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In this episode of Paris Talks Marketing, host Paris dives deep into the entrepreneurial journey of Chris Heffernan, founder and CEO of Dlivrd, a logistics platform connecting brands with independent contract delivery drivers in the U.S. and Canada.
Chris shares his early days of doing unscalable tasks to differentiate from competitors, the importance of personal touch in the gig economy, strategies for driver recruitment and retention, and marketing techniques that have helped Dlivrd carve its niche.
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Links:
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Explore: https://hop.online/
Connect with Paris Childress, the Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parischildress/
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Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
02:14 What is Dlivrd?
05:11 Dlivrd's Unique Selling Proposition
11:23 The Strategy Behind Driver Recruitment and Retention
16:43 Market Differences
22:46 How Dlivrd Connects with Local Businesses
25:34 Building Brand Awareness and Market Strategy
29:02 Chris's Entrepreneurial Journey
38:50 Customer Support and the Role of AI in Streamlining Operations
40:25 Embracing Non-scalable Actions for Growth
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Hosted by Paris Childress, we’re featuring deep dives into the latest industry trends with the top SaaS B2B founders and marketing leaders who reveal what it takes to succeed in B2B SaaS marketing.
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Chris: Everything I did in the beginning would be defined as not scalable, right?
Back in the day, driving, dispatching, delivering those orders with Dlivrd, delivering the orders. I was copy and pasting all the orders into the system in the morning before we had the API integrations. These weren't scalable things, but they were the things that differentiated me from the competitors because I was like, yeah, I can do that.
So the biggest thing that I look back on is like, do things that don't scale so you can scale, right? It gave me great opportunity to learn my client, learn my customer, learn my processes. And you know, that's something that only an entrepreneurial mindset, you know, can kind of do. So if you're a new marketing customer and you only want to do Google Meets and you never want to meet somebody in real life, but they're like, I need to meet in real life.
That's not scalable to go meet every customer. But when you're starting, go meet that customer, go do things that you wouldn't normally do or outside of what your plan is to build that scale.
Intro: Every SaaS company plays for high stakes, but what does it take to dominate the market right now? Welcome to Paris Talks Marketing, the podcast where we dive deep into the latest trends and strategies in SaaS marketing that are really working today. I'm your host, Paris. and Our guests are SaaS CMOs, founders and specialists, and we discuss one trendy topic in the industry per episode.
Ready to unlock the true power of marketing strategy? In this theme, we'll explore the world of cutting edge marketing strategies and tactics that are shaking up the SaaS industry. We'll share insights on testing new tactics and uncover the latest developments from digital landscape giants like Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
We'll also explore how AI is revolutionizing the digital landscape and transforming marketing tactics. So grab your headphones and get ready for a marketing strategy masterclass with Paris Talks Marketing.
Paris: Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Paris Talks Marketing. Today I'm with Chris Heffernan. Chris is founder and CEO of a company called Dlivrd, and he's also a seasoned and career entrepreneur with lots of successes and failures and great learnings along the way, which we'll hear about. So welcome to the show, Chris.
Chris: Thanks for having me, super hyped.
Paris: So first of all, tell us a bit about what is Dlivrd and how did you decide to start the company?
Chris: Great question. The number two question I typically get to is like, why are there no E's? Right? So we could address both through it. So, Dlivrd is a logistics platform that connects brands with independent contract delivery drivers in 156 markets in the U.S. and Canada.
So in essence, we're a way to enable deliveries for restaurants, caterers, small businesses, e-comm to supply on demand next day, same day delivery. Our cornerstone is catering kind of that large order fulfillment. So, a bunch of burritos going to the doctor's office or when Peggy retires and they want to have, you know, a lunch for the team, you would see that come through our platform and we're connecting the restaurants that are making the food to the customer that ordered the food.
Paris: Awesome. Roughly what percentage of your customers, the partners, what percentage of those are restaurants are food-prep versus non-food?
Chris: We're really high in like what we call the perishable or like high stakes delivery. So like meal preps, catering restaurants. So, you know, we're probably over 80% in that realm. Just recently got into the other like auto parts, hardware, some other niche things.
Cause I mean, you know, now everything can be delivered same day. Everybody wants to compete with Amazon and get stuff to you within two days or same day if possible.
Paris: Yeah. I just think that the food and restaurants is the obvious category, but as you mentioned now everything can be delivered with some exceptions. But I think there's a lot of category growth still there. Do you look at categories that you wanna develop further where you think they're underserved or there's a lot of untapped potential?
Chris: Yeah. I mean, what I really like doing is helping small businesses like the mom and pop shop that uses square as their point of sale and wants to deliver something, but doesn't want to rely on three to five day ground shipping from the post office cause if I need to order from, you know, Jane's boutique and I can order it from Amazon and get it in two days, but I have to wait five days from the boutique, like, I'm going to order from Amazon. So, you know, being able to help the small businesses with those kinds of transactions are great. The easiest thing to say that we'll stay away from is like low earning, low pay, like get it now. Unfortunately it's like delivery is becoming a bit of a race to the bottom.
Where everybody wants to pay the least, but wants the highest customer service, that's what we're kind of trying to stick away from. So we can offer a little bit of a higher earning opportunity to the drivers out there so they can make a decent buck. They're out there using their own car, every weather condition.
So, you know, we want to make sure they're taken care of.
Paris: And in terms of the competitive landscape, clearly, some big giant brand names come to mind. Uber Eats is out there and Deliveroo and who's the other one that, it's on the tip of my tongue, but...
Chris: DoorDash is probably like the biggest.
Paris: Yeah, that's the one on the tip of my tongue.
Yeah, DoorDash. Now, clearly you all are differentiating here. I'm sure that you get it a lot, but how is it to try to position yourself among some of these giants and how do you communicate your real unique selling proposition in this kind of competitive environment?
Chris: Yeah, I mean the easiest way to delineate and like for us, they're not competition, right? Not in like a condescending way, like I'm better than them. They're just so far beyond our scope. They're not competition for us. And just like we're not competition for them, right? We're so small in comparison that, you know, we're not even probably a blip on the radar of these big guys. Where we try to differentiate is we don't want to be that size.
I don't ever want to be the size of those large, you know, behemoths. It's because then you lose your personal contact with your clients and your customers, your drivers. So, you know, we want to make sure that our differentiating factor is humanizing the gig space, reminding the gig workers that there is another person that you're talking to on the other side of that app, because when they talk with those behemoths, there is no other person. It's a chat bot and maybe they get somebody after, you know, seven emails about a problem where with us you can pick up a phone, you can call or text or chat and connect with a real human. And then with our clients making sure that they understand that the drivers are real people and it's not just that I need delivery and I need it for the cheapest rate possible. Like, no, you know, you're asking someone to do these things and, you know, trying to get both parties to understand and respect that from each other.
Paris: There seems to be more of a local theme with Dlivrd that is coming through here. So there's a relationship between the driver and the end customer, there's probably also a relationship between the driver and some of their regular partners where they're stopping maybe for recurring jobs. How much of it is actually recurring jobs? I'm thinking of an example of let's say someone that gets a prescription medication that has to get delivered in every month. And it's a standard trip, go to the pharmacy and pick it up, drop it off. How much of the businesses is this kind of recurring type of service?
Chris: More and more, especially in the business world is like return to work becomes more prevalent where offering meals is less of a benefit and more of like a requirement. So you're seeing a lot of orders to go into the same place on every Wednesday or every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So, you know, you see a lot of that.
We see a lot of the same like meal prep customers, the same e-comm customers. For us, like brands can say, like, I really liked the way that this driver delivered it and we can enable that driver to be the first one to see offers for that customer or for that client. So either the person that the delivery is going to, or the person that delivery is coming from, so we can kind of like build that little bit of community.
And I love that because then the driver knows that they're going to make, you know, steady revenue, the client knows who's showing up, they're familiar with how to pick up, how to drop off, where to go. Like, oh, we use the side door, all these different things. And that's what enables the difference.
You know, one of the big differences between like Dlivrd and like the big guys is we have those little systems in place. I kind of equate it to like, there was a commercial back in the day for, cheese and it was like happy cows make better cheese. So that's what we're trying to do with these drivers.
Just if you give the driver a good experience, good customer service, you pay them well, and you're there to support them, theoretically, they will be happy. They will deliver happier, which means that customer will then order from the client again. That client will then get another delivery, which means that driver gets another order and the circle continues.
So just trying to create happy cows.
Paris: I imagine these drivers have dashboards in their car on there and then they'd probably have multiple phones even up in the car facing them and they're lighting up at all times. So they're doing Walmart, Uber, maybe DoorDash, Dlivrd. And so in a way you're almost kind of competing to be top priority for that driver.
So if the driver sees at the same time, three different deliveries or jobs that pop up, they would choose to take the Dlivrd job first, all things being equal, I guess maybe if the routes were about the same or revenue, but just because it's that community and there's more of an incentive connected with what they'll do with Dlivrd. Is that also something you think about what's going to make them in a moment like that pick your job over the job that came in at the same second?
Chris: 100%. There's a team and part of our driver, like engagement team is marketing, right? Cause we're marketing to these drivers to buy into taking orders from us. We need them to swipe right when we send them that order. And just like as a consumer, you're driving down the road, you see a Walgreens and a CVS and a Rite Aid all within a, you know, three blocks of each other, these drivers, it's even easier for them to see multiple offers when they're multi-apping, right? So how do we get them to be sticky to our app to take the jobs in our app? And sometimes it boils down to money, right? Like if we send a job and the earning is $25 and somebody else sends one for $28, they're going to take the $28, 9 times out of 10. But like you said, it's those comparable, if we send one for $25, somebody else sends one for $25 and they're close to the same as far as distance or time or whatever, like what can we do to make them choose ours over the other one. And so we spend a lot of time marketing to drivers and doing different things.
We have driver engagement events. We go to Dave and Buster's we do at least one a month and go to different cities, invite the drivers, their family, we have food and drinks and play games and just a way to connect with that. In January, I went and had a pizza cook off with one of the drivers in Indianapolis because he's always posted on his social media about the pizzas he makes and I make pizza.
So, we met up and had like a pizza competition. So just a little way to like humanize it so when that driver sees that offer come through and they were just at a Dave and Buster's event, they're going to swipe right, cause it's like, I remember meeting with Charlie and like, he was a cool dude. I'm going to take this order, you know, because I like them better.
So sometimes it's the intangible things that can make the difference.
Paris: Yeah. And how do you go about even in the beginning when you're recruiting drivers, so let's say you're in a market where we need to boost the drivers.
We need to go out and get some more drivers. How does that whole recruitment process start? Is there any classic marketing channels that are used or walk me through how you would like ramp up 20, 25% more drivers in a new market?
Chris: Yeah. A lot of it's targeting, you know, we're looking for job applicant profiles. We target a lot of Instacart drivers, drivers that are on Instacart are great for our platform just because they're used to doing a little bit more through the delivery process, you know, so we're going through your traditional channels, like your Indeed or your Craigslist.
We also advertise like in the app store. So if you're looking to download a driver app for one of our competitors, or even one of the big guys, like you'll see an ad for the Dlivrd driver application. Word of mouth referrals is a big one as well. So we'll send out a blast. If it's Austin, Texas, we'll say, hey drivers refer another gig friend and you get X amount of money after they do X amount of deliveries and they get, you know, something as well.
And that's kind of the biggest thing right now, actually we have so much demand to be on the platform. 85% give or take of our markets are locked down. It's a wait list. So people can sign up and then as it becomes more equitable to share the orders that are there to the existing drivers, we start on locking, you know, groups of people from the wait list in.
Paris: Walk me through the math behind that. Cause I think that I understand the logic. If you flood a market with too many drivers, you're not going to get enough jobs. They're going to churn. And then, you're kind of spoiling the community well, in a sense, because then, people in that market might say, ah, there's not enough work and I dropped it. I went to something else, but what is the ratio? We talk about this a little bit pre-show, but you've worked out a ratio of drivers to partners, merchants, what is that ratio and how did you come up with it?
Chris: Yeah. Each market kind of varies, right? So it's different. And it also depends on the type of clients in each market. So, you know, we could have a market that has a thousand orders a day in it. And we need more than a thousand drivers, right? Cause not every driver is available. And a lot of the orders come at the same time.
So it's making sure that we have enough drivers to keep those orders placed, but not enough that people are just sitting in the winds. And there was no like fancy way. There was no algorithm or like AI that did this for us. It was just years of like, we have too many drivers, we're getting too many complaints, not enough drivers, analyzing how many times we have to assign an order to a driver before they accept it in one market versus another market and looking at like driver populations. So, it's crazy cause it's not like an exact exact science, but like we put a lot of work into it.
And it was one of the things that I like really harped on me when people are like, I was making this much less quarter, this quarter, I'm only making this. And it was like, oh, that's right, cause we brought in a bunch of more drivers. So, it's just being delicate, but then it also comes with when a client's like, oh, tomorrow I'm going to send you 10% more orders.
Or like we were working with two fleets. Now we're going to work with one. Then now it's like, all right, now we got to open the floodgates, get the drivers in, like get them quote unquote, like set up for success. So it's, you know, a balance of working with the clients and set expectations.
Like, Hey, if you're going to onboard and you have a lot of volume, you got to give us a week. You know, or if you're going to change and you're going to do this, like it needs time. And most people, if they're good clients and they want to be a true partner, they'll understand because, you know, they know it's best for their brand in the long run.
Paris: Yeah. Well, what does the vetting process look like for a new driver?
Chris: Yeah. It's quite different than that of like the major apps. Most of like the big apps, you can download the app, put in a bunch of info and take your order within minutes. And, you know, while that's great and there's not a lot of barrier to objection, we're looking, you know, for a little bit more of an elevated experience, drivers that can follow a little bit more instruction, especially in that catering world, a little more attention to detail. So we used to use a third-party applicant tracking system, and then they decided they were going to change their pricing model and it would have been way too expensive. So we just built our own.
So a driver goes online, says they're interested, picks their market. If it's not wait listed, they get in, they get a little note from me, thanking them for their interest in being on the platform and talking about what this process is going to look like. They watch four videos and take four knowledge checks, and the videos are about how to use the app, how jobs come in, when you should expect to receive them, how pay works, you know, basically a full Q&A, but visually a really nice, like cartoon animation. Ask questions, you answer the questions correctly, you move through each stage. Then at the end, there's like a master knowledge check. It hits the big things like you get paid the next day. These are when job offers come, like the most frequently asked questions that we get day to day when drivers would come on the platform, we made this in the master check.
Once they complete that, they're then on the platform. Then their delivery journey kind of starts after their first five orders, they're put into a queue to get a follow up from a person and say like, hey, how was your first four orders? What can we do better? After 10 orders, they are now eligible for a driver kit, get some bags, a shirt or lanyard, you know, some different fun swag, some sunglasses.
And then, they hit like different periodic milestones, but once they hit that 10th delivery, they're now out of like that onboarding journey.
Paris: Okay. I find it really interesting that the differences between the markets that you were talking about a few minutes ago, that in some markets the ratio of drivers to merchants and the supply and demand balance thing, are there any kind of like regional trends that you've observed or since you're all over the U.S. now, are there patterns like, let's say in the South versus in the Midwest or out West? Do you see any broader patterns as to why you may need in some states more drivers for a given set of merchants?
Chris: Yeah. I guess the easiest way to look at it is in something like in the Midwest, for example, like orders go further, right? So the distance between the pickup and the delivery is typically longer than that of like a metro area, like a New York or Philadelphia or anything on the East coast.
Like what, you know, you could coin is like the older cities that are more condensed. So your DPH, your deliveries per hour is less in your Midwest or like more scarce markets than it is in a more congested market, like a major city. So even though you could have the same amount of overall orders for the day, or for the period, you know, call it like a lunchtime period.
You will need more drivers to cover those orders in like a Columbus, Ohio, or a Kansas city, then you would in a Philadelphia, you know, or a Washington DC, because the drivers are spending more time traveling to and from than in those other ones. So that's one example of how, you know, a metropolitan influences that.
It could be to the nose, the same amount of orders, but you'll need more drivers to cover them because one driver can't do as many orders in that market.
Paris: That was the obvious answer that I somehow missed because I was fishing for some sort of cultural differences, but, and maybe that's at play too. But what you said is the obvious one. Yeah. That the density and the distances traveled.
Chris: Also like a consumer behavior. It was weird and we don't have any like full trend behind it. But when we were opening new markets, we started in Philly, then went to Baltimore, then DC, then jumped to San Francisco. And at first, like people's lunchtimes were staggered and this is when we were building like the catering and it was like, cool, a lot of people are eating at 10:30, then 11:30, then you know, 12:30.
So a driver could line these three orders up. And then when we opened in Phoenix, Arizona, and that's a wildly popular market for us, every order was due at 11:30. There were no 10:30's, there were no 12:30's. Everything was 11:30. So even there it became less about like the travel time and the distance and more of like literally everybody seems to eat lunch at the same exact time in this whole
Paris: So everybody in Phoenix eats lunch at noon or before noon?
Chris: Apparently. Like, so typically if we're like to deliver by 11:30, then it's an 11:30 to 12:00 delivery window. So like that gives us that little bit of like leeway to kind of be on time. But yeah, so everybody's lunch break in Phoenix seems to be like right around noon.
Paris: Could it just be that they're the senior citizens thing, or maybe not?
Chris: Early bird special. Yeah, I guess they're having dinner at 16:30 too.
Paris: Right, yeah, maybe.
Chris: Or like, maybe it gets so hot. I don't know. It was just, I remember I was like, why do we need so many drivers in Phoenix? And it was because
Paris: The search window is just, is so tight, huh? Yeah. Really interesting. Yeah. Another kind of random question, but it's been on my mind. How many of the drivers are driving electric?
Chris: So we don't have an exact number on that. That is something we're looking forward to, like, rolling out this year is understanding more about how many drivers use electric vehicles, because then we can go and the goal is to get like a power purchase agreement with an EV charging, you know, like an EV go or Electrify America.
And then also offer some incentives to drivers. If they are using EV, we currently offset all of our carbon footprint. So anytime a driver picks up an order and then drives it to a delivery, we work with a company called Ecologi, a B corporation to offset that impact on the environment and that's through rain forest reclamation, water restoration projects, you know, a variety of different programs that they offer that we can invest in based upon those miles.
So, you know, we pay into that. If the person was using an EV, it would cost less. So we could pass that savings to the driver as opposed to, you know, to the Ecologi so we're seeing more and more of it. One driver was super excited. He was making enough money on the platform. He was finally able to buy like a Tesla model 3, and he was, I remember like I met him at a driver event in Austin, Texas, and he was just so hyped that like, he was finally able to do this. And now he had the EV and it was going to make that, and he does Uber and it was going to be great, so.
Paris: Yeah. I mean, aren't the unit economics much better for the driver when they're driving an EV because they can, especially if they've got a really good one that they could maybe go all day on, on a charge overnight at home. And that sure beats filling up the gas tank.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I drive an EV myself and I don't do a lot of deliveries, but just not having to go to the gas station and I have the charger in my garage. So like I plug it in at night, my gas bill is like nothing. So yeah, I mean, a driver could definitely do it. And especially now in this, you know, in the U.S. they're given that tax credit upfront with most of the cars when you buy it.
So they're becoming more and more affordable and, you know, it's just making sure you have a place to charge it.
(Midtro)
Paris: All right. Let's shift over now to the other side of the supply demand coin, which is your partners, merchants, restaurants. I guess this is the demand side or these are the people that are supplying the goods and food products, services to the end customers. How do you market to those folks?
Because you mentioned that a lot of them are local businesses and marketing to SMBs at the local level is very tough. I mean, you can't really rely on them searching for stuff. So paid search is not really great. Facebook could work, but it's not always reliable with when it's still B2B.
LinkedIn is no good because these are not the type of people that have LinkedIn profiles. So what do you do other than boots on the ground? How do you go and sign up these guys and get them on the app?
Chris: Yeah, no. And that was the question that kind of like daunted me in the very beginning. So the first way that I got into people's, I guess, in their face was instead of going and door knocking at the very start, like, hey, Mr. Business owner, Hey, Mr. Restaurant, like, can I deliver for you, and just get shunned out the door.
I just started going to like different tech stacks, point of sale systems, order aggregators, restaurant marketplaces, and saying like, hey, I can integrate with you and we can do your deliveries. And we're like, cool. So we would integrate with these different partners. And then instead of going and door knocking, it was all right, now you're in 30, 000 point of sale restaurants. I'm just a button there that they can hit for delivery. Or they're working with the order aggregator that sends them orders like a Marketplace, like a DoorDash or an ezCater. And we get the order and we go. And what happens there is we pick up that order and we deliver it.
And then we would get an email or a phone call from that restaurant like, hey, you delivered my order from this website, or you delivered my order for this point of sales system, how can I give you my other orders? And up in like, for the first four years of the business, that was the only way we grew our business was new markets with existing integrations and referrals from those integrations that they were like, hey, I'm glad you're doing my delivery for X, but I got deliveries for ABC.
I need those to go to. So, that was the biggest way we did it. When I first got going, like the very first day when I was like Dlivrd is going to do catering delivery. I went on Craigslist and I searched under jobs for catering delivery driver. And I looked at all the restaurants that were hiring catering delivery drivers.
And I would just send them an email like, hey, it's great that you're hiring for a driver. Imagine a whole fleet of drivers. And like pitching them that way. And 9 times out of 10, it didn't work because those people didn't believe in the gig space or gig economy. And they thought catering was too white glove for a gig worker.
But 1 time out of 10, it did. And most of those contracts that I got through like Craigslist emailing, we still work with today.
Paris: That's fascinating. I love that you went from a bottom up approach, from the technology integration, and then worked your way up, although, to play devil's advocate, then you're available in these platforms, but they still don't know you. I mean, I think you still have to establish some kind of brand recognition of Dlivrd as a brand for these mom and pops. Even if they are seeing you on a dashboard where there's you're 1 of 5 or 10 delivery options, how do you take that step? How do you create the brand awareness in a new market outside of becoming available in the technology platforms that they use?
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the biggest way that we do that is by, you know, connecting with the drivers. We still only have one and a half sales guys, like one full time one part time. And most of our referrals come in through like the driver world and through those other aggregator deliveries.
So that's the biggest way we find it. And then for like our bigger clients, like LinkedIn works, but for the small businesses, the SMBs, we're getting those and like, a lot of them, honestly, like, I don't know what they're Googling and I should probably figure that out right? But like our email inbox comes in and it's like, hey, I have this flower shop I need delivery for that. Like, and I think flower shops are historically someone who always had a lot of their own drivers, right? And their own vans. And that is slowly, but surely changing just with the way the labor market is. So we're seeing a lot of interest there. So I think a lot of people are going online and like searching, like I need a delivery driver cause it's hard to put people in jobs.
Paris: I'm going to share my screen. So all of this volume that we see here is in the U.S. so the top keyword is Amazon delivery driver, Walmart delivery driver, but then delivery driver jobs has 16, 000 searches. So these are your drivers but then delivery driver itself has 7. 7. So what you have here is an aggregation of people that are looking to drive and people that need drivers. It's all nestled in here. The total volume, according to this is 371, 000 across the entire U.S. And this could become localized. This is a treasure trove. Are you doing paid search? Google ads?
Chris: No. Cause as soon as we get into those keywords, we just get like, you know, we're bootstraps. We don't have any investment money. So if you Google like order food online or delivery driver for restaurant, like you're getting DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, and they're paying massive pay per click, you know.
Paris: Although if you see this column, this is the cost per click. The average cost per click here is well under a dollar in all these cases. It's probably because these are not consumers.
Chris: Right.
Paris: Looking to get something delivered to their door, but these are gig workers looking to drive and get driving jobs or they're the merchants looking to get a delivery service that they can connect with. I'm surprised to see how low the cost per clicks are extremely low, but tons of volume here. Yeah, this could be another way for you to get large volume of drivers quickly. If you need to ramp up quick in a market now, this is across the U. S. so this is not specific to a city. I know that with the way that you're operating, you'd have to localize this to a particular geography, I suppose. This is an interesting opportunity. Well, anyway, I'll stop the screen sharing. We can get back. Once you get me off on a tangent, anything related to search marketing, it's hard to reel me back in.
Tell me one thing that we haven't covered and we probably should have started with this is that your entrepreneurial journey has been a rollercoaster, I think, as you described it in the pre-show, walk me through your story and in particular, what were the times that you fell short and learned valuable lessons that helped you get to where you are today?
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. My first jaunt into entrepreneurship was in 2011. I was on vacation in Florida and there was a cheesesteak space and being from the Philly area is like, I got to make sure it's like a real cheesesteak. And I went and there was a sticker on the window and it said, we deliver with delivery dudes.
And I never heard of anything other than like Grubhub or like pizza or Chinese restaurants and basically they were like, what DoorDash is today is what they were then, but only for the strip of restaurants in Delray Beach. So I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. So I came home and I was like, oh, you know, I could probably build this.
So I bought a shoe website that I turned into food. So instead of ordering a pair of Nike's size 10, I made it so you could order a cheeseburger, you know, medium rare and started delivering for restaurants in my lease Toyota Camry. Cause I hated my job at the time. So I quit and started doing this and I was running that for a while.
I was the dispatcher. The orders were coming in on my iPad. And then I was calling the orders into the restaurant as I was driving to the restaurant, picking up the food, delivering it. Then the customer would call me like I was missing my fries. I'm the one that would take the call. I'll be like, I'll send a driver right out going, picking up the missing fries, delivering it to the customer.
Yeah, I was doing it all with the first four restaurants in suburban Philadelphia that I started just running around, racking up miles on this leased car. And it was great. And it was a lot of fun. I put every dollar that I made back into the company. All I kept was the tips that I got on the orders.
I kept those for myself and that's what I used to pay my bills for the most part. And then kept going with that. And I felt insulated cause I built this before DoorDash existed before Uber did Uber Eats. And then DoorDash came along and Uber Eats became a thing. And I was like, well, they're just going to do downtown Philadelphia.
They're not going to come 45 minutes outside of the city to my little suburban market. So I'm just doing my thing. And then next thing you know, Uber Eats and DoorDash identify my little market as like a hot zone because I basically primed the market for them. Customers were comfortable with using an app and a website to order their food.
There was a driver pool of people that were interested and like knew of at least the concept at that point where when I started, people were like, I don't want to use my own car for delivery. And I'm telling a restaurant, I need 20% of your order. They're like, I don't even make 20%. Why would I give you that?
So it was a really hard road to get going. And then once I got my groove. They just came in and destroyed me and then offered restaurants exclusive pricing to not work with any other delivery companies, were paying drivers more than I could pay them, and really just like, ruined it. And I mean, I guess at that point I could have just been like, well, I'm done.
I'm going back to corporate America. But I was doing a delivery. Cause that was the only way I was making money. And I was going to Boston market and I was picking up, a $15 sandwich order and the manager's like, listen, man, like, I'm really grateful of these small orders you bring me during lunchtime, but I need help delivering this 250 pharmaceutical rep order.
Can you help me with that? And I'm like, can I help you pick something up and drop it off? I don't have to find a customer. I don't have to pay a credit card fee. I don't got a market to them. You just want to tell me where to go and when to be there. And they're like, yeah. Well, yeah, I could do that.
So like, as one thing was like crashing and burning, here was this opportunity to work with, you know, I think six Boston markets in the Philadelphia area delivering these catering orders. So we started doing that and I never turned around and looked back at like the marketplace order, you know, customer facing business again.
Paris: That's cool. Yeah. I think a lot of times with startups, you don't really know where the product market fit is going to eventually land. And then it almost never is what you set out to do in the very beginning.
Chris: Right. Yeah. I remember arguing with a buddy of mine who was like helping me through the journey in the beginning, he was still working, you know, full time job in his career, but was helping me drive or like would work in my office and help me with ideas. And when the Boston market thing started, he's like, oh, you really got to focus on this.
I'm like, but that's just like during lunchtime, on demand and like the marketplace, like, that's all the time. And he's like, no focus on this. And luckily I listened to him because that's what, you know, turned into Dlivrd, right? When we re rebranded and, you know, built our technology for this, but then that was kind of just the start of the struggles.
Like when I mentioned earlier, like Philly to Baltimore, to DC, to San Fran, in the gig world, you got to pay these drivers and you got to pay them fast. So we had to pay the drivers the same day. So they got the deposit the next day. I didn't have any money. Like I said, we didn't have any backings.
It was all bootstrapped. So I was using my personal credit cards to pay all these drivers. And my credit score was fluctuating by like a hundred points every month because I was maxing my card out, then paying it off because I'm paying the driver every day, but the client's paying me on net 30. So, constantly moving money back forth.
Paris: You're floating all the cash for the drivers up front?
Chris: Yeah. And I like financially, it looked horrible. I had no cashflow because as soon as money came in, many went right back out. So nobody would write any kind of loan for it. So I went from struggling to pay, you know, 40 grand a month to drivers to now, you know, we process over $2 million a month to drivers, but luckily I was able to secure a line of credit because I don't have enough personal credit to float $2 million a month so.
Paris: Yeah. So you're still entirely bootstrapped. You haven't raised any money with equity yet?
Chris: No, no real need either, because we're one of the few, I would imagine in the delivery space that are actually profitable. And that's because we started with that, with the catering, there's more money to be made there. While in the on demand space, you're fighting over a buck or two. And our margins are much larger than that.
So it allowed us to be profitable and then put that energy into other things that aren't as big of moneymakers, but we had the piece there. We had the technology. We had, you know, a driver fleet, the things that cost a lot of money to get. We weren't building off of making pennies. We'd already made the money and then built those.
So kind of like a reverse way to do it.
Paris: Yeah. It also dawned on me a second ago that you're allowing these companies particularly like a catering company that they don't need to maintain their own fleet anymore. Do they? They don't have to own a few vans and they don't have to maintain vehicles and drivers anymore.
They can pretty much turn that from a fixed expense into a variable expense, which is almost always a good thing in a business.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And those are the people that we love working with the most, somebody who had their own drivers and whether they had their own drivers is they're using their own vehicles. They had their own drivers in a fleet. They're the best people to work with because they understand that delivery is a mess, right?
Like I always equate it to baseball. Like if a baseball player goes up and he hits the ball 3 times out of 10, I go into the hall of fame, right? That consistency will get you there in delivery there is no perfect day. It just doesn't exist, right? Like, so we just strive to go up there and, you know, hit the ball as many times as we can to do the best job we can.
And people that have lived that life, managing their own drivers or working with a fleet, they get that. The people that haven't are typically the hardest. Like, what do you mean the driver was late? Why were they in shorts? They're independent contractors. Like, well, no, I expect them to wear a uniform. No, they can't, but the people that had independent contractors or had drivers before they get it.
So they're the best to work with.
Paris: Yeah. I imagine that, I mean, the customer support also is complicated because you have people that might want to complain about the product itself. And maybe the food showed up and it was the wrong order, but they're going to take it out on the person who delivered it, I mean, do you get a lot of customer complaints that are really directed at the vendors and don't blame it on the messenger, so to speak?
Chris: Well, and it's honestly, it's a two way street in that sense. Yeah. I mean, the driver definitely catches the flack regardless if it's their fault or not, right?
And then there's also times the brand also catches flack if it's the driver's fault. When a brand uses Dlivrd to, you know, coordinate their deliveries, the consumer doesn't know.
They just know they went on to X, Y, Z website, click delivery, and here's their food. So when the food shows up late or the driver was they're not blasting Dlivrd. They're going and writing a Yelp or a Google review for that brand or that business, right? And then, you know, the same for when the driver shows up late because the restaurant took too long to prepare the food.
Or the restaurant messed the order up. They're the ones catching heat for it. So, again, it just ties like we strive for perfection in an imperfect system.
Paris: Yeah. I think it's just human nature to place the blame on the human face. That's bringing it to you. But also I think, yeah, it works the other way to restaurants, get the flack because I'm a customer, my money is going to that restaurant and it's up to them to figure out how to get it to me the right way on time.
But I can appreciate the complexity of that too. And just the customer service arm of your business. I'm sure it's active everyday.
Chris: Yeah, we process yesterday. Let's look at the call stats for last week. Just in phone calls. Our call center took and made 8.4 thousand phone calls Monday to Friday of last week.
Yeah. So that's not counting like text messages. So there's a lot of text messaging back and forth. And that doesn't count web chat either, like for like support, you know, through our website. So there's a lot of communication, good and bad, you know, for driver support, customer support.
Paris: Have you looked into AI as a solution to take over a lot of the customer support stuff that could be easily looked up? I mean, order status and stuff like that.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. We're working on, it's called task. Task GPT. It's a, you know, product that allow simple questions to be pulled from our system. So if a driver messages and says, hey, I'm running late for my order, it'll be able to take their phone number and their driver ID, see what order they're talking about and pin back.
Oh, are you talking about your order for blah, blah, blah? And then if they're like, yes, then it'll go and notify that customer through their communication channel. Like, hey, the driver for order for customer Joe is running behind ETA is 10 minutes. So, you know, we're building some cool stuff out like that to take some of the silly stuff out of the way between customers or between drivers and us.
And then for customers and us, we're processing a lot of more like self-service tools and a chat bot that can give status on like, you know, what's the update of my order, when should I expect delivery? So, you know, we have some really neat stuff coming there to kind of to quell that down and I don't want it to ever replace all of communication because I'm a big proponent of like, you know, automating what you can so you can humanize what's important.
I don't want it to ever be where like, you can't get ahold of somebody if you really need help and you're always just going to get this AI chat bot because I think the human connection is a part of why brands use us and why drivers drive on our platform. So it's balancing that AI, that automation and that human touch point.
Paris: Yeah, gotcha. Well, this has been great. I don't think I have any other questions. We really covered a lot. And is there anything that I didn't ask you, Chris, that you wished I would have asked you or something that we had planned to talk about and never got to, or anything else you think that could be just helpful for our audience, anybody out there that's entrepreneur or aspiring marketer?
Chris: Yeah, I mean, I guess we covered a lot of things. One thing that I always, like to, I don't know, not leave on, but like departing wisdom or something, I guess is like one thing that I've always found that's worked and got me, I hate saying like to the success that I am, cause it sounds so kind of like condescending, but like everything I did in the beginning would be defined as not scalable, right?
Back in the day, driving, dispatching, delivering those orders with Dlivrd, delivering the orders. I was copy and pasting all the orders into the system in the morning before we had the API integrations. These weren't scalable things, but they were the things that differentiated me from the competitors because I was like, yeah, I can do that.
So the biggest thing that I look back on is like, do things that don't scale so you can scale, right? It gave me great opportunity to learn my client, learn my customer, learn my processes. And you know, that's something that only an entrepreneurial mindset, you know, can kind of do. So if you're a new marketing customer and you only want to do Google meets and you never want to meet somebody in real life, but they're like, I need to meet in real life.
That's not scalable to go meet every customer. But when you're starting, go meet that customer, go do things that you wouldn't normally do or outside of what your plan is to build that scale.
Paris: I think that's great advice. And I think to add to that, I'd say to really appreciate the value that you can create through scale. You first have to experience the pain and disorganization of doing things that are not scalable. I mean, I think it's true in a lot of aspects of life, but doing things first that are not scalable can build that foundation that, all right, if we're able to automate this or scale this. Now I realized how much we're saving because I did it the hard way and I realized how much it sucked and, you can appreciate the value creation of scaling, having been in the trenches doing non-scalable things.
And of course, there's the humanizing approach too which you've talked about a lot here, which is doing those non-scalable things, going and visiting and having an in person meeting. It's a human touch factor as well. And I think that can keep you connected to the roots of the business and the mission, which is about community and a touch of personalization that the huge whales in your industry are not really focused on.
Chris: Yeah. Equate it to like anybody who's old enough to remember phones before iPhones, right? Like texting, hitting the four button three times to get to like the L, right? Like that's the definition of like doing something unscalable until you can scale it like texting. Like imagine writing a text message by having to hit each button three times or two times to get to your letter.
And now you can just, you know, you have a full, you know, full keyboard on your phone. Like that's how I like visualize when someone's like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, think about how you used to text and think about how you text now, put that mindset into your business, do everything that way, the hard way, the long way until you can get it to do it the quick and the short way.
And then that, you know, that will hopefully ground you and you know, bring all those self-realizations and you get to like sit back and be like,This is much easier. This is great.
Paris: Yeah. Well, that person that you described, it has to be at least 30, 35 years or maybe older than 30 to remember trying to bang out a text message with a numeric keypad. I've done enough of that and it's painful, but then the text messages were so short and you would never, you know, you would write your as a, you are and it was given a specific language to it just to keep it short.
Chris: No grammar, no punctuation. Just straight to the point.
Paris: Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, a period of a period is another four button pushes. I mean, why do that if it's not needed?
Chris: Yeah. No one's judging you.
Paris: Yeah. All right, Chris. Well, I think we've got to wrap it up, but this has been fantastic. I learned a lot about Dlivrd, fantastic business. I hope our audience has gotten an appreciation of the challenges and nuances of a marketplace marketing to both maintaining supply and demand on two sides. And, it's been a great conversation. So thanks for being with me today.
Chris: Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's a great talking, Dlivrd and marketing and here for it.
Paris: And, last quick question, but where is the best place for people to find you online?
Chris: LinkedIn is probably where I'm the most active. I have a problem with like transparency. So all my social channels are open. My LinkedIn, my Instagram, my Facebook, any driver, any client can see anything I do where I'm at, what I'm up to. But LinkedIn is probably the most resourceful place where I talk more about like business and strategy and marketing and Dlivrd updates and stuff.
Paris: All right, great. Well, nice chatting with you today. Have a great, great day ahead.
Chris: Thanks. You as well.