Chris Heffernan, CEO of Dlivrd
Last week, Dlivrd, a catering-delivery company specializing in last-mile orders, launched its first driver app. But CEO Chris Heffernan isn’t doing cartwheels about the novelty of it. “I mean it’s cool and all,” he said in an interview. But where he is up on his hands is about the app’s early adoption.
“We rolled it out to Baltimore drivers first, and then the state of Florida, and so far 70 percent of our drivers have moved over to it,” he said, which has exceeded his expectations. And come Monday, the company will present the app to the rest of Dlivrd’s community of 15,000 drivers in 160 markets.
The app’s creation dates back to pandemic times. Unlike most people, Heffernan considers that period a bit of good fortune.
“We had been growing so quickly — we were on pace to 6x our revenue from 2019 — that pausing allowed us to reflect on things we needed, like our own technology,” he said. “We reached out to a developer in Pakistan who helped us assemble an off-shore team to build the technology so we no longer had to band-aid our stack. What we’ve designed is more than just an app. It’s everything behind it, including our customer-service dashboard.”
But the app is pretty snazzy. It will need to be to be to handle the company’s projected volume. Its trajectory has been growing like Wembanyama. “We had our busiest week ever last week,” Heffernan said.
Dlivrd may be benefiting from a nationwide surge in catering, fueled in part by companies dangling free food as a return-to-work enticement. Heffernan has certainly noticed companies behaving differently lately.
“Not only are we seeing more orders, we’re seeing more consistency in the orders. We’re not going to an office once a month. We’re going to an office three times a week,” he said.
Heffernan sees plenty of runway in workplace demand. But he is also steering the company into new e-commerce and meal-prep delivery spaces. Of course everything hinges on Dlivrd’s relationship with drivers. He has something in the app he thinks they’re going to love.
“We have a feature that will help them find available parking spots,” he said.
Well if that won’t do it nothing will.
