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