When I left for Dartmouth College in 1986, I found that the college town lacked two important things: the famous mutton-based BBQ of the Moonlite BBQ Inn and the Burgoo Stew of Old Hickory Bar-B-Que. The barbecue in my hometown — Owensboro, Kentucky — has a vinegary taste I just couldn’t find there, or anywhere else since.
A few years later, I said goodbye to the famous chicken sandwich from Hanover’s Everything But Anchovies. It kept me going often at 2 a.m. during study sessions, so much that I’d happily order it to be delivered today. However, the business closed after nearly 40 years and its impact was felt across the community.
Many people can relate to those feelings of nostalgia when it comes to our favorite meals — and now, restaurants have the opportunity to bring back those memories to customers near and far. These customers may miss a taste of home or are just curious about the flavors of a city they’ve vacationed in or longed to visit. DoorDash helps restaurateurs and other businesses help deliver beloved items to customers across the US with nationwide shipping.
After DoorDash launched nationwide shipping last year, I chatted with three of our partners to discover how this new service was impacting their businesses.
Mark Murrell, Get Maine Lobster
Mark is the co-founder of Get Maine Lobster and explained how shipping the crustaceans works. “When Maine harvesters catch a breeder lobster, they have to mark it and throw it back in the water. And even then, only 20% of the rest are robust enough to travel safely from the docks at Union Wharf in Portland, Maine, to say, Los Angeles,” he says. “Some customers only want new shell lobsters, because the cold salt water tenderizes the meat while the lobster is alive.”
Their shipping operations rely heavily on picking the right lobsters and packing them at the right temperature. “We love using nationwide shipping because we get to tap into hundreds of thousands of customers we didn’t have before, without marketing costs,” he says. “That number is only likely to get higher since more people became comfortable cooking seafood at home during the pandemic.”
Steven Peisach and Ivette Harrouche, POMP Flowers
If you’ve ever admired the flowers at the Tony Awards or the Miss America pageant, they’re most likely from farms in South America. One of these farms is POMP Flowers, an online, direct-to-consumer business started by cousins Steven Peisach and Ivette Harrouche, who come from multiple generations of flower farmers. Their goal is to bring premium, high-quality flowers across the US, and DoorDash plays a pivotal role in ensuring that the quality isn’t compromised in the shipping process.
“When you unpack a POMP delivery, you see floral excellence at its finest. It's our job to plant and cultivate the most robust flowers, with the optimal characteristics based on genetic varieties, and make sure they stay strong, through every part of our supply chain,” Steven says.
Now our biggest opportunity is to get our name out there and enable more people to experience POMP's stunning blooms. With DoorDash, we can each play to our strengths: we’re the quarterback and you’re the wide receiver. We pass the ball to you, and score a touchdown together in a way neither of us could alone.
Shawn and Robin Davis, Big Shake's Hot Chicken and Fish
Husband and wife team Shawn and Robin Davis are the owners of Big Shake's Hot Chicken and Fish, with three locations throughout Tennessee and Alabama. For the couple, they believe people nationwide should experience the joy of their Shrimp Burgers, Hot Mess Sandwich Kit, and other tasty items as soon as possible, so they offered customers nationwide shipping early on. They wanted to ensure that customers could still get the Big Shake's experience, regardless of distance.
“We didn’t ship fish for years because we thought that it wouldn’t come out crispy and crunchy and maintain the taste, once the customer got it home. But our first trial turned out great. We use the flash freeze process to support the experience at below zero,” Shawn says. “We’ve been able to keep the integrity of the product to make sure it passed my test. And we have a pretty decent circle of individuals that tell me the truth all the time, including our staff!”
Interested in nationwide shipping for your business? Sign up for DoorDash and if you're eligible, we'll be in touch.
I’m continuing my journey to learn and share other ways entrepreneurs are extending the power of their business beyond their walls. Stay tuned to Unlocking Success for more inspiring stories, and discover the many ways our partners strategically grow their businesses.
