Easy Eats expands despite COVID demands
You’re hungry. You didn’t grab enough food at the dining hall, and now they’re all closed.
You grab your phone, and open the Easy Eats app. A few taps later, a Colby student is driving to Five Guys to pick you up a burger. Easy Eats provides food delivery to students on campus through a mobile app. Users simply choose a restaurant and order food in the app, and an Easy Eats driver will deliver their favorite fast food right to their dorm room.
After an incomplete first year, the company was forced to suspend operations when campus was evacuated in the spring.
A couple weeks ago, Easy Eats began operations again on Colby’s campus, now with new safety protocols.
Co-Chief Marketing Manager for Easy Eats, Connor Klingenberg `22, outlined these changes:
“We believe that Easy Eats in general offers students a safe way to support their local businesses that have been harmed by the pandemic…”
“We’ve had every driver sanitize before and after handling food, every driver has to keep their mask on even if they’re in the car, no matter what.”
Klingenberg continued: “We also offer contactless delivery, so drivers are able to drop the food right at the door of the individual who ordered the food.”
While health precautions may be a hassle, Easy Eats driver Anna Compson `23 is still able to enjoy her job:
“You get to do your job while actually having fun…. I get to talk to the people on my team, but I’m also talking to the people I deliver to, and I also just love to drive! It’s such a vibe, just going back and forth [between Colby and Waterville].”
The company has seen a significant increase in demand for food delivery this fall, which co-founder Katharine Dougherty `22 attributes to the pandemic and Easy Eats’ scrupulous safety protocols.
“With COVID there’s been a huge increase in deliveries and online ordering and that kind of thing, so that’s [perfect] for our business model.” she said.
In addition to ramping up operations at Colby, Easy Eats has spread like an infectious virus to other colleges as well. This year, they have entered a partnership with the administration of Bates College.
Easy Eats edged out GrubHub to deliver food to students in isolation at Bates three meals a day. The administration prefers them, Dougherty said, because they employ exclusively students. However, Bates is just the beginning of Easy Eats’ plan for expansion.
Dougherty told The Colby Echo about their plans to expand to other small colleges in and out of the NESCAC.
Presently, Easy Eats is working with students from Harvard and Middlebury to finish developing a new and improved version of their platform that hopes to streamline the process for both employees and customers.
Once they finish their update, their software will be more easily implemented in cities other than Waterville.
They plan to expand to Middlebury, Bowdoin, and Thomas College, and are tentatively considering the implications of operating at large colleges like Boston University.
However, Easy Eats has received grant money from pitch competitions to expand to colleges in Maine, so in-state institutions are their current priority.
This week, Dougherty and co-founder Christian Krohg `22 are hoping to walk away with the $10,000 prize of the virtual Big Gig Pitch Competition, and to invest that grant money into more expansion projects across the state.
With more resources available, they hope to begin offering daily breakfast delivery to Colby students, and weekly Chipotle delivery from Augusta by next semester.
At a time when so many businesses are failing, Easy Eats is poised for rapid growth and creating opportunities for college students all over the state.
Their motto of “for the students, by the students” is a signifier of self-sufficiency and success at Colby, and we certainly haven’t seen the last of it.
