Sam shares the story of Farmstead, a Portland-based grocery delivery startup run by a friend, which is seeing 20-30x demand spikes during the coronavirus pandemic. The conversation pivots to how delivery companies are struggling to find enough drivers, leading to a quirky story about a strip club that started doing food delivery — dubbing it “Boober Eats.”
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Farmstead: Grocery Delivery Exploding During Coronavirus [00:00:00]
Sam: So there’s this cool story — this is not a YC startup, although it maybe should have been. We’re basically in Portland, you know, right now with coronavirus, everybody’s getting deliveries. And I have a friend who runs a company called Farmstead, and they do grocery delivery. They’ve been doing this for about two years now.
All Farmstead does is deliver your staple foods — milk, eggs, bread, stuff you need repeatedly. You don’t need to go to the grocery store every time you run out of milk. Kind of sucks. So they just deliver to your door. They’re like a version of Instacart that’s just focused on the staples.
And also — key difference from Instacart — Instacart goes to the grocery store, buys stuff, and marks it up. These guys are the grocery store. They buy wholesale and sell retail, so they don’t mark it up. They actually get good prices.
Shaan: Okay, good startup.
Sam: They are exploding — 20x, 30x, oversubscribed on demand right now — because everybody is ordering food in because of coronavirus. Everyone’s getting to try this delivery thing. They’re sort of forced to do it for the first time.
Shaan: What are they called? Farmstead?
Sam: Farmstead, yeah. This is my buddy’s company. He listens to the podcast sometimes, so shout-out if he’s listening.
Shaan: Cool name. Love the name.
Sam: Great name, great brand. It looks good and the product is good. I actually like it a lot.
Strip Clubs Pivot to Delivery — “Boober Eats” [00:02:30]
Sam: Now, one problem they’re having — and that every delivery company is having right now — is they’re short on drivers. They have too much demand and not enough ability to fulfill.
So this company in Portland started hiring out-of-work people displaced by coronavirus. And you know what industry has been hit hard? Strip clubs. Nobody’s going to strip clubs right now. So they hired the strippers to do delivery, and they got a bunch of PR from it.
Shaan: I gotta find out which company it was. I don’t know if it was DoorDash or whatever. I don’t even know if the company actually did this, or if the strippers just started signing up on their own — like, “We got to make money, what are we gonna do? I guess we become delivery people.”
Sam: Which do you know which company it is they’re delivering for?
Shaan: He jokingly calls it Boober Eats. So it all started as a joke with Lucky Devil Lounge — one of his clubs. Nobody was coming in, and they go, “We need to do like Uber for weed delivery, or Luber for sex lube delivery.” And he was like, “Let’s do Boober, which is topless girl picks you up and takes you to a strip club.” So anyway, that’s the joke. I don’t think it’s real, but it did get PR.
Sam: Yeah, it did get PR. I think I did read that the gig workers are basically shifting from one category to another, right? Demand has gone down in one area, gone up in delivery, and more people are becoming delivery drivers. I thought that was interesting.
Shaan: There’s another one — “Quarry Meals for 4-inch Heels.” Or “Meals in 6-inch Heels.”
Sam: Well, I don’t know if it’s smart to create your own delivery company, but I do know if you’ve got to work right now — you know, girls gotta eat. Got to do something.