4 years ago, in the darkest days of the pandemic, I joined neighbors to start a program we called North Beach Delivers. The concept was simple - we would allow anyone to order from a restaurant for delivery to their home delivered by a volunteer with no fees.
We had no idea if this would work. We started with one restaurant. 20 people ordered. The next week we did it again with a new restaurant and 40 people ordered. Some 12 months later, we had worked with nearly 50 restaurants across North Beach, Russian Hill, Chinatown + Nob Hill.
We generated about $250k in sales for restaurants, all without any delivery fees. We sent fleets of volunteers out and climbed the hills on ebikes. We scrapped together an ordering system and tracking software. And, for every restaurant we featured, it was their best sales day.
I'll always be grateful to everyone who made this bright spot possible in the midst of the darkness of the pandemic. The fellow organizers (Sri, Eric, Teddy), the dozens of volunteers, and the hundreds of neighbors who ordered with us.