To Your Door

   In the spirit of corporate comedy, I hereby present the origins of every home food delivery service now struggling for market share and customers. The shame of it of course is that they are all doing it completely incorrectly.

   The origin story of To Your Door is that we had a very, very wet winter of 1983 in the SF Bay Area. In a town where the commute to business meetings is by shoe leather and elevator, it resulted in a marked increase of dry cleaning bills, to get the crease back in those slacks.
   Much scheduling strategy was expended as to how to spend more time in the studio designing the ad campaigns and marketing strategies then going to meetings to discuss them. Thus was born To Your Door. As a result of all of this staying in to eat, it was discovered that San Francisco of the 1980s had an impressive number of restaurants that delivered. This was in large part a result of the close proximity of the restaurants and their clients, at the office and at home.
   To further explore my own market intuition, a good friend's market research firm was hired to work the street corners with clipboards and pens in hand. The results surprised even an old market analyst. When tabulated it showed that 90% of financial district folks would use the service an amazing 3 – 4 nights a week. At the office, and at home.
   The business model and roll out strategy was simplicity itself. And pleasantly self serving for all of my friends and associates. This was because the early stage of research involved ordering as much food, from as many places that delivered as was possible. We got to know the restaurateurs, their menus and their service. They got to know us, and the project.
   I can’t express, as the creator of the idea and founder, how amused I am by the venture capital dependency and poor business models of the current operations, but there we go…