Rhode Island Start-Up Pledges a Better Food Delivery Model

Rhode Island Start-Up Pledges a Better Food Delivery Model

Anthony Spiratos doesn't want to run a food delivery business -- he wants to start a movement. 

The Aquidneck Island native said he launched No Contact Valet during the pandemic to help out struggling restaurants, as well as out-of-work industry professionals. 

"At the start of this pandemic back in March, I was driving down Broadway and Thames [in Newport] and would see a lot of restaurants were closed, and I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t doing delivery," said Spiratos. "When I started to look into it, I saw an alarming trend — they can’t afford to go with the big [food delivery] apps who charge 15% commissions and up, charging customers, often inflating menu costs. I said we can be better than this."

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In Rhode Island, businesses have spoken out in recent years about their unhappiness with being added to food delivery services without their permission, and most recently in the pandemic, when demand for food delivery has increased. 

"We came up with a platform that is free for restaurants to use. We don’t charge them a dime — it is free for restaurants to use and always will be," said Spiratos. "There is no sign-up fees or fees to put their menu up."

"For the customer, our fees are transparent — the delivery charge is a flat rate of $5, plus a 2.9% online transaction fee, which is what Square charges us. We make our money on the $5," said Spiratos. "My workers keep 100% of any tips they make."

Attention to Detail, Attention to Service

For Spiratos, he said the locally-focused model is critical for restaurants, customers, and drivers to establish a community -- and accountability. 

"I am a stickler for being punctual, that the food has to arrive on time and we’re always in contact with the customer and when that window of time is going to be," said Spiratos. "And the restaurants know if there's ever a problem, they can call me directly. You can't do that with the big apps."

"I’ve reached out to a lot of different restaurants about staff they may have had to cut, as I’d love to hire them," said Spiratos. "This isn’t just a company — I’m trying to turn this into a movement, where we can save the restaurant industry as a whole on the island. If we can do that and this model seems to be working, we can do the same thing elsewhere and really give these big billion-dollar apps a run for their money."

So far, Spiratos says No Contact Valet is now up to 17 restaurants who have signed up, and that he has 10 drivers at the moment, and three staff who are "expediters" who handle the orders. 

One satisfied restaurant so far is Greg Parkos with Sardella's on Memorial Boulevard in Newport. 

"We'd done DoorDash in the past, GrubHub isn't too built for Newport,' said Parkos. "It was good for a little while, but we had issues with wrong menu items on their sites, and accountability -- I'd get a lot of calls the food was cold."

"So we were trying to get away from that. It didn't make our brand the quality we wanted it to be. We looked into our own delivery model, but it was hard to build the infrastructure," he said. 

"So Anthony pitched us the idea, and we decided to go with him — he had the Easton's Beach snack shack — I felt like the quality of model, worker, if I had a problem I could go to him, so we decided to be one of the first ones to hop on," said Parkos. 

"I think the accountability is key," said Parkos. "With the other delivery services, I’d always get complaints about something -- I haven’t had that problem yet. One main thing for us was it could it be done in an efficient time, so we decided to give it a shot. We did a few test runs with friends, and everyone has raved about it."