Bicycle Courier Startup Hurrier Plots Montreal, Vancouver Expansion

Toronto-based restaurant delivery startup Hurrier is planning to expand to Montreal and Vancouver this fall.

The expansion will see the service, which uses bicycles to deliver meals from local restaurants, in Montreal by shortly before the end of September and in Vancouver around a month later.

While the company, which currently only delivers in its hometown, has been considering expansion for over a year, Adam Hasham, Hurrier’s founder, says it was important to get the technology right.

“It’s really important for us to be able to provide a high-quality level of service to our customers and we didn’t want to rush into it and do things in a sloppy way,” he says.

It wasn’t just about making sure everything would work as the company scaled-up, Hasham says. It was also about creating technology that allowed the company to offer a higher level of service.

“Through the algorithms that we’ve developed, it actually enables us to focus on really quick delivery times and freshness of product,” he says.

That means integrating directly with kitchens.

“It’s extremely important to be integrated, especially when it comes down to freshness of food,” he says. “We’re able to cue a kitchen to start preparing an item so that it’s ready the same time that a Hurrier arrives to pick it up.”

He says that means it only takes between five and 10 minutes for food to get from a restaurant to a customer.

“It’s still piping hot,” Hasham says. “That’s especially important in the winter time.”

He says that Hurrier’s ability to deliver food as soon as its ready, rather than whenever the deliver driver shows up, has helped the company win over chefs who previously wouldn’t use a delivery service. 

“The majority of our partners are restaurants that have never delivered before or have turned down opportunities to deliver with other services,” he says. A lot of restaurants care about how long it takes for someone to come pick up their product and deliver it.”

Still, getting that timing right isn’t easy, especially with a bike delivery service.

It involves “dynamic route calculations, measuring timing and forecasting how long it will take for different things to complete,” he says. “Our model is very dynamic and alive.”

It seems to be working.

“Right now in Toronto we’re averaging delivery times, from order placed to order received, between 30 and 35 minutes,” he says. “That’s something we want to be able to create in Montreal and Vancouver.”

Despite being bicycle-based Hasham says Hurrier is a year-round service.

“We’ve gone through two seasons of winter in Toronto now,” he says. “You’d be surprised at the number of bike courier that like to get out there and fight through the cold.”