In Chicago, it has never been easier to get stuff delivered. Need a six pack sent to your office or home? There are literally four different companies that will bring you booze. What about a catered work lunch? Fooda's got you covered. How about the ingredients and instructions for a restaurant-quality meal? That'd be Home Chef. And for all your other delivery needs, food, personal or otherwise, Postmates has you covered.
Nationally, on-demand delivery is really heating up. Amazon has same-day delivery in select cities, as does Google Express. And Uber just picked up Google's head of same-day delivery, hinting that the ride-sharing giant will get into the on-demand delivery game.
But as popular as on-demand app delivery has become, missing in the equation is a focus on small businesses, said Jimmy Odom, founder of WeDeliver. WeDeliver launched in 2013 to provide a delivery fleet to businesses, but it has taken that one step further Monday with the official launch of WeDeliver Locally, an iOS and Android app where businesses can sell items directly to their customers and offer on-demand delivery.
“We don’t believe we’re actually playing in a crowded space at all, ironically, even though we see people on the fringes," Odom said. "We don’t believe that any of them are attacking the market the same way we are. We’re in the same math class, but we have a different problem. And therefore, we have different solutions for those problems.”
While Postmates, Google, and others are focused on the consumer, WeDeliver is, at its core, a B2B. WeDeliver Locally gives small businesses a "digital storefront," as Odom puts it, providing companies with a place to sell their items and the logistics to get them delivered to customers that day. The businesses upload items to the platform and manage the app as they see fit. WeDeliver makes sure the tech works and performs the delivery.
"We want to empower local businesses to do what they do best, but more frequently and in more places," Odom said. "Delivery is the fist step in that journey."
In the thousands of deliveries that Odom's team fulfilled since its initial launch, they found that roughly 98 percent of orders happened over the phone. Whether it’s because of lack of time, resources, skill, or other reasons, small businesses weren’t utilizing technology to maximize revenue.
“We felt that local businesses…had not been properly positioned to take the advantage of all of the new technology that consumers have become accustom to,” Odom said. “We thought, how easy would it be to finally get a place for one stop shopping for all my of local businesses?”
WeDeliver Locally has more than 40 Chicago businesses on board across a variety of industries, including Local Foods, Stan’s Donuts, Beermiscuous, Southport Grocery, Lutz Pastry Shop, and Brainstorm Comics. WeDeliver, which was part of this year's Techstars Chicago class, expects to triple the number of participating merchants by 2015 and expand into other markets, which Odom declined to identify.
And when it comes to all the perceived competition WeDeliver faces in local food delivery, Odom says his company is solving a greater issue that just bringing you your lunch.
“We’re solving a problem for a business owner. Not creating a new problem that we can solve…We are pushing on-demand delivery in the marketplace as opposed to pulling consumers to utilize on-demand delivery. That’s the difference in the two.”
Images courtesy of WeDeliver
