CHICAGO — Jared Mitchell’s workday usually starts at 5 a.m., when he hops on his bike to head Downtown for another day of deliveries with Cut Cats — one of Chicago’s last courier services operating.
Mitchell’s route has him delivering hefty catering orders to high-rise office buildings or meals for customers from favorites like Goddess and The Baker or Small Cheval.
Cut Cats has operated across Chicago since 2012, starting as a pair of cyclists offering quick and inexpensive delivery services to local businesses. The worker-owned collective is now up to 40 cyclists and partners with over 85 restaurants and businesses, and while the company is surviving in the age of delivery apps like DoorDash and UberEats, that hasn’t come without its challenges.
“App deliveries were less of a worry when I started,” said Mitchell, who has been riding with Cut Cats for eight years. “And now it might actually take our jobs.”
Chicago is a money-making city for DoorDash, which named it one of the best cities in America for delivery drivers.
But for traditional couriers, DoorDash and other delivery apps not only pose a threat to business but also create unrealistic expectations for consumers while depersonalizing the delivery experience, said Cut Cat rider Anton Milej.
“DoorDash creates this unrealistic expectation where everyone expects all of their food to be delivered in 15 minutes or less,” Milej said. “The push from the apps has become this weird, unhealthy thing where everybody needs to work as quick as possible and the pay keeps getting lower while everyone just needs to work quicker and faster.”
Cut Cats, however, remains confident in its ability to provide a higher-quality delivery service compared to what can be done through apps or, increasingly, robots, its employees said.
“We’re really good at it — like, stupid good at it,” Mitchell said. “We do such a better job. It’s a no-brainer to me.”
The couriers said there are tasks they can do that simply cannot be completed by a delivery robot, like passing security checkpoints in office buildings or riding freight elevators with hundreds of dollars’ worth of food.
What Mitchell calls “just a bunch of dirty guys with backpacks” is a lifeline for some Chicago restaurants, like Crisp in Lakeview.
The popular Korean fried chicken joint was the first business to take on Cut Cats as its in-house courier when the collective started 12 years ago.
“They came up with the idea to deliver food faster with bikes, and they started here,” Calvin C. Buckner, general manager at Crisp, said. “The owner gave them a shot to deliver for us and the rest is history.”
On top of the quality service the couriers pride themselves in delivering, Cut Cats is structured as a worker-owned and -operated business, where every employee is considered a co-owner.
For Buckner, this structure is what makes Cut Cats stand out from other delivery options.
“They’re not corporate,” Buckner said. “Everyone who works for them owns a piece of their business. It’s equal for everybody.”
The worker-owned model allows for a better system of accountability for couriers, while ensuring fair wages and a healthy work environment, Milej said. The riders are ensured a base level pay to make up for lower tip amounts or a slower volume of deliveries.
“The relationship that gets built up by having the same people deliver over and over does just make solving issues a lot easier in a way that isn’t what the apps are like,” Milej said.
Cut Cats have dispatchers scheduled every day who are on the phone ready to talk to clients. That incentivizes Cut Cats to pay attention to detail while making deliveries and also builds a relationship between clients and couriers, Milej said.
Milej said he recognizes the names of repeat customers and has gotten to know their quirks — whether it’s which doorbell to ring or if the customer is ordering their food on the way home from work.
Cut Cats said it has built lasting ties with restaurants across the city by making sure they have a real person to talk to if there’s a delivery issue. Milej said that practice differentiates the service from what he calls the “faceless monolith where you just get everything you want on demand.”
“It’s a beautiful thing,” Mitchell said. “We go back with all of these people.”
On top of courier services, Cut Cats also operates as a “background mutual aid program,” whether by hosting fundraisers for injured riders or throwing parties open to the public at venues like the Empty Bottle.
While the impact of app-based delivery robots on courier services like Cut Cats remains to be seen, the Chicago-grown company continues to be “the real person” behind deliveries, and it continues to encourage Chicagoans to shop and eat local — down to who is delivering that food, Milej said.
“When you’re ordering from a place that’s not super far from your house that we service, maybe don’t click on DoorDash,” he said.
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