Courtesy Food Pedaler
With restaurants in St. Louis City and County forced to close their dining rooms this week due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis, a local vendor hopes to help shop owners make the transition to online ordering.
Food Pedaler, an online ordering and delivery service, is offering its ordering and takeout hosting platform to any restaurant in St. Louis City and University City that isn’t yet set up to take orders online. Owner Alex Ward says Food Pedaler will handle all transactions and communications between customers and the restaurant, then provide each establishment with daily direct deposit and a full summary of sales. This way, Ward says, restaurants will have an easier way to offer takeout and curbside pickup options as they deal with the transition to new business models.
“I’m sure plenty of restaurants out there have their own online ordering,” Ward says. “But with the smaller mom and pop shops, if they haven’t developed their technology far enough to offer that, this is a very simple and quick way to get this running this week or as soon as humanly possible so they have another revenue stream.”
Many restaurants began announcing contingency plans earlier this week, even before St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson and St. Louis County Executive Dr. Sam Page declared Tuesday that restaurants must either move to curbside, carryout, and/or delivery service or shut their doors entirely. For the establishments that would like to remain open after Thursday but aren’t equipped to take online orders, Ward hopes this new temporary service will ease the burden on shop owners who might be struggling.
“We’re open to anybody who needs software service,” Ward says.
As the coronavirus crisis impacted the restaurant industry this week, Ward determined that Food Pedaler’s standard commission of up to 30 percent on deliveries wasn’t going to be feasible for most restaurants. Instead, Ward is asking restaurants for 8 percent commission—3 percent to cover credit card fees and 5 percent to cover costs to Food Pedaler—in exchange for building an online menu and ordering system. Food Pedaler will then make sure that customers have the option to order online for takeout or curbside pickup.
Food Pedaler will also continue its delivery services by bike for its current partners that are remaining open.
“St. Louis restaurants make Food Pedaler what it is,” Ward says. “Without them, Food Pedaler would die. We want to do what we can to help restaurants stay alive."
Restaurants interested in partnering with Food Pedaler can contact Ward at alex@foodpedaler.com.
