Updated: Clustertruck to Truck Up Columbus Food Delivery
There were some major inaccuracies in our initial report and Gwen Ragno, the Digital Marketing Specialist contacted me to give me some more information on their unique business.
First, there are no trucks but instead a central kitchen that allows a wide range of food to be made to order.
“We just use that concept as a way of organizing our massive menu. And we certainly do not cook the food in the car! We have one central kitchen where we prepare all of the food. Customers order online, we make their food to order, then drivers (or bikers) pick up the food and deliver it to the customers.”
“Just to give you a little more detail to work with, that central kitchen the main thing that sets us apart from other food delivery services and from food trucks. It allows us to make a bunch of different types of food all in the same place, so you can get a burger, tacos and Pad Thai all delivered together and equally fresh. We base our delivery range on drive time, and the kitchen doesn’t begin making the food until a driver is on the way to pick it up—so customers will never get food more than a few minutes old.”
Gwen also helped clarify that Mike Cunningham is not the owner. Their co-owners are CEO Chris Baggott and CTO Dan McFadden. Mike Cunningham is an investor and, “We do draw on his wisdom often, but he does not run the kitchen and he was not brought in to “handle the food,” as he says in the BizJournals article.”
“Our executive chef, Tim McIntosh, fills that role. Chris, Dan and Tim have much more day-to-day involvement in the company than Mike Cunningham.”
What’s one more food delivery system? We’ve got UberEats (and their outrageous prices) and also Amazon Restaurants (pro-tip: which is free with prime) — to help diversify our choices Clustertruck is coming to Columbus.
What is Clustertruck you ask? It’s kind of like a fleet of UberEats cars each with their own cuisine and the food was prepared in the car (or truck in their case.) The owner, Mike Cunningham of Bru Burger Bar, has described it as having 10 “virtual” food trucks, each specializing in its own cuisine and totaling more than 100 dishes customers can choose from according to BizJournals.
They don’t start cooking your food until one of their drivers accepts the order, no charge (which is great) but customers are asked to walk to meet the delivery person at the curb. Common courtesy people. Meet them halfway I suppose.
The truck will be located near CCAD, after securing the space necessary to operate. It’s a great space — a lot of hungry college kids that don’t have many options. You can check out their menu for the Indy locations here.
Which offers an absurd amount of options including Graeter’s, breakfast options, and soup.
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