It’s about 10 p.m. on a chilly December Friday, and James is buzzing the front door of an apartment complex on Spring Street. Out emerges a grinning, boyish student whose dusty-blonde hair almost covers his drooping eyes.
“Hey dude, great smile!” James jokes, chuckling as he notes the massive grin on his face. “You’re at $20 even.”
“Thank you. Thank you sooo much dude,” the boy says earnestly, fumbling to retrieve cash from the pocket of his grey sweatpants. “Here’s $20, I’ll grab you a tip.”
“Alright man, I appreciate it,” James says as he hands over the delivery of fresh-baked cookies and milk in exchange for the cash. “You have a great night.”
Over the course of the night, this will become a routine interaction for James, an employee of Munchie Delivery, a service that delivers snacks to hungry patrons within a three-mile radius of the Capitol building between the hours of 6 p.m. and 3 a.m.
The Munchie Delivery men
James is a part-time University of Wisconsin student studying computer science. He works about 40 hours a week as an assistant manager of Munchie Delivery, which operates out of a small office tucked in the back of Capitol Centre Market. Co-assistant manager, self-described nerd and UW legal studies student Chris works about 25 hours per week, and the head manager Ken works long hours and “gets the least sleep” of the three, Chris says.
Despite odd working hours, the guys seem to have fun on the job, cracking jokes and poking fun at one another. They also have an amicable, faux-rivalrous relationship with some Capitol Centre employees—at one point, one pops his head in and says with a smirk, “it must be hard to write an article about people at work when they’re not actually working.” James and Chris laugh.
“You can also write in the article that the people who work at Cap Centre are very jealous and that they are mad bro,” Chris jokes. “At least you get to leave here at 11 p.m., we’re here till 3 a.m.”
“I also got here at 3 p.m., so…”
“I may have still been in bed,” Chris retorts.
“In yo face!” James says, laughing.
“I’m going to go do some work now,” the Cap Centre employee says as he leaves the room, chuckling.
“What’s that like?” Chris sarcastically calls after him, using a healthy sense of humor to fill the time on slower nights like this one.
In addition to James, Chris, Ken and the owner living in Chicago, the company also includes an Israel-based web developer. He recently overhauled the Munchie Delivery website, which hosts about 1,000 items for customers to choose from when placing orders for delivery.
The most common request?
Milk and fresh-baked cookies, Chris says, estimating that 20-25 percent of orders include the variety of cookies they bake from frozen in a convection oven in the back of the market.
“They’re almost as good as my mom’s,” he says. “Which is saying something.”
Other popular orders over the course of the night include ice cream, chips and hummus, frozen pizza, various kinds of candy and energy drinks and an inordinate amount of 32-oz bottles of Frost Glacier Freeze Gatorade.
When an order is placed on a given night, James and Chris receive a notification on the company computer and head off to the floor of the grocery store to retrieve items before scanning and bagging them. Munchie Delivery pays the grocery store wholesale for each item and marks it up for sale, and the company gives Capitol Centre a fixed percent of its total profits in exchange for the provided space. After orders are scanned, they’re delivered on a schedule of 15-minute increments. The company uses an electric Nissan emblazoned with the yellow and orange logo to deliver orders, which James said is perfect for zipping around town.
The average amount of orders per night is 25, with the busiest nights by far being Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays.
The goal is to eventually increase orders to 100 per night. Chris said business has been steadily increasing since September when Munchie Delivery reopened with a new name and structure after a few months off.
Revamping as Munchie Delivery
Owner Jeremy Neren, who also went to UW and now lives in Chicago, revamped his business this fall when he moved it into Capitol Centre. The business was called Madtown Munchies since it opened in 2006, and it used to operate out of a warehouse off-campus. Neren said the new set-up allows for faster delivery, more delivery options (the warehouse used to offer about 100 products) and a mutually beneficial relationship with the grocery store.
“It was a pretty dramatic shift for us,” he said. “It really allows us to focus on the service we provide and it increases the amount of products we can offer. Also just practically speaking, Cap Centre is really centrally located so it’s a good point for us to be leaving from.”
James said while the changes have been beneficial, business was slow to start this fall. An average night in September brought in just 10 orders, which the company has now more than doubled.
“Word is spreading in some way, shape or form,” he said, adding that word of mouth is a big way Munchie Delivery gains business.
Neren noted that each fall, the business takes a hit as UW seniors have graduated and left Madison and incoming freshmen don’t yet know of Munchie Delivery. Business tends to trend up in the winter, especially during finals and when weather is bad, which Chris said has made for some slippery, rain-soaked delivering experiences.
The clientele
The most common delivery area is the Henry Street/Langdon neighborhood, home to most of UW’s Greek system, James said. One apartment building off Langdon, which James says “functions more like a frat,” houses Munchie Delivery’s top customers. The foyer is scattered with trash — both inside and outside of bags — and the entire building reeks of marijuana. On this night, James will deliver orders to this building five times, three of which are to the same specific apartment.
As for the typical customer of the business, Chris outlined his estimate.
“I call it 40-40-20, where 40 percent are drunk or stoned, 40 are not intoxicated and another 20 percent are not students and are older,” he said.
He said he sees a “good mix” of clientele, and it’s not uncommon to deliver to students studying late at night at places like College Library, especially during finals and midterm season. James and Chris both said they get to know certain repeat customers on the job.
“There’s this one guy, he always orders three things of ice cream,” Chris said as he clicked through the website’s back end. “Nice guy.”
Customers over the course of this Friday night range from cheerful, probably high students who say “thank you” profusely to not-so-cheerful, definitely high students who emerge from darkened apartments and snatch their deliveries and quickly retreat without saying a word. Other customers, like one girl in Equinox seem to be studying or having a movie night in with friends.
James said it’s not unusual to deal with customers who take a while to figure out how to count cash. He laughs as he remembers how Ken recently was invited into a customer’s apartment because they needed a few minutes to count out 20-some singles.
Chris said he enjoys delivering to older customers because they’re always shocked at the delivery speed and are “super friendly” and usually tip well, unlike some of the UW students who might be more entitled.
Sticking to hot pockets and ice cream for now
As for the future of the business, Neren said he is hoping to expand to other cities and is currently at the “ground floor” of this process. But for now, James, Chris and Ken will continue to hold things down at Cap Centre.
The last order of the night comes in at 2:30 a.m. and is comprised of a pint of ice cream, Gushers, Goldfish and two kinds of Lean Pockets. No cookies this time.
“Lean pockets and hot pockets scare me,” James says while packaging up the order. “But the customer is always right!”
Now tired from the long night, James heads out into the cold to deliver the last order, bringing the total to about 20 deliveries for the night. While this is low for a Friday, he doesn’t seem too worried. The ice cream, pizza, chips and energy drinks lining the shelves of Cap Centre will live to fight another day.
