As a Next Gen food bank, we’re always on the lookout for forward-thinking partners to help us get food to the community in smart and effective ways.
Enter Uber, a company so well-recognized for its innovative approach to transportation that its name has become a verb. A company with the agile logistics that match our need to move food nimbly through congested city traffic, and to maximize every mile a vehicle spends on the road and gallon of gas it uses. And right when we need it most: in our busiest season.
Twenty five Uber employees from all facets of the company – drivers, managers, marketers – joined forces with the food bank today to pack bags, deliver them, and then pick up donations at smaller locations where it doesn’t make sense for us to send out a 16-wheeler.
This got me thinking: Uber wants to change the ways cities work. We want to increase access to food. Anyone who delivers or picks up as part of their business model or service approach has run smack into the maddening bottlenecks and clogs around town that make it harder to do that. Uber’s traffic pattern guided vehicles can play a big role in filling in the gap.
Uber’s communications lead Taylor Bennett told me that today was about giving back. Indeed. But it is also about innovating smarter delivery to get more food to more folks at a time when we most need help. And it is about using our comparative advantages in concert to solve problems and, ultimately, to make the world a better place. That’s partnership.
In an era where we can call a car with the glancing touch of a screen, or zero in on hunger needs right down to the neighborhood, solving hunger doesn’t sound so far-fetched. Together, Uber and CAFB are getting closer.