In the COVID-19 era, with many Americans sheltering in place at home, small retailers are facing an existential crisis: an overwhelming decline in foot traffic to their stores.
Small business owners across all industries have taken up the challenge of serving customers when they can’t visit them in-person – and that’s where “crowdsourced delivery” comes in. The term might be new to you, but you’ve likely already tried it, or something like it – if you’ve used an app to have food delivered to your door in the past few months from your favorite burrito or sushi place, they probably used a service similar to crowdsourced delivery to get it there.
The crowdsourced delivery model is essentially “rideshare for packages.” It works by tapping into a network of drivers in their own vehicles to provide same-day and scheduled deliveries. It’s a tremendous resource that goes largely unused: the 250 million passenger vehicles that hit the road every day in the U.S. with four billion cubic feet of unused cargo capacity.
By tapping into a crowdsourced network of delivery drivers, retailers can continue selling while also expanding their geographic reach and creating delightful experiences that go above and beyond to keep their customers coming back.