New Delivery Service Hits Town

A new delivery service, PostMates, has come to town. Originally launched in San Francisco, PostMates is now in 40 different markets around the United States and could best be compared to the Uber of delivery service. You place your order, they connect you with a driver/personal errand runner, and send you real-time updates on what is happening. While they are available for various services in other cities, it seems like they're currently focusing primarily on food in and near Jersey City.

They opened in Jersey City last week and seem to have a pretty extensive delivery list already available. Every time I check, there are more places added although it's a little hard to tell some of those locations' hours without clicking on to that specific place and/or what menus they have available at the time you're ordering. There's a good selection of Hoboken restaurants as well and because the service assigns you to a someone who is more or less acting as you by proxy, there are also a number of restaurants available that are typically take-out only which definitely helps expand your at-home dining options.

(screenshot from their site)

The downside? It's not cheap. Delivery fees start at $5.00 but increase more depending on distance. For example, I did a couple of sample orders without checking out and ordering from Porta which is in about a 5 block radius of me, would have cost me $5.25 just as a delivery fee. To order from Mamoun in Hoboken, it was $9.15. On top of the delivery fees, there's also a 9% service fee. Neither of these cover tax or tip so you're looking at your costs building up very quickly.

That said, they seem to offer discounts pretty often and they always have a special offer at the top of the page. When I first started checking it was free slices (although they didn't say from where) and now it's Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

                                                                (screenshot from their site)

It's good to know there are more locally-managed options out there and if I needed a big order or was really in the mood for something from fairly far away, I would definitely consider using PostMates. It might also be ideal for non-food delivery in time, but for smaller deliveries, you might be better off using another service.