When you love what you do, sometimes you just don’t want to stop for something as mundane as a daily meal. Especially for creative entrepreneurs, when you find yourself in the flow, your tummy may be grumbling, but the last thing you want to do is leave your zone to go find food. The great thing is that there are now even more people in Sarasota who will bring it right to you, so you can continue on with your brilliance.
Ask most downtowners about where to call to have lunch delivered, and the most popular answer is Maximillian’s Cafe. For well over a decade, Reggie and his crew have put together amazing paninis and delectable salads, offering up unique pairings of sweet and savory from their unassuming, quaint little cafe. Other than pizza places (such as Patellini’s, also downtown), they’re one of the few places that deliver. If you happen to work at the HuB like we do, you can always call down to the small cafe in the lobby and have them bring you something upstairs; and if you just need sustenance, Jimmy John’s will do in a pinch. But there still aren’t many cafes or restaurants that serve food beyond the perimeters of their establishments.
However, technology is really starting to work in our favor in the culinary department, as we now have third-party delivery systems that allow you to order from just about anywhere. Instead of calling the restaurant of your choice directly, you can now go to a few different websites to order online. Grubhub and Doorstep Delivery are some of the more popular services in Sarasota, and each of them work with a number of different restaurants. If you happen to be ordering lunch for everyone in the office, and one wants Chinese food while another wants barbecue, they’ll even go to more than one place before delivering your order. Ashley’s gets extra-cool credit for being a local business, too!
Even more exciting than that is the new Shipt app, which, as I first heard it described, is the Uber of grocery shopping. Basically, from the website or smartphone app you sign up for an annual membership ($99), enter your grocery list, pick a most convenient delivery time, and voila — your groceries come to you. Imagine how much more attention you can put into your project if you don’t have to go to the grocery store anymore.
Launched last year from Birmingham, Alabama, Shipt has only been available in Florida for the last few months and only deals with Publix. The app includes a user-friendly menu of products that your grocery has in stock, so all you need to do is pick out what you want and go back to work. Orders need to be over $25, and a small percentage is added to the price of each item in order to pay the “pilot” who picks out and delivers your food. Considering the extra time and energy you can keep focused on your business, it seems to be well worth the extra cost.
Blink;Tech is a one-stop web technology shop in Sarasota, FL, serving all industries and business sizes. And now we’re hungry. If you’d like to talk to us about your website or Internet marketing needs, let’s do lunch.
