The inspiration for Campus Delivery came from hungry friends, according to Ashish Bhatt '07, president of the Cooperative. "We watched the habits of our friends on weekends. They would often be with company, watching a movie or just sitting around, and they would get hungry," he said. "They would order from the same one or two places that offered free delivery. We realized that if presented with more options, our friends would order food from a larger variety of restaurants."
Bhatt hopes that Campus Delivery will provide a service that students need but cannot find elsewhere. "Campus Delivery is filling a niche that other delivery services have left virtually untouched," he said. "Students will choose Campus Delivery because of its low price (due to its being a cooperative) and speed."
Campus Delivery currently delivers from Amherst Chinese, Panda East and Fresh Side. The most notable is Fresh Side, as Campus Delivery is the only delivery service from the restaurant-Fresh Side is not on Delivery Express' list of establishments. Although there are only three restaurants participating as of now, the Cooperative is working to have several other restaurants-among them Antonio's-join the list as soon as possible. "So right now, we're trying to expand the options we provide to more than just Asian food," explained Bhatt. Bhatt also said the Cooperative hopes that expanding the list of participating restaurants will increase the delivery service's business on campus.
Campus Delivery Cooperative's recent grand opening was a success, and the members of the cooperative are expecting to see their business grow continuously. Although there are several restaurant-operated delivery services in town, not all restaurants deliver, and the only restaurant-independent service charges $3.50 per delivery and requires a minimum order of $10.00. Campus Delivery offers customers a 10 percent discount on all menu items from all the restaurants with whom they are affiliated. Further, the delivery charge is only $1.50. These features are an important way to appeal to and learn about customers according to Bhatt. "As a new business, we wanted to obtain quickly as high a daily volume of customers as possible," he said. "We also want to learn about how our customers react to our price."
In order to help appeal to students, Campus Delivery offers a number of economic incentives to its customers. For orders greater than $16.66, students will pay less to Campus Delivery than they would if they made direct purchases. Campus Delivery has other attractive perks to entice students to use their service. The sixth order one places with Campus Delivery is free of delivery fee.
Despite Campus Delivery's low delivery fee, 10 percent discount, and free delivery on the sixth order, the students involved still expect to earn a profit. "As a corporation, we can afford to give the large discount with a low delivery fee because we have no single owner or executive who expects to receive an unequal share of the profits," explained Bhatt. "Paying our members, our delivery people and operators, is our largest expense."
The current deliverers are student-volunteers, but Bhatt said the group hopes in the future to replace its student employees with local residents who frequent the Amherst Survival Center. "We would like to work with the volunteers at the Survival Center to find underemployed people-preferably people we can work with as peers-who would want to become members [owners] of the cooperative," said Bhatt.
There are several challenging aspects to that plan. "Our goal of working with the Survival Center will be difficult to achieve, but we are continuing to work toward it," Bhatt said. "Our main difficulty is handling the many issues that are involved in working with people we don't know who live relatively far away. Also, the volunteers at the Survival Center are wary about working with a new student-managed organization whose work they have never witnessed."
The delivery service operates on Friday and Saturday nights from 7-11 p.m. The Cooperative plans to increase Campus Delivery's operating hours as business grows. It is also possible that Campus Delivery also will expand ultimately to service students at UMass-Amherst.