK, is that reasonable? But there you did it. I couldn't even tell you how many times I've heard all. You took my idea. I mean, everyone's got this idea to deliver food. So, you know, I was 19. I was a pre-med student at Ohio University. Fortunately, you know, my best friend and I went to school together. And yeah, we just started delivering college kids basically anything to play textbooks, hop on like homework or their classroom them, you name it. We delivered it non-alcohol alcohol, obviously, but it was very lucrative and it was a good way to pay for school. You know, when I was in school? Oh yeah. So we started that. We started it at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. For anyone who knows where that's at. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's a college town. And we expanded. We went to a whole Ohio State University in Columbus. We did Kent State University, Miami University of Ohio. And it was awesome, but that would have been back between 2013 and 2016. So I graduated school in 16 and moved back to Canton, Ohio, following graduation. Really wanted to keep pursuing this. This dream of mine to have a delivery company that was that could compete with DoorDash, UberEats and those guys. And what I found out very quickly, very, very, very quickly is that, you know, in order to be with those guys one, you have to be a tech company, which is which we are not to. You have to have unlimited funding to basically, you know, fund any initiative that you want to get into, whether you want to do a land grab, offer free delivery, you know, you name it. So I went into a local restaurant with John, that's the other founder, and we we were pitching the GM there or whoever it was and said, Hey. You know, we'll we'll do your deliveries for you to sign up or, you know, we'll do all your On-Demand deliveries, all you take out, all that stuff from the guys don't need it. We're already on DoorDash. Grubhub donated a and he probably delivered on all platforms. You know what that's like? The signs are know so instant. No. But we saw that there were there were orders like large orders sitting on tables, and the GM looked at me and said, Hey, man, you know, would you deliver catering food? And at the time, I mean, I had no interest in doing that, but I said, You know what the heck, let's try it. So John and I got our first taste of delivering catering. This would have been at the end of 16 early 17. And we found that, wow, we delivered 200 bucks of food to a hospital. We were polite. We were dressed professionally. We looked good. We set the food up just like the customer had asked for in him. And I must have got a 40 or 50 dollar tip in cash on spot and right there, you know, the light bulb went on. We're like, Holy crap. You know, that wasn't even that hard. How can we take what we just did in scale it, you know? All across Canada, Ohio, all across northeast Ohio, then all of Ohio and then keep, you know, keep expanding from there. And that's how this company was born. So, you know, our motto is buy drivers for drivers. I mean, when I say that I've delivered a thousand catering. I mean that I've delivered a thousand individual catering orders. So I know what it's like to be a driver. Everyone in our company has delivered catering orders. We are a company that is built around, you know, the driver mentality. So, so you're not there. You're not the CEO that sits up in the tower and then for two hours goes out and does some deliveries and tweets about it. We won't name any names or anything like that. You've actually been there, done that. I still take deliveries. Do I need to know? Do I enjoy it? Absolutely. And I think a lot of I think that there needs one thing we're trying to do as a company is is change the perception the way delivery drivers are viewed. Typically, you know, like, for example, I'll go into a building. No one knows who I am. No one knows what I'm doing. I use a shirt on a logo and I'm carrying your food. And oftentimes, you know, I'm not treated with the most respect. And that's what we're trying to. That's what we're trying to solve there. So we're trying to be the most driver centric platform that's available today, and we're not trying to take down Uber or DoorDash or we're not trying to take anybody down. We're trying to play alongside them and just make sure that our main asset, which is our drivers they're taking care of at every turn. That's why we have a U.S. call center based in Canton, Ohio. You can call a live hotline and get answers immediately. You have, as a driver, you have your own account rep. You can call and talk to us. We really like I said we we pay, in my opinion, are our compensation model for drivers is second to none. Our support team, you know, we support our drivers in every chance we can. So, you know, a lot of these things have been put in place because, you know, when we founded the company, we were delivery drivers. We didn't. We didn't find it. We didn't found the company in Silicon Valley right now, right? Midwest guys, Midwest, hardworking guys. And this company has grown substantially to where we've got, you know, 40, 40, some full time employees now, you know, and that's something that I can say. I noticed just right away when I started delivering was it was like. There's real people on the other end of the line, you know, with with with. So many of the others, it's all it's all done by algorithm. And if you got a problem, you know you, you submit it to. You know, you're either going to get somebody in an overseas call centre or you're going to, you know, it's something that's all kind of many barriers put up in place to keep you off the phone and keep, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole model is built around having as few man hours involved. With the interaction with the customers, with the drivers, with anybody. And, you know, and it's something they it can work, but it's also it can be frustrating when you need when you run into those odd situations and everything like that. And when it started, you know, first time it delivered for you. You know, here's all of a sudden there's, you know, I'm getting actual texts from actual people instead of, you know, just a robot type of thing. And. You know, there was one big order that I took on. And, you know, as I'm on the way, just, you know, somebody called me and said, Hey, how's how's it going? What do you think? Is there anything you'll need any help with on this or something like that and just blew me away because it's the absolute opposite of what I've come to expect. You know, in gig economy. So that was something that I really appreciated right away with you guys. Yeah. And you know, thank you for that. Thank you for that. And there there are some people out there that would prefer to not get contacted. They would prefer to drive on the left where you're literally just, you know, accepting, accepting, accepting and there aren't humans involved at all. And there's there's nothing wrong with that, right? But what we're trying to do is give a voice to the common person. You know, the common driver, make them feel like they're not just the number in a company, that they're part of a team, that part of the family. And that's what we're trying to instill in our fleet. Yeah. Yeah. How does that work for you guys, I mean, as far as you know, because a lot of the reason I know behind this model for so many companies is profitability that labor is such an expensive cost. Is that as it does that become a problem that you run into? Are you able to stay profitable in spite of, you know, being able to provide kind of really that extra service both to the drivers and to the customers? Yeah. So without going into too many, too much detail about our financials, you know, we've been lucky, we've been very lucky and very fortunate. We made it through COVID. We didn't have any layoffs with our employees, which is which is great. No COVID related layoffs, right? We didn't reduce anybody's pain that drivers are now making. More customers are tipping more. We change the way our our our driver compensation model works. We had two new initiatives, like the delivering more bonus to where if you get certain milestones, you get bonus to every single quarter. We're able to provide more jobs and a more frequent capacity to drivers a driver. So like the one metric we look at is orders per driver, and that has gone up significantly over time, which tells us that, hey, the average driver is taking more and more and more deliveries, which equates to more money. Sure. So labor for us, no, it's not an issue whatsoever. It hasn't been an issue. And I truly believe it's because we have built this, this driver centric platform to where drivers are going to go the extra mile for us because we go the extra mile for them. We truly view it as a partnership with these individuals, these contractors that, you know, in order for us to be successful, we've got to make sure you're being successful as well. Sure. I hadn't thought about this before. What you just mentioned with the pandemic, and I would imagine did that hits you differently than a lot of the other places because everybody else, you know, blew up with one off deliveries because everybody's delivered from home. But because you rely on catering more to that, did that slow you down at times? Oh yeah, our volume went down. I mean, significantly overnight in Covid, I mean, that was a nightmare. And, you know, we had to be resilient. You know, we said we've been fortunate, very lucky and we're we've obviously worked our way back. We're doing record numbers every single week now. You know, we got through, we have a lean model. We have a very lean business model. We don't have developers, nor a lot of overhead that we have to worry about. So, you know, the main thing was keeping our fleet alive, making sure they're getting taken care of. And then from there, we knew business was going to come back. What COVID did for us was it forced us to think outside of the box. Prior to COVID, any new driver that came on board would have to go on a ride along, which basically is a shadowing of a delivery delivery that's like, you know, you can't do that anymore because code. So we're able to put more money in our driver's hands, but by eliminating that entire process, because that was an expense for us. So we launched this virtual onboarding process. And by the way, this is we were able to expand rapidly because before we had to travel into markets to launch them, now we can launch a market in as little as a week. I mean, we're taking deliveries in Honolulu right now. And no one from our teams ever been there. So call it as bad as as it affected the world, as bad as it's affected business, it's bad, it's affected. I mean, it's it's been terrible. It's I still see the silver lining a little bit for us how it made us a stronger company. Did that maybe in some ways, open up some catering opportunities, you know, some of the some of the other companies do have their catering options, like I mentioned in introducing everything, you know, the drive orders for DoorDash. But I kind of wonder if. Because all of a sudden their demand went through the roof for all the at home deliveries. If that made it harder for them to fulfill some of the catering offers they had or. Yeah, so our market share definitely went up in the industry, that's for sure. Mm-Hmm. The smaller players they you know, the smaller players that relied on tech had a lot of overhead. They just slowly went away and they're struggling to come back. So we definitely expanded our market share because, like I said, we had a lean model and we were a driver centric platform. We weren't a tech centric platform. We don't rely on, like, like you said, algorithms right now. We rely on the people, you know, more more so than the technology, which is a it's a blessing and a curse because, you know, you need good technology to make the delivery experience better. But more importantly, you need good people. Yeah, people aren't. It's everything in this business when you talk about hospitality people. Sure, I preach that all day long. Yeah, you tend to, you know, like you have a little higher standards as far as kind of what you expect on drivers. And I remember noticing that that year, you kind of, you know, you're asking for at least at minimum, you know, decent clothes, you know, decent clothes, you know, a polo, you know, reasonable slacks or whatever as opposed to. A lot of platforms where it's kind of like you see everything and yeah, and and when when you're dealing with a large volume of food and you get somebody coming in just like, you know, looking like they haven't showered in a week or something like that carrying your food, that can be a really bad customer experience. Yeah, I mean, you hit it right on the head. So it's said two things on that. We don't require a certain dress code. That's not us. OK? The clients that we work with, the restaurants and marketplaces, they have certain standards. Sure. And yeah, I'll I'll piggyback off what you just said. Horrible experience. You go, you know, just imagine delivering to a boardroom where CEOs, their whatever and you show up in sweatpants and a tee shirt, don't set the suit up. Provide a horrible experience. Blah blah blah. You know you do a terrible job. This is something that we educate, educate our drivers on. Listen, if you want to maximize your earnings, if you want to maximize the potential to earn a high gratuity, you need to be doing these things because this is what we see works. So, yeah, I mean, you're not you're not dilute. It's not. It's not a new delivery anymore. You know, you can't be you're not delivering Chipotle to a college kid. You're delivering large quantities of food to professional settings, typically. But one thing I noticed, you know, like in the driver community, you know, especially if you hang out many driver groups or anything like that on Facebook. And of course, you get all sorts of things on Facebook. But you know, if some of those places, if you talked about, well, yeah, you should wear this or you should, you should dress up a little more or you got to set up the food. And I know some places are going to be like, No, no, no, no, I can't do that. Time is money. I need to move on to the next delivery or something like that. And so there's there's kind of a mindset out there. But what I see with you is kind of between the, I think one the respect for the drivers, but to the fact that, OK, there's a bigger picture of something that is it's more than just a $5 delivery now that we're talking about and that there's a value in providing that service and a value. I think in having that better appearance, better customer service, all of that stuff. Yeah, I mean, ah, but like I said, we're a platform by drivers for drivers. Every, every single one of our employees in our company has taken countless catering deliveries. So we know the pain points and we know how to make money doing it. We know what's good and what's bad. And we try to reiterate that in the best of our abilities to our fleet of drivers, it's why we have weekly driver tips of the week. You know, we're launching a driver centric podcast where we will be able to interview drivers about their delivery experiences, talk to them about what they like, what they dislike, you know, their deliveries. I mean, we are a platform for drivers and. Yeah, I mean, that's that's that's that's how we view it. Yeah. So in and in it, at no point I'll say this as well. So our average paper delivery is right around 30 bucks. OK. That's what the average pay is. One of our deliveries in the average job takes. You know, I'm not going to get technical here, but I'll say 45 minutes actually. Less will say 45 minutes. OK, deliver. That is not the all in one solution for drivers out there for getting the gig economy right. We do not have enough jobs in a day to provide a full time income to any individual. It's not. It is not as how we're about. We're a platform that can supplement and be a great, great addition to your gig stack. So say, like you said, you might drive for Uber, DoorDash, Grubhub, X-Y-Z, you know, and you put us in the middle there. I bet you we perform dollar for dollar better than any other platform for the time we spend on our platform. Yeah, and I would say that that makes you actually more of a true gig economy platform. Because I think when you get to the big three. I do think that there. I don't know that they ever actually say it, but you definitely get the feel that there's an expectation that you're going to deliver only for them, you know? And so the idea is you keep delivering, you know, you do what I say, DoorDash, you pick on them or something that you do, DoorDash, and they kind of want you to just keep doing DoorDash, DoorDash, DoorDash, DoorDash. And and that's not a whole lot different when you take that approach than just being a job. But, you know, my idea is you're running a business and you've got all of these companies that I always call you guys our customers because you're the ones that we contract with. And so, you know, why rely on just one source of income? And so I tend to my approach generally is I'm going to go out and I'm going to turn on the different platforms. And whoever can pay me the best for the next delivery is going to be the one I'm going to deliver for. And that's really more like running a true business, you know, really is. And and so I liked it. You know that that you recognize that that really is kind of the way to do it, I think. And so it's like, yeah, you know, as I say back to the philosophy, buy drivers for drivers, right? When I was a driver still am a driver. I'm in a I'm going to put the drivers best interests first. And I know that, hey, you drive with us between 10 and 12 and then you drop and then you do your other gig platforms, you're going to maximize your earnings. You're going to have a better overall experience. We preach this to our fleet. We educate them on, yeah. You know, one thing about me and we've jumped ahead a little bit, but tell me about some of the different types of deliveries and the different platforms or something that you guys do deliveries for. So people have an idea of kind of what they're looking at when you get into a deliver that type of delivery or ops, what kind of deliveries could they look forward to? Yeah. So you're predominantly going to have pre-scheduled catering deliveries. And we we Dean pre-scheduled, obviously, you know, in advance, we do take on demand deliveries for catering at time if we can fulfill them. There's rule based deliveries, there's grocery delivery, there's meal kit deliveries. We don't traditionally do the on demand, take out the small orders. It's not our bread and butter. We view our fleet as the cream of the crop. So in order to do a take out small order, you don't need the best quality of driver to do that right. So we sort of stayed away from that. We don't want to compete with DoorDash and UberEats and Grubhub for that market share. You know, we're we're going for more of the professionalism, the customer service approach and the drivers that can obviously, you know, do that. Sure, sure. And it's, you know, you kind of recognize the one thing that you guys do really well and focus on that and. So who are some of the platforms, I guess, because you guys tend to sometimes, well, maybe let me say it this way to be able to launch in so many different markets? You know, there's one side where you can go out and you can recruit restaurants, but that's probably harder to do to do kind of. You talked about a quick launch type of thing where you can go in now and you can launch in Honolulu without being there. And so I'm assuming that means you guys work with other platforms or something like that to make that work. Yes. So we've been fortunate enough to build strong partnerships with numerous marketplaces and numerous large restaurant brands. Okay, talking about some of the biggest brands in the world that are on every street corner? Okay. So by leveraging those partnerships, we're able to, I guess essentially, you know, advertise for drivers, get the appropriate amount of drivers needed and then launch start taking these deliveries as long as they're outfitted and they've got the appropriate equipment and they're onboarded. Boom, we can start taking deliveries. OK? And that that that process completely changed, that we launched markets due to COVID, as I talked about earlier, because you already had. Potential clients already lined up for the most part. It's kind of more like, Oh man, if we can just get into. But more importantly, Exxon, we we view our main customer. There's there's two customers really for us, and they're they're both very, very, very, very important. But you need one in order to make the other one happy. Yes, we have two customers. We have the restaurants and marketplaces that we service and that's, you know, they're providing us the deliveries. And then we have in our opinion, what's more important is the drivers. You don't have the drivers. You can't you cannot service the other. You cannot service the customer. So we view you guys as customers to us. We work for you guys. That's why, you know, when I say we're a platform, buy drivers for drivers, and I really do mean that. And you would, you know, as we've continuously given bigger and bigger and bigger and we've got thousands upon thousands upon thousands of drivers on our platform. I mean, thousands, OK? And it's funny because as we've gotten bigger man to people like the Heat. And I mean, personally, I've been attacked. I've been sent sent stuff. I mean, people don't even know who I am, what I'm about, what this company is about. And it's not just me, it's all right. So as we've gotten bigger, we've been sort of targeted now as a, you know, we've been targeted by people, you know, getting our name out there and doing stuff like this and giving our story and what we're all about. This is a huge this is a huge pro for us. Sure. Sure. No. And I, you know, because I had never I don't I had never heard of you. And I remember one and I'm always interested in, OK, what else is out there? What are the other options out there? And and I don't even remember where I first heard of you. And so I had to look you up and it's like, Oh, you're in Denver, OK, I'm going to give you guys try and stuff like that. So it was kind of like, you know, and then after getting out there, it's like, OK, you guys are one of the better or better kept secrets out there, which is always one of the deadliest things you could say, I guess, when you're trying to grow a business. But so but I appreciate you're willing to come on and talk with talk with us and you know, we let people know about, Hey, here's another option. Tell us about where you're at. You know, what kind of markets are you in and where will generally people be able to deliver for you? I'm telling you right now, if you're in a major city across the United States that does not include Manhattan, were there? OK, I mean, I mean, we're there. We're not talking about Manhattan, Kansas. Yeah, yeah. Maybe. Yeah, you would be okay. Yeah. No, no, no. I mean, we're we're everywhere, man. Like. But I'd say like our like our best states we deliver. I mean, if you going to deliver that dot com, you can see a full list of all the metros we're in at the very bottom. I was kind of amazed me. And contrary to what a lot of the other big delivery companies do, we also service a lot of suburbs. A lot of suburbs. So, you know, you said, you know, for example, you see Chicago on there. That doesn't just mean that, you know, Chicago, the city. I mean that it's like a 50 mile radius around Chicago, OK? So there's plenty of opportunities all around the country for for, you know, for anyone that wants to deliver at a high capacity and be a and and not just be a number. But if for whatever reason, you're in an area that I want to say, we had a driver recently that that contacted us from Augusta, Georgia. And, you know, that's after the match was played out and they got beaten down there. But he asked us, Hey, you know, can you launch this market for me? And you know, we're taking a look at that because again, we're a platform by drivers for drivers. So he must have known that there's catering opportunities. Sure enough, we launched the market just because we were able to get enough drivers down there. It made sense. So if there is an area that we're not in and we get an inquiry from a driver and saying, Hey, you know, can we turn on these areas? We always take a look at it. It's not like we just. You know, we we listen here to every one of our drivers complaints, compliments, concerns, questions. That's why I'm taking this. That's why I'm doing this podcast. Sure, sure. Yeah. And again, I we've talked about that before. The accessibility has been, you know, just unbelievable. It's not what you expect once you've been in the gig economy. So again, just kudos to you guys on that. Thanks. Thank you. What's your biggest challenge when it comes to using independent contractors, do you think? Hmm. I'd say reliability. OK. It's because I don't care if you're DoorDash us, it's the same pool of people. I mean, it's it's it's the same people that are on these platforms. You just we do a better job on educating them. How to do pre-scheduled catering delivery the best. You know, we just we just are a driver centric platform. So it's the same pool of people. They read themselves out very, very easily. But I say reliability. You know, we get, like I said, we get hundreds of drivers on our platform, like almost every day that we on board. And you know, they all quickly weed themselves out of their bad. So. How do you know what kind of you know, what kind of things, I guess the U.S. is first? How does that, how does that happen? I guess drivers kind of wind themselves out. Well, you know, when they get on board and they have to abide by our terms, and if they violate those terms, they're off the platform, they don't get second chances with us. Like I said, we have the necessary things in place. So if you don't look, you're a contractor, you're not an employee of ours. So if we come to an agreement, you know, as stated in the in the terms and in the icy agreement, you guys actually signed with us, if you guys will live up to those expectations, you're you're gone. Sure. Because you're doing a disservice to everyone else in the platform. You're doing a disservice to the drivers on the platform. You're giving them a bad name. And this is why third party delivery in the first place has gotten a bad rap. Sure, there's a lot of the drivers. They don't take it seriously. They don't take it, you know, like, it's a real job. It's a real way to make money. And you talked about you mentioned that earlier that, you know, you go into some places and they just they don't treat you well. And I and I'm convinced that a lot of the reason isn't because these restaurant people are evil. It's because they've been beat up by some bad drivers out there in that terrible experiences may have, some say. And so, you know, we view it, man, like, you know, you get a fresh slate when you come on board. We, we we give you all the tools to succeed and we give you the resources we give you people. If you have a bad delivery experience, we is, like I said, there's a hotline. You have a dedicated driver account rep. You can call and vent to and have a conversation with. Mm-Hmm. So, you know, again, these are things we've learned by taking deliveries and being a platform by drivers for drivers. This stuff is necessary. Yeah, absolutely, I I know that the one thing I hear, you know, just a lot of independent contractors out there that, you know, they they cling to that we're independent contractors. It means we don't have a boss or something like that, and they kind of take that to mean. We can do anything we want, and we can do it the way we want it. And they forget about the fact that they're running a business and and I've I've run businesses outside of doing delivery and and I can tell you, there's no way you could do that. You know, if you go in with that kind of attitude, you can lose all your customers. Yeah, I mean, if you're a contractor and you go in that mentality, you can just walk on water and you can do whatever you want. You're not going to be successful. I don't care what they or do. I mean, people are going to give you bad reviews. The platforms aren't going to keep you on. You know, it's it's a privilege. It's not a right to be a gig economy. It is. It's well, you're running a business and and you've got to treat. Yeah, you, you have to treat it like a business. You do exactly like that. It's your business. Yeah, I think that's the only way that you can really make it in the gig economy is you take that attitude. That's that's my opinion. So since you do catering, you know, kind of one last thing or something like that, just so people have an idea when the opportunities are. That usually means, then, that most of your opportunities are going to be during the rush hours, so the lunch, maybe sometimes the dinner hours or something like that, is that correct? Yeah, we do a lot. So the predominantly like the the majority of all of our deliveries
are between that 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. Local time. Between 15 and 20 percent of our deliveries are breakfast and dinner time deliveries. And then you've got a small percentage. I'm talking like one to two percent that are sprinkled in during the off hours. You, you might have a graduation party that's eaten at two o'clock. Yes, that's for example, I could give you. But no, if you want to make good money, you know, during that 10 to one, that's your best opportunity right there. I definitely give us a look. OK. OK, that sounds. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's the biggest thing is just trying to figure out the times that work. You ever get very much on weekends at all? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, it's depending on the market, but. Sure. Oh yeah, man. We get we get a lot of weekend deliveries, but ball parties? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. In the weekend deliveries. That's. That's definitely spread out throughout the day. Those are just breakfast, lunch and dinner that's spread out because there's obviously different events. I mean, you're talking about on weekdays, it's more of the corporate type settings you're delivering to hospitals, doctor's offices, office buildings, boardrooms, schools, you know, that kind of stuff. Now you guys, you guys you talked about, you don't really rely as heavily on the technology because most of the other guys, essentially what they do is they they kind of assign a delivery to you and you accept or reject a delivery at a time. You tend to kind of put that out there is available and just whoever grabs that delivery know that option or something like that. It's the one that gets that is that does that sound about right? With that, like I like I said before, where I'll keep saying it over and over sharing platform by drivers for drivers when we investigated and drove on the other apps. That's exactly what would happen. I would get assigned orders I don't want to take. So why not give the contractor you guys, you know, hey, pick what you want and whatever, and we might suggest certain things to you like, Hey, this delivery can go with this delivery can go with this delivery so that can actually maximize your earnings. You can take it if you want. You don't have to take it. We're never assigning orders to drivers and what we do. Yeah. And that that was something I kind of actually appreciated because it's kind of more like you could choose which ones make sense. Now you've got to be the first one to choose on those good deliveries. I'll I'll go back to my, my, my my piece on the technology, OK? What I meant was we're not a tech company. We're not producing software that you would be Microsoft. As a technology company. You would deem Apple. Sure, not only are we there, they're a tech company. We know we need good technology to make it easier on our our our driver partners. So yes, I mean, we do. We do have some internal technology that we have built. We do have a couple outsourced engineers and software developers. But when I say, you know, we're not a tech centric company, that's how we're able to put more money into your guys pockets and actually pay you guys more because we don't have the overhead that a tech company typically would. Yeah, yeah. And and you know, one thing I love and I think sometimes you work with some of the same companies as DoorDash or some of the others, but I kind of love the fact that it's like. With you, this is one thing that was leading into I don't have to jump through all the hoops to be able to get those opportunities to where with DoorDash, it's kind of like you got to accept a certain percentage, things like that and then, oh, maybe you might get a chance at. One or two of these drive orders that are out there or something and and then sometimes you get them and it's like they didn't have a chip or anything like that, so it's hit or miss with those companies as it is. Do you guys? When you mention that we talk about the way that you have it, so that it's like you just put the whole list out there, I can fire up my app right now and I can see all sorts of deliveries. And I remember one day I saw in Boulder. Four different options are offers for different deliveries that were out there on the same day that were all going to the same place, and I'm just thinking maybe I should drive to Boulder for this. But it's like, what happens if that doesn't get picked up? And does that happen very often for you? Do you have trouble like keeping keeping all your orders fulfilled? What happens in those situations? No, we've made it so to answer it very on point. No, we've built this company by fulfilling deliveries at a very high capacity. So what typically happens when there's deliveries that are uncovered up to a certain amount of time as we actually do incentives, you could say that we'll actually pay more on those deliveries just to get them covered. But ultimately, it's up to the driver. And we make that clear with the people, with the people, what the restaurants and marketplaces that we work with that contract us say, Hey, listen, you know, we can't make people take deliveries, we can't make them fulfill these deliveries. So if this goes unassigned, you need to have a backup option, a secondary option whenever you want to call it a delivery rescue program, that that way that order can at least get fulfilled. OK. Because when we're when we're talking about who we work with, our number one priority with the restaurants and marketplaces isn't us taking the delivery. It's making sure that their delivery gets taken in their customers happy because again, we work for the. We work for the restaurants and marketplaces and we also work for you guys. That's how we view it. So it's got to be a symbiotic relationship. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. And and I have to say too, it's like my experience so far as a driver has been. I think it backs that up. You know that that is, you know, some of that goes back to that personal touch. Some of that goes back to, you know, just the fact that you guys are there to take care of us. And I appreciate that at it. You know, we go back to something you said that a lot of drivers prefer not to have any interaction and I'm probably one of those drivers. But then when you need it, you definitely want to have it, you know? And so all those things that I really do feel like you kind of take care of us pretty well with that and. Well. Oh, go ahead. We also we give our drivers the opportunity to opt out of all communication. Well, OK. You know, that kind of stuff. If you don't want to be reached out to about deliveries, you can opt out of that kind of stuff. Sure. Being a platform by drivers for drivers, we realize that sometimes you know we can inundate you guys with resources and and and, you know, support in a lot of veteran drivers. A lot of drivers have been driving for a while with us. They don't. They don't need that stuff. They don't need their hand. Essentially help is the phrase I would use. So you can opt out of that kind of stuff. Yeah, actually, right, as you said that I had a text come in, said, hey, there's a there's a special delivery opportunity up here or something like that. And it's actually I prefer that I'd rather have the options to get that information. And I can I can ignore it and I don't have to and I don't feel bad about ignoring it. You know, you guys never make me, you know, I never feel pressure. I get a lot of I get a lot of communication from you. I get a lot of texts from you, and I do know that, you know, you can opt out of those things. But I get a lot of texts from you about different opportunities that come up. But at the same time, I don't get this feeling like, you know, you're pressuring me or you're trying to force me into it or anything like that. And that's huge. As an independent, just trying to let you guys know, Hey, there's a delivery available if you want to grab it, if you don't want it and no problems, do you want to make 30, 40, 50 bucks on this delivery, you know, and if your schedule permits it and you want to do it by all means. One last question I want to ask you and this is a little bit different area, but in relation to things like. I want to say the situation out in California right now with Prop 22 and A.B. five Pro Act and trying to push it through in the Congress and everything like that. Where do you see things going with all of that? Some of the pressure to try and force the employee relationship? I'll tell you this right now, OK? And this is for our business, particularly if we made our drivers employees, it would actually hurt their income potential. It would actually drastically affect what they make is because we're not giving you guys deliveries for eight hours. You're working for an hour, hour and a half two hours. So you guys would actually making less. So that's where we sit. We put the necessary pieces in place to make sure that, you know, you guys are not classified as employees under any circumstance. We've got a we've got a great legal team that believe and we believe that you guys are in a good spot as contractors, especially with the liver, that where do I see this going as an industry as a whole, there needs to be a different sort of classification for a gay worker. They're not an employee and they're not truly an independent contractor. There needs to be, you know, a middle ground that's met. And that's what I see this. I and I guess here, here's my thought on a lot of that, and it's like ultimately. A lot of problems could be solved if. If there were more accessibility with the bigger companies, would you just. Well, it is like, OK, so you know, with DoorDash and Uber Eats or all these companies, you get a lot of people that, you know, either they get they get warnings or they get they get their accounts paused or deactivated. No word about it or anything like that, and they can't get a hold of anybody, you know? And so there's no there's no there's it. Just make you mad that that that pisses me off. Just being a driver man. Yeah. And and it all goes back to that whole, trying to manage by algorithm and by trying to avoid any kind of man hours related to what you're doing. And and I suppose probably with their profitability model, they kind of have to do it that way to keep their costs down. But yeah, it is and and it is one of the big problems with it because it is like when something like that happens, there's no. There's nobody you can talk to or anything like that. And I honestly think that if you had. A little more maybe personal attention or something like that in those situations that that would solve a lot of the problems that are out there in a lot of these situations. Woman, hey, that's that's what that's what we're trying to solve. That that exact issue that we're trying to be the resource and the voice for the drivers, for you guys. And I think the other issue that I see a lot of times is kind of that overstepping the bounds about with with a lot of the companies, you know, especially the bigger companies out there. And I've seen a couple of pretty small ones that are maybe haven't figured it out yet or something like that where they're they're still trying to get employees or paying for contractors is kind of the way I look at it. And so they're going to try and control you a little bit more or something like that. And so and yeah, and I think that's that's another area where I think an approach similar to yours is probably going to be solve a lot of problems with it. But I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see where all of that goes, especially with the politics and stuff like that. And I I'm going to put and say, put some money on it, but I'm more than more than confident that you're going to get a different classification for the gig economy worker here within the next year or two. It's just too big of an industry. It's too big of an economy that two people make money. Too many people make good money on the gig economy that you know it might actually hurt. More people will be being classified as employees, you know, than the contrary. So I agree with you completely. I a I have always said that. You know, everybody wants to say, OK, you know. X y z company is terrible, so they should be forced to hire employees, and I'm kind of like, OK, but if this company is so terrible, what makes you think that all of a sudden they're going to become this model employer? It's like I would rather have them as my customer than as my boss. So, yeah, yeah, that's that's for sure. Well, Erin, I want to thank you again for taking the time and joining us and any any last thing that you want to let us know before we sign off. Absolutely. If you're a driver out there, if you're, you know, driving with us on a different platform, just know that deliver, that is going to be your voice. We're fighting for drivers. We're fighting for the best opportunities for you guys. I'm a driver. Everyone to deliver that as a company of our employees, our drivers that you know at heart. So if you're listening to this. Just know that you've got someone on your side, you've got a platform that's on your side. So but Ron, I really appreciate the time, enjoyed our discussion and look forward to seeing alive. Yeah. Yeah, we look forward to getting this up and running and everything like that. And once again, just thanks for joining us and best of luck for everything is happening further down the line for I deliver that. Thank you. Well, my friends, what did you think? I want to just thank Aaron, one more time for taking the time to join us and for just sharing a lot about deliver that and how things are done, some of the philosophy behind it. And I got to tell you that I've had generally a positive experience with deliver that I think there are a lot of things I like. And you know, I will tell you that almost every delivery I've had is paid between 25 and $30. So there's like this guarantee that you're going to get a reasonable amount of money for a delivery. I like the fact that there is a personal touch. I love the fact that there are people on the other end of that app because I think one of the biggest problems with the with the big three is that when there's an issue, you either can't get a hold of anybody at all or the people that you do get a hold of are working for an overseas call centre. And they're not even employees of DoorDash, UberEats or Grubhub or whoever you know, they're they're employees of that call center. And so they haven't been empowered to really take care of your issue in most cases. And so that's that's I think, something that really sets them apart. I think because they're big offers, they can, you know, tend to pay pretty good. The flip side is, you got to kind of be careful not getting too sucked in by those $25 or $30 deliveries. And here's what I mean by that, because those deliveries will take longer with catering orders, in most cases, you're having to set it up. You know, you got to go in, you've got to take the food out of the bags and just, you know, mostly just lay it out. It's not extensive. You know, Aaron said in the interview that she could expect usually about 45 minutes for that pay. And I would say that that's accurate. But not accurate. What I mean by this is 45 minutes from the moment you arrive at the restaurant or from your start time on a delivery because it's scheduled to. When you finish that delivery. And that, I would say, is accurate, I don't know if I've ever seen one go more than that with that time frame. The flip side of that is there's more time involved in that, you know, just like any other delivery. Your time on deliveries is not just the time that you're from, the time you arrive at a restaurant, you know it is from the moment you accept. And now we're scheduled is a little different that from the moment you accept, but you got to consider that you're going to have dead time ahead of time. It might take you 45 minutes, but it could be an hour and a half that you're not making money with anybody else because of that commitment to that, because you're not taking a delivery ahead of time so that you don't end up missing your start time, right? Or because of the drive time or different things like that. So I think it is. There's there's the good and the bad with that as far as the pay. And the other side of that is that these deliveries are all almost all happening at times when things are the busiest with the other platforms. And so. Generally, I'm probably making a little bit more per hour on my deliveries for DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats. That's just me where I am. There are some places where it's kind of like, You know what? This might be the best way. But this is the reason that I guess I look at delivery as a portfolio type of thing. I look at it as. Well, basically, it's a gig economy thing, and what I mean by that is it is a delivery, by delivery, by delivery thing, and I'm agnostic as to who I'm delivering for. I'm going to deliver the best delivery that comes along at that given time. And if that best delivery is DoorDash, then it's DoorDash. And if that best delivery offer right at the time is deliver that even in spite of maybe some of that extra time, then I'm doing that, deliver that order. There's a couple of places that are pretty close to where I live that have some fairly regular catering orders. And so if I get one of those and it's just a few minutes away and I'm planning on starting my day right away with that, it's like that is the perfect delivery to take. And I think that that's where I really feel like this is the way to look at something like this is that they're an option. They're not the option. In fact, if you listen to Aaron. He doesn't want to be considered the option. Now here's one difference that I would see between deliver that and a DoorDash. There are some deliveries on deliver that that I would call him a stinker, but it's because they would take so much time for me to do generally, because maybe I'm so far away from them, and maybe I'd have to do a lot of, you know, Deadhead back time that I can't make any money anywhere else. So ultimately, I'm not making very much money on that. There are a lot of deliveries on DoorDash and Uber Eats and Grubhub that are really bad deliveries. And the difference being is they're going to be a bad delivery for whoever takes them because I'm sorry, $3 for a 10 mile trip is never a good delivery, you know? I don't see those stinkers like that on deliver that. It may not be the best delivery for me, but it doesn't mean that it's not a good delivery for somebody who's right in that area. And so I really feel like they're a good option for somebody, especially when you take that philosophy that what I'm doing is running a business delivery by delivery, by delivery. So with that in mind, I don't take a high percentage of orders with deliver that, even with that 25 to $30 price tag. But the ones that I do, I've been satisfied with. Some of those, you know, I get done and I realize I probably could have made a little bit more on somebody else, but it's never been where it was so bad that it was like, Yeah, I definitely would have made more with somebody else. You see where I'm going with that. So. And I think that that's a good place to be. And that's something that makes them a good option to have along with everybody else. Now, there's a few things I don't like as well about them. I don't like how they do their app. You know, he mentioned they're not a technology company and they don't just like, send an order to you. What they do is they just put the orders out there and then it's kind of like everybody can see those orders and then it's just a first come, first serve. But a lot of times you don't know exactly what you're getting on a delivery, and it varies by the different type of delivery. Although even then, like I said, my deliveries have been very consistent, almost always between 25 and $30. But you know, you get all the offers and you see where they're going and where you're picking up. You see all that, but you don't see what the pay is. You have to actually go into it and see the details and all the different stuff like that. The good news is you can just you can you can turn it down right away and put it back out in the pool. So with deliver that it's kind of like fishing, you know, it's catch and release until maybe eventually you catch the good one. I do know there are a lot of people that probably don't like them because it's easy to get deactivated. You know, if you are late, if you are unprofessional, if you look like crap or you smell like crap when you bring in hundreds of dollars worth of food, there's a good chance you may never deliver for deliver that again. And personally, I don't have a problem with that. Probably my biggest. I don't know if it's a beef, but it's something that is very different than what you see in the rest of the delivery world, and it is how they handle chips in particular with deliveries for Easy Cater. They're a big contractor with easy kater. They'll pick up a lot of orders for them. Now, if you've delivered for DoorDash and you've done their drive orders, you're very familiar with Easy Cater because that's a big one for them as well. But one thing you probably notice on DoorDash is that sometimes the tip can be really incredible. And there are a lot of times where there's no tip at all. And so what? Deliver that has done is they pool the tips, so they just take all of the tips that come from easy cater and then they just divide them out by delivery, so every delivery gets the same tip for that particular day. And some people hate that because they want to get that bigger delivery or something. And. I can see it both ways. You know, and honestly, I guess it's kind of like the way I look at a lot of deliveries for everybody else that it's like, I know what it is going into it. And if I accepted it in a way that I'm OK with that, right? And if I don't like it, then I just don't accept easy cater orders. That's kind of my philosophy around that particular one. Now I think the wackiest thing that I see that it's just different enough from what I've seen anybody else do in this space or in the gig economy is that they can actually charge you for certain things. If you miss a delivery where it's like no call, no show and nothing's been done about that. And all of a sudden, this food has been sitting there and can't be delivered. You can be charged $100, why it's costing them a heck of a lot more money than that. So I understand that in some ways, but it is very different than what we're used to seeing in this in this world. And if you're extremely late, there could be a charge on that. And so. You know, I don't know what to feel about that, to be honest. There's a piece where I'm like, not comfortable with it. But there's a part where I understand it. But I will tell you that I'm not worried about ever being charged because the thing for me is. Catering orders, that's a high stakes type of thing. You know, companies are spending hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars on the food that you're taking out there. And so it's a bigger deal if something gets really screwed up. Than it is for a $15 Chipotle order. And so, you know, and so if I'm going to take an order that, first of all, it's going to pay more. I can understand when the standard is a little bit higher. And I honestly, I feel like we ought to have the professionalism that we are going to show up on time and we are going to do a delivery that we committed to, especially at that level. But I do think, you know, that's the one thing that's just different enough that I don't know. Here's the bottom line. You're never going to get there, deliver. That is not the perfect platform. There is no such thing as the perfect platform. I will continue to use them, but it'll be time to time, it won't be. Sometimes it'll be super consistent and sometimes it's going to be a long time between deliveries. And I'll continue to find good deliveries with them and there are I'll continue to see a lot of deliveries that you know, they offer me. Some deliveries are like 100 miles away. I'm not taking those, you know, it could be a hundred dollars, I'm not taking those. And so, you know, I don't notice as many abject stinkers. I don't I don't see the, you know, the $3 10 mile orders, but I don't see as many unicorns either. It's it's kind of steady. And to me, it's kind of like you find the one that fits well that is close enough to you, that you can kind of fit in within everything else and those can be really good orders. And that's kind of it in a nutshell. I think if they're in your market, I really encourage you to give them a try, at least. And and again, do it, you know, don't don't do it as they're the only ones. Don't do it. Where are you going to focus heavily on deliver that during the catering time or during the delivery times and then switch over to everybody else? You know what I would tell you to do is you find the best delivery from whatever the platform is for whatever the time is. And if it's deliver that, grab it. And if there's a great one on Uber Eats, grab it. You know what I'm saying? You know, pay very close attention to all of the different things that as you're doing them, so you kind of know the environment you're working in. And I think that they can be a great option. They're one more piece there, one more weapon that you can use to earn money for you. Now you can use my referral link in the show notes at EntreCourier.Com/Deliverthat and sign up there. I'll also have, like I said, the links in the show notes and everything like that. Give them a shot and then let me know how it's working for you. I would love to hear your thoughts and your feedback on what deliver that is like. So, my friends, that kind of wraps up today's episode and I give you a heads up next week. There probably won't be an episode, as it looks right now. We're going out of town for a few days and just things are going to be so busy and so whacked out that I'm not going to have a chance to be able to put up an episode before heading out. And at the same time, things could change. So just keep an eye on and maybe maybe something will drop and maybe something won't. It probably won't. We're probably two weeks out until our next episode. But in the meantime, our friends. A really encourage you to think about things like deliver that, but do it on your terms. Do it in your philosophy. Do it in a way where you're looking at what works for you and run your business as you see fit, take control and be the boss.