Delivery startup aims to bring gas station to you
Like so many people juggling a career, a commute and unexpected day-to-day chores, Whitney Block’s life unfurls in a perpetual state of semi-controlled chaos.
The 30-year-old Redwood, Calif., resident works as a nurse practitioner, a demanding job that requires her to travel to three clinics, driving as long as an hour and a half some days to meet with patients.
To ensure that her weeks run smoothly, Block, an avid planner, has turned to technology, using AmazonFresh and Google Express to stock her fridge and order products ranging from toilet paper to electronics. She can’t remember the last time she pushed a shopping cart through a store.
Until a few months ago, there remained a single irritating chore that Block couldn’t seem to avoid: filling her car up with gas.
Her solution: a Silicon Valley startup that functions like a mobile gas station, using “field technicians” to fill up vehicles when they’re not being driven. The company, known as Yoshi, is part of a crop of gas-delivery startups billing themselves as “Uber for gasoline.” Yoshi members pay a $20 monthly subscription fee, plus the cost of gasoline, a deal that Block — who considers gas stations dirty and inconvenient — said she couldn’t resist.
“The more demanding my career has become, the more I’ve realized I don’t want my free time to be consumed by mundane tasks that I don’t want to be doing — and that includes going to the gas station to fill up,” she said.
“It’s not fun, it’s not stimulating and it’s not enjoyable,” she added. “If I can pay somebody to get it done for me, I will totally do that.”
For many drivers, a trip to the gas station is a forgettable inconvenience that occurs once or twice a week. But Yoshi is banking on the idea that there are millions of people like Block all over the country: urban professionals whose demanding schedules and disposable income make them ideal candidates for outsourcing a chore that has been a feature of car ownership since the inception of the automobile.
In the past 12 months, the company has spread from three cities nationwide to 16, including Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston and Los Angeles, picking up investments from superstar athletes Kevin Durant and Joe Montana along the way.
For customers like Block, paying a few dollars extra each month for gas is a fair trade for convenience. But Alistair Weaver, editor in chief at the automotive website Edmunds.com, said potential customers should approach subscription services — which can seduce customers into excess spending — very carefully.
“My suggestion to consumers is to read the small print carefully and really calculate the true cost,” he said. “If you’re going to subscribe you need to make it work for you, because otherwise it becomes that gym membership that you sign up for and never use.”
He added, “We’ve all been there.”