New Service Delivers Snacks to Late Night Customers

April 11, 2006

New Service Delivers Snacks to Late Night Customers

WASHINGTON–DC Snacks, a part c-store and part bike messenger service, is delivering convenience store items such as ice cream, pizza, and health aids, to customers’ doors within 35 minutes, reported The Washington Times .

“I’ve heard it described as instant messaging for food,” said Matthew Mandell, who founded the company on George Washington University’s campus in early 2003, told the newspaper.

Nearly three months ago, the Washington, D.C.-area DC Snacks expanded its delivery zone to west downtown and has seen orders jump 10 percent.

“We’ve had requests from people who moved off campus,” Mandell, president and chief executive officer, told the newspaper. “We expanded based on demand to serve a larger population.”

DC Snacks opens at 8 p.m. and is open until 1 a.m. Monday to Wednesday, 4 a.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 a.m. on Sunday. Its staff of 50 fills orders placed on its Web site, DCSnacks.com, and bikes them to customers, reported the newspaper.

“Our customer is someone who is working in a law firm downtown at night and wants some cigarettes or chips to get them through the night to students studying at the library to someone partying and looking for margarita salt,” he told The Washington Times . “Margarita salt can be hard to find.”

DC Snacks operates from a building “near the White House,” Mandell said in the report, declining to be more specific.

“There is a certain amount of mystery about it that people click on the computer and [their] food shows up,” he said.

Prices are relatively consistent with grocery or convenience stores. DCSnacks charges a delivery fee of $1.50 for orders under $10.

The store sells nearly every product found in a convenience store and about 20 items are added every week, Mandell told the newspaper.

“We’ve had everything from someone looking for condoms, Red Bull, NoDoz and frosting to someone looking for 15 pints of ice cream,” he told the newspaper.

Mandell hopes to expand the company’s delivery zone even farther downtown in September.

Since 2003, the company’s revenue has grown between 300 percent to 400 percent. Mandell expects the same type of growth this year alone, according to the report.

“We’re in a period of hyper growth right now. In the future we’re potentially looking for investors to grow to our full potential,” he told the newspaper.

Original Context