The Essential Last Mile
By Sarah Morris
Sarah is the call center manager and director of client services for SF New Deal. She was previously employed by Deliv, a Menlo Park-based last mile start-up, for six years and has worked extensively as a relationship manager and community organizer. In lieu of a formal business education, she takes cues from her theater training: work collectively, speak to be heard, and always come prepared to improvise.
Courier Danny Tzekbaas from Rocketeer picks up meals from House of Dim Sum. Photo by Ian Tuttle.
Suddenly the holidays are upon us again. Anyone who works for a carrier or courier or crowd-sourced delivery company gathers their grit in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and rides through the fever pitch with nary a second’s rest until January. In the logistics world, it’s referred to by the lone syllable: “peak.”
I’ve been in the last mile space for years and do not say this lightly: Christmas has nothing on COVID. For small businesses, the last mile has become the safest point of contact with most customers and the past eight months have subjected the logistics industry to an unprecedented grueling gait , as on-demand delivery shifted from a luxury amenity to an essential service and transformed its workforce into a frontline peer with medical professionals. Obstructed by the titans of industry and mobile phone apps, customers tend to forget that delivery companies are often themselves small businesses. Shelter in place has further exaggerated expectations for same-day, on-demand, rush and all other permutations of the “disrupted” delivery space, but it has not created a universal state of wellbeing for all players. Until June, I myself had been employed by a logistics start-up where I’d been an early hire. Ask me how I know.
Not long before my layoff, I prepared for a different holiday: March’s eccentric pastry jubilee, Pi Day. 2020’s calendar placed it on a Saturday, so I’d strapped in for 48 hours of madness including anticipated corporate celebrations on Friday. Instead, a national emergency broke. Offices were abandoned and company-wide gatherings cancelled along with hundreds of orders; those who’d planned to celebrate at home halted to consider what they might be inviting in with their delivery. During the following weeks I watched my clients in all industries repel in opposite directions - some towards permanent closure, others shooting past economies of scale to their breaking point. A butcher in DC ran out of freezer space when sales climbed 600% in two days, flower shops shuttered on the brink of Mother’s Day. One wine merchant reclassified their operation as an essential business in order to reopen, only to shut down two weeks later so their exhausted warehouse workers could recover. A San Francisco pie-maker started a vast mutual aid network of 100+ local restaurant partners that, by some grace and aforementioned grit, has delivered a million meals to the city’s at-risk populations (you may have heard of this one).
Bike couriers Jerry and Kelsy from Candlestick Couriers pick up meals from New Harmony Cafe. Photo by Ian Tuttle.
Meal delivery is not new, but it’s also never been easy. Though SF New Deal’s restaurant and community partnerships are often highlighted by virtue of their uniqueness to this moment, we also work with local couriers and could not - full stop - distribute the 35,000+ meals produced each week without them.
Our partners (Candlestick Courier, Rocketeer, Modern Courier) not only deliver meals but operate as public health enforcers, client wellness scouts, city navigators and cold chain experts. Before working with SF New Deal, each courier must be certified in ServSafe’s COVID-19 Delivery Precautions. Delivery drivers are trained in social distancing, proper sanitation practices and PPE usage. While COVID containment is the chief concern, delivery teams take a “neighbor’s keeper” approach to wellbeing, alerting SF New Deal to any client interaction that may suggest a community member is in need of support - for their mental health, companionship and connection, or unrelated symptoms of age. Together, couriers and restaurants and non-profit teams and volunteers form the net to catch those most vulnerable people.
We elected to work with independently operated couriers not only because it is consistent with SF New Deal’s mission of supporting small, local businesses but because our people-centered program requires countless numbers of specific and last minute accommodations. Larger delivery companies may have greater material resources at their behest, but in our experience the smaller couriers are most willing to go the extra mile for our clients and accommodate the high number of last minute modifications that our program supports.
Bike courier Jerry distributes meals along his route. Photo by Ian Tuttle.
Then there are the usual operational foibles to consider: how do a handful of drivers deliver tens of thousands of meals every week without spoilage, leaks, or traffic delays? When the core of your business is founded on an “it takes a village” mentality, the answer is simple - get others involved. In addition to our courier partners, SF New Deal operates a network of volunteer drivers who’ve donated over 1000+ hrs of their time to assist with deliveries each week. RideOS, a routing & mobility platform, allowed utilization of their software to batch and optimize routes for geographically scatter-shot orders within the Great Plates program; it has allowed us to reduce a particularly snarled, real-world version of the Traveling Salesman Problem (involving 20+ pickup locations/restaurants and 700+ drop sites) to mere minutes of code-crunching. Cruise - arguably, the heir apparent to last mile innovation - offered up their self-driving vehicles and filled them with fifty breakfasts here or two hundred dinners there in between data-gathering city drives.
While the accrual of so many different solutions and partnerships has enabled SF New Deal to feed San Francisco’s most vulnerable since March, the last election cycle centered a statewide proposition debating the merits of what an acceptable baseline of wages and benefits should be - a battle familiar to many delivery partners. For so long, “gig economy” workers (though I doubt this is how they’d self-identify, given the choice) have been viewed as a temporary stopgap between traditional carrier methods and eventual automation. Delivery app drivers are a diverse group: students paying their way to a more stable future; retirees whose nest egg winnowed away in the Great Recession; parents in need of scheduling flexibility; burgeoning artists or recent transplants putting down roots; dedicated driving professionals. Whoever they may be individually, delivery drivers around the nation learned this March that they had one common identity: they are indisputably essential, and deserve the protections of other essential workers.
Our partners load Cruise Automation cars with meals for delivery. Photo by Jacob Bindman.
Last year, when the prospect of a global health emergency seemed laughable, my former employer took steps well ahead of AB-5’s passage to reclassify its California drivers as employees, replete with benefits and worker protections. Though the organization has since dissolved, there were lasting consequences. When work disappeared, our drivers were able to apply for unemployment without the bureaucratic hoops posed by independent contracting; they had medical coverage during the onset of a pandemic. Looking towards a post-COVID landscape, where Prop 22 is irrevocably passed and referendums prohibitively outlined in its fine print, how will we treat these essential citizens? Will we remember that they kept our seniors fed and sequestered, or bridged the divide between struggling businesses and their customers? Just as we advocate for our partners in the food and beverage industry or those vulnerable populations we serve, it’s imperative that the public continue to push for fair policies and worker protections within the last mile space. When COVID eventually recedes into the background of history, I hope we remember that the delivery drivers in our respective cities went the last and longest mile for each of us, time and again, while we cleaved to the relative safety of our homes. They deserve no less from us now.
If you are in need of a courier service, please consider working with Candlestick Courier, Rocketeer, or Modern Courier
Courier Danny Tzekbaas from Rocketeer loads meals into his vehicle. Photo by Ian Tuttle.