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Oh, these kids today. Hopping on their bicycles and delivering hot food in icy conditions. Servicing hip joints like Melt and Handlebar. Quitting their jobs to start new businesses and make their (eco-friendly) dreams come true.
The kids are Spoked Couriers LLC, and the kids are alright. Kayce Shelton, Matt Hartman, and Chris Vela (left to right) are filling their bicycle tires and wending around potholes beginning on Jan. 1. Their new people-powered restaurant-delivery service will ferry chocolate-banana waffles from Melt, Lobster Rangoon from Atomic Cowboy, pelmeni Russian dumplings in broth from HandleBar and what Hartman says will be an entirely new menu of delivery-friendly foods from “sex-positive café” Shameless Grounds to hungry St. Louisans.
Hartman says he is in negotiations with about 10 more restaurants and closing in on deals to deliver their meals, which is good, because Spoked has a total of 11 delivery-bicyclists on its roster (including three women, which is unusual, he said). They’re poised for growth.
Spoked will cover South City, with concentrations on eateries in the Grove, Cherokee Street, South Grand and Benton Park neighborhoods, plus points between.
Starting a bike-delivery business in the dead of winter is bold, but Hartman says that real bikers care not about a little nip in the air.
“We already ride year-round everywhere,” he said. “None of the owners even own a car. It’s the same for many of our riders. You just have to wear the right layers. You can get by in 15 degrees with three simple layers if they’re the right layers, and you get used to it.”
“I enjoy the silence, too,” he added, waxing romantic. “That’s my favorite thing about riding in the wintertime is the silence.”
Spoked will not use a centralized office or dispatcher, said Hartman, because they don’t have to.
“We’re working with some friends in San Francisco who run 400 to 500 orders a day, TCB Courier,” he said. “They have no dispatcher. We’re using some software that they’ve developed. It taps into the POS system at the restaurant. It feeds that to a queue. Our riders can see it – all they need is a smartphone. It’s a fairly simple business model.”
Fans of food-delivery tech will get a kick out of the rigid bags Spoked will use to ferry the food unmolested, too.
“We’re working with a company in L.A. called Road Runner Bags to develop backpacks that hold two large clamshells side-by-side, and six clamshells from top to bottom,” he said. “They have an internal framework and they’re waterproof. We’re also getting flat racks for the front of the bike.”
For those keeping score, Spoked will compete with the Bike Waiter, a Texas-based bike-delivery outfit with bicyclists delivering food in two cities, San Antonio and St. Louis. (The Bike Waiter purchased the former Griffin Delivery from Andy Heaslet.) The local biking community is, like so many other subcultures in St. Louis, one where everybody knows everybody else.
“We all know each other,” said Hartman. “I’m good friends with Andy [Heaslet]. I worked for South Grand Delivery right before it became Griffin. Chris [Vela] worked for Andy for almost two years. Kayce [Shelton] used to work for the Bike Waiter.”
Indeed, the bike culture around these parts encompasses bike polo, bike shops, the Naked Bike Ride, HandleBar, the Moonlight Ramble, bike races, the Banana Bike Brigade, Trailnet and so on. Biking enthusiasts tend to be a young, sweaty, earthy, socially conscious bunch.
“I’ve worked in the bicycle industry for a couple years now,” said Hartman, “and bikes are my life. I work for Big Shark, selling and fixing bikes, building race courses and going to trade shows. Spoked Couriers is an outgrowth of SpokedSTL, which is basically a group of friends who go on long or fast rides, and put on races and events. We created a legit bicycling team last year, and we’re working on the Penrose Park Velodrome project, too.”
Those who share Hartman’s all-encompassing, romantic view of bike culture will get a kick out of this brief video teaser created for Spoked.
“We’re excited to quit our day jobs and work for ourselves and ride our bikes and hang out in our communities,” he said.
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Photo Credit: Chris Green of A Greener Film.
