B.C. Kowalski
Food delivery service 715delivery.com has seen enormous success in its first year in business
One day Sharlene Bruder woke up and realized she didn’t have a way to get a cheeseburger she wanted delivered to her house. The only delivery options were pizza and Chinese food. It seemed to her there should be a service to deliver food from a variety of restaurants.
Today 715delivery.com provides what Bruder envisioned, and the business is about to expand to its fourth community in less than a year. She and co-owner Jacinta Carver work with a number of local restaurants to provide a one-stop way for customers to order food and get it delivered.
How does it work? A customer can log in through the website or the 715delivery app, order food and pay a delivery fee ranging from $3.99 to $8.99, depending on location. Otherwise, it’s exactly like buying from the restaurant, Bruder says. Customers tap the items they want to go into a cart, they go through a secure checkout process, and 715delivery.com drivers bring the food to their door. 715delivery.com staff can tell customers almost exactly what time to expect the driver. Currently 28 restaurants are listed in the Wausau Area section on the app.
The business, based in a small building on Wausau’s northeast side, has grown beyond the duo’s wildest dreams, delivering more than 8,100 orders so far this year. They’ve already surpassed their three-year goals for the business, even before 715delivery.com is one year old.
The reasons for the business’s success become clear when Bruder talks about the research she and Carver engage in. 715delivery.com keeps detailed rankings of area restaurants, and work only with those meeting high standards for timeliness and quality. Order response times are almost instantaneous, and the service strives to provide the most accurate delivery time estimates possible.
That attention to detail allowed Bruder and Carver to expand twice already, first into Merrill and later to Stevens Point. The two have big plans for other markets, Bruder says, but Marshfield will be the last expansion for some time to allow the duo to focus on building their existing business for the next few years.
Bruder once started a similar business in Sheboygan, where Carver ran the call center. Carver also worked for a previous delivery service, WausauToGo. When that business closed last year, the time seemed right to launch 715delivery.
The service quickly took off in Wausau, so expanding into Merrill and Stevens Point just made sense, Bruder says. There are ten restaurants listed on the app for Merrill, two in Mosinee and 14 listed for Stevens Point.
The Marshfield service is expected to open Sept. 26 and roughly a dozen restaurants are already signed up on the app.
Fat Joe’s now open
Residents on the southeast side of Wausau have been waiting for some time for the opening of Fat Joe’s Pizzeria in the long-vacant former Pizza Hut building on Grand Avenue.
Customers got their wish Sept. 7 as the business opened its doors. Serving Long Island style pizza and garlic knots, the locally-owned restaurant has been noticeably busy since it opened.
Fat Joe’s Pizzeria opens at 4 pm daily except Mondays. The business is still working out kinks, a post on its Facebook page says, but eventually aims to stay open until midnight.
Speaking of old Hut locations, Rosati’s Chicago-style pizza is expected to open sometime this month in the former Pizza Hut building on First Avenue in Wausau.
