TOAD sharing a bigger piece of the pie with local restaurants

By Ian Hunter

A meal delivered to your door is one of life’s simple pleasures. As the demand for takeout has skyrocketed during the pandemic, many restaurants discovered that partnering with big-name delivery apps may have been more than they bargained for.

That’s where Rob Puschelberg saw a chance to help local businesses. He created Take Out and Delivery (or TOAD for short) as a local option to combat the high fees charged by conglomerate meal delivery services.

During the early days of the first lockdown, with his karaoke business at a standstill, he reached out to his friend who owns Driver For Hire looking for work. That led to Puschelberg launching his own local delivery app.

“As I was doing deliveries, I'm hearing all these restaurant owners complaining about the fees and the service with the big delivery apps,” Puschelberg said. “I got to thinking that there's got to be a better way than 30 percent on every order.”

TOAD’s owner said apps like Skip the Dishes or Uber Eats take as much as a 30 percent commission. As a result, restaurants see much of their razor-thin profits evaporate to third-party providers.

Puschelberg’s friend offered to lend some of his drivers to the venture, while another friend who’s a retired web developer worked on the back end of the project. Together they developed the TOAD app which is a dispatch, restaurant and driver app all in one.

“We were bringing in more restaurants under the premise that we don't want anything from you,” Puschelberg said. “We don't want any money from you. All we're doing is collecting a delivery fee. That's where our revenue is coming from. We just want to see restaurants stay afloat.” 

As of now, TOAD has over 80 local restaurants using the app to send takeout deliveries to customers. On their busiest night during the dinner rush hour, TOAD might have close to 20 drivers delivering meals around Waterloo Region.

With restaurants operating from a takeout-only model during the early months of the pandemic, many establishments had no choice but to implement a meal delivery service or subcontract deliveries to a third party.

“There are a lot of restaurants that don't think they can handle adding delivery,” Puschelberg said. “And there's a lot of places that people want to eat from, but with the pandemic, don't want to go out.

“We're just giving people the option to get food or other products wherever they want without having to leave the house. They just have to pay the delivery fee.”

Puschelberg heard plenty of horror stories from local owners who used a big-name delivery service before. It takes a lot of control of the restaurant’s hands, as the app becomes the point person for interactions between the customer and the restaurant.

Often, the third party-provider doesn’t give the restaurant an opportunity to fix a mistake; they just credit the customer and charge it back to the local restaurant.

“There was one restaurant told me they had a $150 order refunded because they forgot one piece of pita bread,” Puschelberg explained. “Nowhere did anybody ever contact them and say: 'You forgot a piece of pita bread.' They just credited the customer for the whole amount and charged it back to the restaurant.”

Sometimes, not only do the restaurants get a smaller piece of the pie, but the customer ends up paying more through a major delivery app.

Puschelberg cited one example where a customer priced out the same meal two different ways: ordering directly from a restaurant and using TOAD as delivery, the other through a major app. Using TOAD to deliver the meal, the bill was cheaper than the big-name app.

The TOAD Takeout and Delivery system doesn’t cost restaurants anything to use aside from a setup fee, and there are no service fees or commissions involved. TOAD charges a flat delivery fee, with the bulk of the cost going into the driver's pocket.

“I think the general consensus is that they make better money with us,” Puschelberg said. “We pay better. Of the $7 delivery fee. the driver gets five, the dispatcher gets one and TOAD gets one. Most of the of the apps don't pay the drivers five bucks.”

Puschelberg knows firsthand what it’s like to see his business disappear overnight and doesn't want other entrepreneurs to suffer the same fate. He’s hoping TOAD can help local restaurants stay afloat and weather this storm.

“We're all in this together,” Puschelberg said. “We're all trying to help local restaurants stay open, and I'm hoping that's what we're able to accomplish.”

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