3B

Wednesday, April 15, 2020 // The Statement 3B

O

ver the past two weeks, my 
campus house has had 200 
multivitamins, 48 beers, 10 

bottles of wine, seven pints of ice cream, 
four bags of chips, two Monster energy 
drinks and one gallon of spring water 
delivered to our doorstep.

It’s a grocery haul far too depraved 

for Instacart or Shipt. We’ve been 
abusing 
goPuff, 
the 
millennial-

catering-convenience-delivery-gig-
business, with a regularity it was never 
designed for. Founded in 2013 by Drexel 
juniors Yakir Gola and Rafael Ilishayev, 
goPuff started as an on-demand hookah 
delivery service, hence its endearing 
moniker. Around a year later, however, 
these 
two 
poster-child 
disruptors 

noted that the demands for chips and 
paper towels were outpacing those 
for blunt wraps and shisha, and they 
responded to observed user needs by 
keenly rebranding as your friendly 
neighborhood mobile convenience store 
— a founding myth that will leave an 
enterprising tech bro absolutely weak in 
the knees.

In six years, goPuff has expanded 

to 150 United States locations with an 
emphasis on urban hubs and college 
towns, including our own lady Ann 
Arbor last May. I first heard of it last 

week, though, when I reached the end 
of my pre-quarantine booze haul and 
began openly complaining about the 
dearth of wine. A housemate mentioned 
goPuff in conciliatory passing and I 
looked it up because it sounded funny 
(marketing warlocks). Twenty minutes 
later I was the proud owner of two 
cheap pinots and a dum-dum taped to a 
“happy first order” card. Magic. 

Within days my whole house was 

obsessed. We were at the rice-every-
night end of our pantry stock and 
trying to avoid grocery stores as long as 
possible. The idea that Ben & Jerry’s or 
a full 30-rack of Natty Light could be at 
the door in half an hour, bing bang boom, 
was manna from heaven. The flat $1.95 
delivery fee (often negated with promo 
codes like “DOUBLEUP,” wink wink) 
coupled with the fact that you don’t 
have to compete for a slot colored it in 
a particularly miraculous pandemic-era 
light.

What I’m saying is that every 36 

hours, as if by subconscious instinct, 
my 
house 
found 
itself 
huddling 

around someone’s laptop to compose a 
melodious, collaborative goPuff order. 
We began affectionately referring to the 
service as “Puff Daddy” and clogged one 
another’s Venmo feeds with half-wit 

variations of the endearment. 
We killed time by surfing the 
site’s unusually comprehensive 
inventory, searching for some 
rhyme or reason to its generous 
definition 
of 
“convenience 

good.” Where else can you buy 
chewing tobacco, Hot Pockets, 
shampoo, single cans of Four 
Loko and $70 Fleshlights in 
one extremely foul swoop? 
Puff Daddy will satisfy you, 
and you, and you and you, too! 
(You get a Fleshlight! You get a 
Fleshlight!)

When 
I 
explained 
this 

phenomenon to a neighbor 
during 
a 
socially-distanced 

porch hang they bark-laughed 
at me and replied, “Good to 
see neoliberalism is still doing 
well!” which was very effective 
in slowing my roll about it all 
because they’re totally right 
(though I know for a fact 
my neighbors made Easter 
mimosas on Sunday morning 
with champagne they ordered 
from none other than Puff 

Daddy — so suck it, 412.)

The skinny is that like every other 

gig company out there, goPuff is a 
multimillion-dollar 
brainchild 
that 

squeezes 
its 
own 
1099-contracted 

workers 
for 
most 
all 
operational 

resources — vehicles, gas, maintenance, 
phones, insurance — while paying 
them 
the 
minimum 
and 
leaving 

them 
to 
independently 
scramble 

for hours. On top of that, goPuff is 
backed by a dripping panel of venture 
capitalists including the notorious tech 
conglomerate SoftBank, aka the literal 
daddy of the military-minded robotics 
company Boston Dynamics, aka the 
people loaning robotic dogs to the 
Massachusetts State Police. Even my 
precious Puff Daddy can be traced back 
to some of the evilest capitalists out 
there. It begs the question, is anything 
truly free? These are thoughts that 
would make you run for the hills if there 
weren’t a pandemic. 

While rideshare services — the 

veritable emblem of the neoliberal 
business model — have tanked in the 
wake 
of 
COVID-19, 
food 
delivery 

gig-services 
are 
experiencing 

an unprecedented rise in demand, 
goPuff among them. In a recent email 

to The Daily, Liz Romaine, goPuff 
director of communications, reported 
“an increase in customer demand,” 
especially for “household essentials, 
OTC medications, meat, bread, pasta, 
canned items and water as well as baby 
products.”

Forget the impressive array of dip 

varietals and sex toys. With the arguable 
exception of certain college houses that 
may or may not prioritize alcohol over 
nutrition, most users are out there doing 
what they can to get what they need in 
the safest way possible, which includes 
leveraging an indulgent gig-grocery 
service for the bare staples. 

Romaine did emphasize that goPuff’s 

“number one priority is keeping our 
driver-partners, employees, customers 
and community safe and healthy,” 
and that goPuff has implemented new 
policies and procedures to do so amid 
COVID-19. 

For the record, all the driver-partners 

I’ve interacted with over the last two 
weeks have worn copious personal 
protective equipment and performed 
no-contact delivery, including scanning 
IDs from a distance when required. 
Residents in Philadelphia, however, 
have had issues with medical gloves and 
personal protective equipment — all 
in the brand’s signature bright blue — 
discarded in public areas outside one of 
goPuff’s warehouses.

Romaine concluded her email with an 

announcement of a 90-day hiring push 
to meet increased demand, complete 
with links to applications.

Like most everything coronavirus-

related — which, nowadays, is almost 
everything — it’s hard to tell whether 
these changes constitute a temporary, 
passing phase or something seriously 
bound 
to 
internalize 
into 
more 

permanent industry patterns. Maybe 
goPuff/SoftBank/gig-groceries 
will ride this wave into oppressive 
Amazon-level omnipotence and I’ll 
kick myself for being forever complicit 
via that first bottle of Apothic Red. Or 
maybe I’ll be back at the Main Street 
Party Store next month (very dubious, 
but worthy of hypothetical address) 
and goPuff will be something forever 
and always associated with This Thing 
Alone, sayonara, book closed. I don’t 
know.

The one thing I’m sure of, though, is 

how to get a Fleshlight in a pandemic.

Stressed? goPuff will bring you
 sex toys, canned soup

ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCHOTT

BY VERITY STURM, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

