As on-demand food delivery becomes more popular, and customers continue to take advantage of super convenient order and pay by phone technology, the demand for delivery drivers in Chicago has skyrocketed.
Delivery services like GrubHub will receive an order, but they leave it up to the restaurant to implement the actual delivery. That's where Deliver My Grub comes in. The Chicago-based company launched in 2011 and serves as the vessel between ordering and eating. After starting the business with just one restaurant on board that paid $300 a month, founder Jimmy Griggs now works with 75 restaurants across Chicago, completing between 12,000 and 15,000 orders a month.
The massive growth of businesses like GrubHub has fueled Deliver My Grub's expansion to the point where Griggs now employs 120 drivers and counting as the company enters its busy season, he said. And this year Deliver My Grub is on track to be a $1 million gross revenue business, Griggs added.
Deliver My Grub entered the scene before on-demand food delivery became all the rage. Griggs, who's background was in IT and delivery, saw the need for restaurants to hire third party deliverers. And now that the space is loaded with startups like WeDeliver, Postmates, Home Chef, Caviar, Fooda, and Artizone, which range from customer delivery to catering business lunches, Griggs believes his company is poised to take on the added competition.
"Back five years ago it wasn’t anywhere near as crowded," he said. "I decide then that if I was going to dive in with my full time and efforts, I was going to be a leader in the industry before everyone else even realized it was one."
Deliver My Grub works by taking orders directly from restaurants. The food establishment will request a driver, and Griggs' team will respond with the time they can arrive and deliver the customer his or her meal.
"It's a service industry at the end of the day," Griggs said. "Technology can't solve every problem. You need people and you need to empower those people. A lot of these [new delivery startups] are throwing technology out there and saying, 'hey we're a tech company and look at us grow,' and they’re not really focusing on the people."
Griggs said after pleasing his customers, the needs of his drivers are his next priority.
"I treat my drivers like my most important customer. Without my drivers, I don’t have a business at all."
Delivery My Grub was bootstrapped to start and was built to generate revenue without taking VC funding, Griggs said. But the company may explore some outside investments in the near future as it looks to launch new technology it plans to market to other delivery companies.
"I started this business as a one-man shop," he said. "Now we're continuing to grow every day."
Photos via Deliver My Grub
