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<\/a><\/figure>Where are all the delivery bikers in Portland?<\/p>\n
This is a question I asked myself upon returning from my recent trip to New York and several European cities where bike delivery riders inundate the streets, carrying large insulated bags on their backs or bike racks with food in tow. I hadn\u2019t thought of it much before, but after my trip, Portland\u2019s lack of bicycle delivery riders was striking to me. During the pandemic, food delivery rose massively in popularity, and it\u2019s not going away anytime soon. So how can we make sure more of these trips are taking place by bike?<\/p>\n
Portland is<\/em> home to several companies that specialize in delivering goods by bike, including freight haulers B-Line Urban Delivery<\/a> (which we recently featured on the BikePortland podcast<\/a>), catering carriers Portland Pedal Power<\/a> and food delivery company Cascadian Courier Collective PDX <\/a>(CCC PDX). CCC PDX is the organization doing the work closest to the bike deliveries I witnessed in other cities, so I decided to ask them for a local bike delivery status update.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of really great local restaurant owners who are frustrated dealing with apps and see the value in working with a local company.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013 Ponce Christie, CCC PDX founder<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n CCC PDX began in Eugene a decade ago and started operations in Portland in 2017. But the company grew substantially during the pandemic, when demand for home deliveries skyrocketed and created a new need for delivery by bike<\/a>. According to owner Ponce Christie, customers and business owners using delivery apps like Uber Eats and Grubhub discovered the limitations of these services, which charge high fees to both consumers and restaurants.<\/p>\n The fees got so out of control that the City of Portland placed a temporary cap on what third-party apps could charge restaurants \u2014 10% of the total order cost \u2014 but this rule was not always heeded<\/a>. In January, Portland City Council approved a permanent fee cap of 15%<\/a> of a food delivery order total. But CCC PDX can do you one better: Christie said they\u2019ve always had a fee of 10% and they have no plans to raise it.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the sudden, everybody was trying out delivery apps for the first time and finding out how awful they are,\u201d Christie told BikePortland on a phone call earlier this week. \u201cI think our business increased by something like 1000%, which is obviously very crazy because we\u2019re a small business. It was difficult to adapt to.\u201d<\/p>\n But they did adapt, hiring dozens of new couriers and cultivating relationships with restaurants who like its local vibe, low fees and eco-friendly approach to food delivery.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of really great local restaurant owners who are frustrated dealing with apps and see the value in working with a local company,\u201d Christie said. \u201cAnd in general, our customers are pretty loyal. Once they find out about us, they seem to be pretty stoked on the idea, and are down to come back and try again.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf I was delivering with a car, all the money I made would just go back into the car.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2013 Zak, CCC employee<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Yesterday afternoon I rode around northeast Portland with Zak, who\u2019s been doing bike delivery with CCC PDX for about six months. The job was to deliver packages from the meal kit company Farm to Fit<\/a> to people\u2019s residences, and Zak upgraded from the standard road bike he takes on smaller deliveries to one of CCC\u2019s Bullitt cargo bikes in order to fit everything. The bike didn\u2019t have an electric assist, but Zak impressively maneuvered it up through the busy streets in the Hollywood neighborhood and then up the Alameda Ridge, dropping off packages as we went.<\/p>\n For many of the same reasons a bike is a great tool for everyday transportation, it\u2019s also a very practical delivery device. You can avoid traffic and the time-consuming hassle of finding parking outside the restaurants and delivery residences. It\u2019s also enjoyable to bike around all day: you get a lot of exercise and can connect with your community. But I think the most convincing reason to deliver by bike instead of car is that you get to keep more of the money you make when you don\u2019t have to pay for gas or car maintenance.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been nice not paying attention to gas prices for the last six months,\u201d Zak told me. \u201cIf I was delivering with a car, all the money I made would just go back into the car.\u201d<\/p>\n It was fun to ride around with Zak, although I have to admit I didn\u2019t envy his position of carrying so much stuff around, especially on a non-electric bike. But Zak was in good spirits the whole time.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t had a lot of jobs that I liked,\u201d Zak said. \u201cBut I really like doing this one.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked my roommate Patrick Riley, who used to drive for DoorDash, about his time delivering, and he had quite a different perspective.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not an enjoyable job,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cMost of it is trying to figure out where to park and going somewhere else and figuring out where to park there.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s wrong to be able to order food from a place five-plus miles away anytime you want at the click of a button because the app says it\u2019s convenient.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n One of the core beliefs within CCC\u2019s business philosophy is that people don\u2019t always need everything immediately. But that\u2019s a tricky business model in the age of Amazon Prime\u2019s same-day deliveries and 20-minute Uber Eats wait times. People aren\u2019t used to waiting anymore. But Christie pointed out that when you\u2019re delivering within a mile or two, going by bike can often be faster than taking a car.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of people\u2019s argument against bike delivery is that it takes so long. But most of the time, it takes about the same amount of time for us to do the delivery as it would in a car,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n With CCC, Christie also wants to encourage people to look at the options closer to home, within reasonable range for bike delivery.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s wrong to be able to order food from a place five-plus miles away anytime you want at the click of a button because the app says it\u2019s convenient,\u201d Christie said. \u201cIf you live in Portland, there are probably 20 other restaurants you could be supporting within a mile of you. That\u2019s one of the great things about it here.\u201d<\/p>\n This is one reason CCC hasn\u2019t latched onto the electric bike revolution: they don\u2019t want to set too high of a standard for speed. But in cities like New York, the bike delivery industry is flourishing largely because of electric bikes (though this has caused contention<\/a> after several inexpensive e-bike batteries have unfortunately caught on fire while charging in apartment complexes<\/a>). If more people had access to e-bikes in Portland, I think it would open up the career path to people who are less enthusiastic about pedaling a heavy cargo bike full of packages up Portland\u2019s steepest hills. Perhaps if an e-bike rebate bill is passed in Oregon<\/a>, we\u2019ll enter a new era of bike couriers?<\/p>\n I would love to see a renewed culture of bike delivery in Portland. It would mean fewer cars on the streets (and fewer Uber Eats drivers parking in bike lanes, which I see on a fairly regular basis) and connecting with our amazing local restaurants would be a great way to reinvigorate Portland\u2019s bike scene.<\/p>\n In order to encourage this, I think the most important step is to simply make it easier to bike around the city for any purpose \u2014 the places where bike delivery works the best around the world are also the places where biking is the most ubiquitous. And as the Portland Bureau of Transportation works on its 2040 Freight Plan<\/a>, perhaps they can consider ways to incentivize last-mile and food delivery by bike.<\/p>\n For now, you can help support the movement by ordering directly from 16 local spots via CCC\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>\n
Cascadian Courier Collective (the other CCC)<\/h2>\n
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Out for delivery<\/h2>\n
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The cost of convenience<\/h2>\n
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