Cartwheel, an on-demand delivery management platform, acquired some new partners as it looks to expand dramatically across the off-premises space.
The company, fresh from a recent $3 million fundraise, announced it was partnering with both Square and the Restaurant Marketing and Delivery Association (RMDA). The partnerships land on both sides of the delivery marketplace. Restaurants that use Square can implement the technology to offer their own delivery fleet management and delivery services connected with RMDA can use the software to manage their delivery fleets.
In the Square partnership, Cartwheel will connect with updated connectivity within the Square ecosystem to integrate fleet management for in-house delivery teams or outsourced drivers. That’s something Square Head of Restaurants Bryan Solar said is especially important today. As staffing costs and inflationary pressures mount, eking out margin wherever a restaurant can is mission-critical.
“Creating higher-margin delivery has become critical to the success of restaurants,” said Solar. “Square is excited to have Cartwheel be one of the first companies to access Square’s updated delivery API. We know it’s critical to our sellers and we believe Cartwheel is among the best in the market to give our sellers the flexibility, control and, more importantly, economics that restaurants need to succeed.”
Square merchants can set up flexible rules for their business, opting to send deliveries to an in-house fleet all the time or when the fleet is at capacity, outsource deliveries. Or, merchants can outsource all delivery to white-label logistics, which tend to carry a lower margin for deliveries.
For example, DoorDash-originated deliveries command a 15 to 30 percent fee, 15 percent for orders via Grubhub delivered by restaurant staff and 2.9 percent from its white-label program called Storefront.
Cartwheel co-founder and CEO Alex Vasilkin said the partnership will help get many more restaurant operators access to company tools. The partnership with the RMDA means the 550 regional delivery networks will have access to new tools.
“Cartwheel has been involved with the RMDA community for years, even as a member during our time building a courier company, and we are proud to have contributed to the group’s early foundation,” said Vasilkin. “We are thrilled to offer our delivery management technology to RMDA members and fellow delivery service providers nationwide, empowering them to maximize their delivery capabilities.”
On top of the standard toolset, he said courier network operators can white label the offering and maintain their branding. Levy Yakubov, founder of FULFLLD, a delivery network that promises on-time deliveries and high-touch service in Miami, Los Angeles, New York, Austin and Boston, said it was the key to scale. In a case study with Cartwheel, Yakubov said the technology built internally worked but wasn’t ready for massive scale, and there were other inefficiencies.
“FULFLLD is expanding rapidly, and Cartwheel’s technology scales seamlessly as we grow,” said Yakubov. “We scaled from five cities to eight in just three months while achieving a 98.5 percent on-time delivery rate, reducing time-to-quote by 30 percent, and minimizing carbon footprint thanks to intelligent route optimization within the technology.”
Andrew Simmons, president of the RMDA, said there are many companies like FULFLLD that need better technology to scale.
“Cartwheel offers an advanced solution for delivery programs that seek to scale, and we are proud to partner with them to bring state-of-the-art delivery management technology to our members,” said Simmons.
Cartwheel also partners with Olo (NYSE: Olo) and ChowNow.
