John Crudele

John Crudele

Business

I sweated out an hour of food delivery — on foot

I was a foot soldier in the great New York City food wars.

But only for an hour. And I will tell you why in a bit.

Each of the past several years around this time, I’ve taken a very, very short-term job to remind myself why I became a journalist in the first place. Sure, journalism would let me help and inform people and make the world a better place.

But I also wanted a job that didn’t make me sweat too much. We’ve all heard the phrase “no sweat.” Well, that’s what I said when my high school guidance counselor asked what profession I wanted.

I said I wanted one with “no sweat.” And thus began my career planning.

Two years ago, I sweated out half a shift at my favorite Jersey Shore bar when I poured beer during happy hour — and last year I decided to prep horses for races at Monmouth Park down by the Jersey Shore.

This year was something different. I tried my hand at delivering lunch to office workers who didn’t want to go out to get their own food.

They didn’t want to sweat in the 90-plus degree temperatures on the day in late July when I worked for DoorDash, one of the food delivery services you see around town.

Food delivery is a $30 billion industry nationwide, a Morgan Stanley study last year found. If you exclude pizza, it’s only a $4 billion industry, but DoorDash and others have attracted lots of investor cash.

So I had to find out more about this growing sector.

I did this for exactly an hour and sweated for it. And I will also explain in a minute why my career in food delivery was so short.

DoorDash was founded in 2013 by three Stanford University students. The company works like Uber. “Dashers,” as its delivery people are called, get assignments from the company’s app and scurry off to pick up food and bring it to the buyers within a certain amount of time.

It’s similar to the way Uber drivers get an assignment to pick up passengers.

As you no doubt have noticed, there are a lot of people who deliver food in places like Manhattan. All those kamikaze bicyclists with huge, insulated bags on their backs are after just one thing — meeting their deadlines. And no red light is going to stop them.

But here’s my problem. Those bike deliverers are the cavalry of the food business. I was a foot soldier because — and this shocks even me — I haven’t ridden a bike in roughly a half century.

So we walked. And as armies determined centuries ago, walking is not as efficient as riding.

But efficient we needed to be because not only is the competition already intense but it’s also likely to get worse if Amazon, which has upended the retailing industry, gets its way and is allowed to buy Whole Foods.

The fear in the restaurant industry in the city is that Amazon will use technology to somehow deliver your lasagna faster than the average trattoria can and get you fresh tomatoes before the vines realize they are missing.

“This is kinda like the new paper route,” says my DoorDash companion as he and I are cutting it close with a delivery of healthy donuts from a shop on West 23rd Street to the customer on West 42nd Street near Port Authority.

The next job is to pick up sushi from a very busy fast food place on Lexington Avenue and— deliver it to someone in the W.R. Grace Building on West 42nd Street within a half hour.

Our success will depend a lot on whether the food is ready when we get there. And it is. So we ace this assignment. Jeremy, the customer, has his sushi 15 minutes earlier than he expected.

DoorDash raised nearly $60 million over several rounds of financing and was rumored to be valued at around $700 million during those funding discussions.

Me? I made $20.45 during my one-hour job, tips included. Put me on a bike and I could have had a nice $30-a- hour haul.

But you have to like to sweat.