Using delivery to maintain your business

Global route optimization network, Route4Me reported that with cities under lock-down, restaurants or bakeries offering deliveries are experiencing faster delivery times. Founders George Shchegolev and Dan Khasis knew the pain of driving through a city they were partially familiar with, only to find there were parking restrictions or had multiple orders in various parts of town. They founded Route4Me as a way to optimize routes, though the recent pandemic makes its usage more timely for DIY deliveries. If there’s only one car and multiple requests, this program can help small bakeries stay safe and fulfill multiple orders. They do say that this product may not be best for bakeries or caterers with less than twenty orders a day, but it could be an investment for a growing food industry company. Many bakeries may not want to hire a driver or use online delivery apps such as UberEats or Foodora.

Bakers Journal spoke with Route4Me co-founder George Shchegolev about the app and how it can help bakers create a friction-free route.

Co-founder George Shchegolev of Route4Me.

“A lot of bakers may want to explore delivering directly to people because people don’t want to leave to go to the bakery.” Route4Me was inspired when the two co-founders were driving about their city themselves, and found existing routing and logistics software either incompatible or incorrect. “The beauty is, if you’re starting a delivery business today, and you just have very few stops you could do it practically for very little money. As you scale up and you have more complexity and more things that you want to do, you can do it. And then if you get to thousands of vehicles and thousands of things, we can still support yours.”

The app integrates with Google Maps and navigation apps such as Waze. “What we do is we tell you what is the most optimal way to visit all the locations, and in what sequence. When you get on the road, you can use an app like Google Maps, Waze or Apple Maps,” he explained.

“The way the app works is that depending on the business complexity, you may have a set of destinations you need to visit, but you have the right to park between a set time or a situation, or where you need to deliver something before they close. With our system, you can put all of this into our form, and we’ll give you a route that’s going to give you the most optimal way to locations,”
he added.

“Depending on the size of your bakery, you can automate the process very heavily where you can just do it simply. As the orders come in, you input them into the system. If you have one vehicle, you just optimize and it gives you the best route. If you have multiple vehicles, we can solve that problem too.”

The app allows for both recurring orders and dynamic ones for first time orders. Route4Me uses Zoom for onboarding for training and is available in Canada.