NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — You may use Grubhub and DoorDash for big chain deliveries, but it has priced-out small business owners.
That's where Ilir Sela saw an opening.
Sela grew-up at his family pizzeria on the Upper East Side.
He matched that experience with his studies in technology to develop an app called Slice — a mobile delivery order platform for local pizzerias.
"I have 34 family members that own small business pizzerias, I have a technology background, and I saw an opportunity for us to work together to make sure that we're enabling these locations to evolve," Sela told Joe Connolly in this week's Small Business Spotlight, sponsored by BNB Bank — "Community Banking from Montauk to Manhattan."
The shops pay a flat fee of $1.95 on every order, rather than $4 to $8 on every Grubhub delivery and other fees that are passed onto customers, stifling growth.
"A small business pizzeria owner partners with Slice and like the flip of a switch they immediately get a digital presence across the internet, not just a website, and we enable those customers to then order easily from that location, not only that but then post-order we advertise to that consumer to come back and reorder from that location and usually we do that through deals and discounts that are proprietary," Sela said.
Slice partners with close to 600 new pizza restaurants every month.
"We are a natural partner for the small business, so we are an extension of their business, we think of ourselves as the digital component to every small business pizzeria," Sela said. "We're not necessarily chasing or trying to maximize our revenue by taking advantage of small businesses."