Blue-collar gigs? Yeah, there’s an app for that

The gig economy isn’t just for Uber drivers and Task-Rabbit furniture assemblers.

San Francisco startup Wonolo — short for “work now locally” — has created an on-demand marketplace for workers to find hourly jobs in warehouses, factories, distribution centers, stores and other sites.

“Staffing has been an industry that lacks innovation,” said A.J. Brustein, co-founder and chief operating officer. “It’s very targeted towards clients, not workers. There’s a huge underserved population of people we address.”

Temporary staffing is a $125 billion industry. Industrial positions account for 37 percent of jobs, compared with 28 percent for clerical, 13 percent for professional, 13 percent for engineering, and 9 percent for health care, according to the American Staffing Association. The field is dominated by big companies such as Kelly Services, Manpower and Adecco, but experts say that smaller, nimbler firms can carve their own niches.

Wonolo seems to be a modernday version of a temp agency with a largely blue-collar focus, although Brustein rejects that label, calling it “a tech company that addresses a staffing problem” as well as helping with underemployment. San Francisco startup Blue-Crew serves a similar market, filling temporary blue-collar jobs through the use of a smartphone app or text messages.

Brustein, 37, and co-founder Yong Kim, 40, devised Wonolo almost five years ago at the CocaCola Co., where they noticed the inability of some stores to deal with unpredictable issues. For instance, Coke would be out of stock on a Walmart shelf with no one around to restock it.

Coke encouraged the entrepreneurial venture, and within a year spun it out and invested in it. In April, Wonolo raised $13 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital, the Menlo Park venture capital firm that invested in Apple and Google, bringing its total backing to $25 million.

Wonolo has about 40 employees, mainly in San Francisco, and about 100,000 gig workers, half of them local. It started in the Bay Area and has added Southern California,

Photos by Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle Driver Shawanda Scott works at the Good Eggs warehouse in San Francisco. Before taking a job with the grocery-delivery company, she picked up gigs there through Wonolo, which matches workers with blue-collar jobs.

Good Eggs delivery supervisor Janila Brown also started there on Wonolo gigs and sometimes picks up extra work through the app.