Small Businesses Helping Small Businesses Persevere

In this time of crisis while people are unable to leave their homes unless completely necessary, rideOS wants to help community businesses weather this storm and safely deliver food and other goods to those complying with the California Shelter in Place rules.

Next week, we’re starting a 3-month pilot program called Adapt Delivery to provide delivery services for local businesses through a communal pool of drivers. This is a completely free temporary option, that you can use in addition to or in replacement of delivery platforms, and it will hopefully allow businesses to retain/compensate their employees during these hard times. Small businesses will get access to a rideOS-provided website to input orders. rideOS’ software will batch orders to customers close to each other together, and have the closest driver come pick up the orders when they’re ready. We also ask all businesses in the pilot, if they are able, to provide at least one driver to the community pool. This is a way for you to support your employees and helps build a crowdsourced, community-oriented pool of drivers that help a variety of local businesses.

If you are interested in delivering your goods and/or providing drivers for the program, fill out this form. Restaurants, bakeries, cafes, pharmacies, grocers, wholesalers, etc. are all welcome to participate!

How it will work

You will need to let your customers know that you’re taking orders over email or phone. Once your business has received an order, you input it into the free, rideOS-provided website. You’ll need to include the order’s pickup location (ex: your place of business), delivery location (ex: the customer’s address), and delivery instructions from the customer (ex: “Enter #1234 on the callbox to get into the building”). That order will be sent to the closest driver, who will pick up the order and deliver it to the customer as quickly as possible.

Interested?

If you’re a small business in San Francisco interested in participating, please fill out this form to let us know. Restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies, etc, are all welcome! We’ll be in touch about next steps within the week.

FAQ:

Program eligibility for small businesses:

You are:

1. You are a local San Francisco restaurant, bakery, cafe, grocery store, pharmacy, retail store, or establishment safely operating during Shelter in Place orders.
2. Your orders do not have special handling needs, such as signature requirements or larger trucks.
3. If we get too much interest, we will prioritize stores that can also offer drivers to the pool. Drivers will need to have access to an iPhone to run a rideOS-provided driver app.

What do you get:

1. Completely free website to input orders, batch orders to customers close to each other together, and have the closest driver come pick up the order when it’s ready.
2. Access to the pool of drivers to help you deliver your orders.

What happens after the 3 months:

Honestly, we are not sure yet. With all the uncertainty, we may extend the program beyond that point if the program becomes self-sufficient. For now, you have our promise to support the program until June 20.

Why are you doing this? What does rideOS get out of it?

As members of the San Francisco community, we’re heart-broken at the devastation that’s happening to our local businesses and their employees. We have an immense privilege to be able to work from home and to have the technology at our disposal to provide a service like this. We want to do as much as we can to help our local community weather this storm. Beyond feedback on our technology we won’t be receiving or taking any contributions — monetary or otherwise.