The ‘new-school milk man’
HALIFAX— It all started when Johnathan Cannon’s father suggested the idea of a pet food delivery service.
After some further conversations fleshing out the full idea, Cannon, along with his two brothers and his father, launched the online delivery service Room Service in August 2017, which bills itself as Halifax’s online convenience store.
Although the business primarily focuses on human food and amenities, Cannon says that the pet options are very popular.
“We sell so much kitty litter it’s absurd,” Cannon said.
“Honestly, if you were to look at the website right now I think we’re out of stock. It’s impossible to keep it in.”
Like a traditional brick-and-mortar corner store, Room Service specializes in snacks and Gatorade. You log on to the website, create your order, fill in your information and pay.
Within 45 minutes someone knocks on your door with a bag full of snacks and a handwritten note thanking you for your order.
“The on-demand economy is kinda where I see things right now,” Cannon said.
“There’s a bunch of mundane tasks you can do in your life that are incredible if you can not have to do them. I hate going to the grocery store. I hate it more than anything in the world ... I think it’s like, we probably got here in part just because that’s not fun to do at all.”
UberEats, one of the biggest players in the third-party food delivery market, grossed $6 billion in 2017, a company spokesperson told the Toronto Star in June.
The company (a subsidiary of the ridesharing giant Uber) announced last week that they plan to expand the delivery service to100 cities and towns across Canada, having already set down roots in 50 communities coast-to-coast and 280 world wide over the last two-and-ahalf years.
It is not yet available in Halifax.
In Halifax, services such as Just Eat and Skip the Dishes link restaurants that don’t offer in-house delivery with customers who can order with their phones from the comfort of their couch.
It’s this sort of niche that Cannon is trying to tap into, except with items normally found at corner stores.
“When we first launched we thought we were solving a problem of time. Like yeah, if you don’t have time to go to the grocery store or corner store, we got you. But we’ve learned that we’re almost a little bit more of an indulgence brand,” he said.
“We all make an effort to try and limit buying ( junk food and) that sort of stuff. What we found is, like, every once and a while you just have to indulge ... if you’re in your pajamas and you’re watching Netflix you don’t want to get up off the couch and go buy something.”
The service started out with Cannon, his brothers and his father, who runs his own computer consulting business, as co-owners.
Cannon’s girlfriend helps run deliveries in the afternoon while the others work their day jobs.
They started out only delivering to the Halifax peninsula but have now expanded to include Fairview and Clayton Park and are now beginning to look at coverage in Dartmouth and potentially Sackville and Bedford.
“The level we’re at now is one driver per night, we’re about at the point where it’s getting (to be) too much to handle with just one driver a night, so that’s why we brought the other two on. Partly to cover the really busy period of the night and partly to help us once we do launch our expansion,” said Cannon, who spends his days working as a corporate tax manager. Room Service was just awarded $10,000 and selected to be a part of Dalhousie’s LaunchPad Accelerator, a 10week program that helps early stage startups grow. Cannon said that his focus through the program will be on expanding the delivery range of the business.
Part of the draw of the service, other than the element of indulgence, is it eliminates the time needed to complete necessary tasks.
Katrina Haight says that Room Service allows her to get the things she needs when she needs them, helping her to juggle her busy schedule.
“I’ve worked a few, like odd part-time jobs where I work evenings or I just have a bit of a weird schedule between school and work, so it’s really convenient to be able to order a few things and have it come straight to the apartment door,” Haight said.
“They now know me fairly well, so I appreciate that they know things like that my buzzer doesn’t work, so they have to text me to notify me. But they also leave personalized messages with every grocery delivery.”
As young people increasingly work schedules outside the traditional 9 to 5 day shift, or juggle multiple part-time jobs with school, businesses such as Room Service aim to help people get the necessities when they might not be available from other sources.
“Especially people my age, in their mid to late 20s, or even early 20s, like college students and young professionals, you know, we have quite often weird schedules and they do deliveries till 3 a.m.,” Haight said.
“That can make a world of difference for someone working a backshift or as a bartender, coming home late at night, or even just, you work afternoon hours.”
“It’s funny,” Cannon said. “We’re almost like the new-school milk man to an extent. You used to be able to get milk delivered to your house and then nobody did for years and now you can again. So it’s all kind of cyclical, so who knows where it is in10,15 years, but right now there’s just so much demand out there for it that it’s just been incredible.”
“We sell so much kitty litter it’s absurd.” JOHNATHAN CANNON CO-FOUNDER OF ROOM SERVICE