Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lauren Sweeney. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Lauren, thanks for joining us today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your business and how did you resolve those issues?

DeliverZero began as a restaurant delivery marketplace. Customers who wanted to order food in reusable packaging searched their address on our site or app, then placed the order through our site. Restaurants would receive those orders through a tablet we provided them with. When the order came through that tablet, the restaurant packed the customer’s order in reusable containers. Customers could hand their containers back to the courier delivering their next order.

Our customers loved this radically accessible reuse experience…but as we thought about the size of the single-use packaging waste problem and how to scale our solution, it became clear that our marketplace was not enough to solve the problem we’re passionate about solving. Around the same time, the popular third-party delivery apps that most customers use to order restaurant delivery began reaching out to us to see if there was a way we could work together.

We were excited by the idea of offering our containers through the channels customers are already used to ordering through, but making reusable containers available through channels we don’t own posed major challenges. For starters, the delivery apps we wanted to work with were opposed to the idea of the customer ever leaving the app (for good reason–if the customer leaves the app, they might not check out). That meant that our first idea, asking the customer to open our app to get some kind of customer ID they could plug into the delivery app like a promo code, was a non-starter.

Not tracking the containers at all wasn’t an option: tracking our return rate and ensuring that it remains high is important to the overall sustainability of reuse. Reusable packaging is only better than single-use if it’s actually reused. So, we went back to the drawing board.

We looked at the other types of restaurant tech solutions available to restaurants, and saw that many emerging restaurant tech solutions use integrations to share data. We realized we could do something similar. We rebuilt our tech to allow us to integrate with any POS system or third-party delivery app, and we began integrating with a few of the biggest POS systems and delivery apps. We use the data we receive from those integrations to attribute containers to customers. Customers don’t have to create an account before ordering. After their first order and subsequent orders, they receive SMS and email updates. If they log into their accounts, they can see how many containers they have checked out and track the impact of their usage over time.

Lauren, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As a single mom working long hours at startups, I relied on the convenience of takeout and delivery. The volume of single-use sushi containers and salad bowls my orders came in frustrated me because I knew just how environmentally harmful single-use packaging is –even when it’s marketed as recyclable or compostable. I knew the rise of delivery apps and fast casuals meant this problem was only getting worse.

Legislation addressing this problem is inevitable–for example, in Germany, all foodservice operators are required to provide a reusable option at all points of sale–but it’s hard to pass legislation without solutions in place, especially where I live. In the United States, innovation from the private sector tends to precede legislation.

So, I set out to work on the solution that was missing in my own life, with the hope that through DeliverZero I could make reusable solutions more accessible and mainstream.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

The moments that have brought me to a more intimate understanding of my own resilience are the seemingly small day-to-day tasks that make all of the work we’ve done possible.

As a company, we’ve been very lucky to get great media coverage, we work with big corporations, and I’ve had exciting opportunities to speak. All of that can look very glamorous on the exterior, but to make it all possible, we’ve had to be scrappy and do all of the jobs–including the literal heavy lifting.

In the very beginning, just as we were starting to get some high-profile coverage in the media and as I was getting memes trending on Instagram, we were doing everything ourselves. Adding a menu to our site took hours–if it was a long sushi menu, it could easily take a full day’s work. I did all customer support myself for the first eighteen months the company existed; we transacted about $1M through our marketplace during that period, so there were many, many support inquiries, all of which I dealt with while juggling manual labor because we didn’t yet have any help yet there, either. When restaurants needed containers, I was getting them into the restaurant myself. I remember being on back to back zoom calls until 5 pm one Friday, and then going out to spend about five hours making deliveries. I remember one summer afternoon particularly clearly: I was carrying a heavy box for about twenty blocks to bring it to a restaurant, and I kept telling myself that if I could do this, I could do anything.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When we started out, there were a lot of uncomfortable truths that very few people were really addressing on social media. Big fast casual brands were–and still are–celebrating the fact that they use compostable packaging, or worse, bioplastics. That stuff is greenwashing; most of it ends up in a landfill where it emits methane. And recycling doesn’t work nearly as well as most of us have been led to believe.

On our Instagram account, I started sharing memes that draw attention to these infrequently-discussed issues in an entertaining way. Customers started sharing them to their stories, and our posts would trend under the hashtags we used like #lowwasteliving or #reuserevolution,

Contact Info:

• Website: www.deliverzero.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deliverzer0/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deliverzer0
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-sweeney-2084b419/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/DeliverZero