Bread by Bike Delivery Service

Fresh bread is great and, I think, a great basis for a simple diet -- just add some cheese and fruit and you're all set (the fruit is optional as far as I'm concerned). I really don't agree with what some Farrakhan followers say about avoiding fresh bread. Unfortunately, baguettes are really only good for one day -- maybe two, if you like stale baguette as untoasted toast for breakfast -- and other good breads also have a short shelf life. But alas, I, like many others, don't live within walking or practical every-day biking distance of a good bread, never mind a baguette. The Peninsula isn't exactly Paris, you know. They do have good bread at good old New Seasons, but because of the distance, it is for me, at most, a once a week thing, more often less since I'm really trying to cut out extra, unnecessary driving these days.

So, my idea is for bread delivery by bike. It's more practical than milk delivery because: 1) a half gallon of milk lasts me a week or so; 2) bread weighs a lot less than milk, and doesn't need to be refrigerated. You could fit a fair number of loaves in a bike cart, as those bike moves demonstrate. 3) A lot of people don't even drink milk anymore and although it's true that some people are still following the low carb diets, many more, I think (maybe I'm wrong?) eat bread than drink milk.

And I would gladly pay a dollar or two -- well, maybe a dollar -- extra per loaf to avoid the lines and transportation and general hassle of buying bread at the grocery store.

But even with economies of scale, we're not talking about a huge income. How many houses do you think someone could deliver to by bike? Maybe 50? So, maybe $50 a day? that's okay, but not exactly a living wage.

So who would provide this invaluable service for relatively low pay? My first thought was bike hippies, but then, my impression is that a lot of those folks are actually gainfully employed. (I'll bet they'd buy bread by bike, though, on those days when they didn't have time to go to the store themselves.)

So, that leaves hobos. I'm not sure if "hobo" is a polite term or not. It certainly seems to have gained recent currency. Well, it's better than bum (although that does give you more illiteration), we'll go with hobo for now. I'm thinking of the folks who regularly patrol the neighborhood by bike already, often pulling a shopping cart behind them, looking for bottles. What if, at the same time as they picked up bottles, they dropped off loaves of bread? Maybe they'd have two carts, for reasons of sanitation -- one for bottles, and one for bread. They're ready doing all that work riding around, this way, they could make more money.

New Seasons is a grocery store that positions itself as having a social and environmental conscience (and I have no reason to think they don't), and being locally based, they could work with local bikers by letting them have loaves at cost, or near cost. They could give them the bread in sealed bags, so you wouldn't have to worry about someone's dog having slobbered on it or whatever. New Seasons could insist that all its bread bike delivery people wore helmets and reflective tape, so that the overall safety of was increased. Maybe they'd give away New Season's bike helmets?

At first, before economies of scale kicked in, New Seasons might have to subsidize the delivery, like the Oregonian subsidizes delivery of the paper. (I'm assuming that the cost of paper delivery is underwritten by the advertising in the paper.) So, maybe you'd get some New Season's advertising with your bread. Or maybe they'd just use it to show how they are working to offset the amount of carbon emissions they help foster by selling delicious things that encourage us to drive to get there. We'd still have to go there for our icecream and stuff. Until the bike delivery service really took off, and then maybe we could get anything that way.

Some people would subscribe to bread and get a little discount. You could get bread every day, every other day, twice a week, or whatever. Maybe you'd get a baguette every time, or maybe you'd alternate with some other kinds of bread. And the bread delivery people would also carry some extra loaves that you could buy off them for a little more. Maybe they'd ride through the neighborhood singing, "bread for sale! fresh bread for sale!"

You'd tip your bread delivery person.

It might be like day labor, where you showed up with your bike and got assigned a route, or some people could have regular routes. It might be like the berry bus, where kids and immigrant workers do it sometimes, too. I only did the berry bus a couple of times when I was a teenager and, man, it really sucked. Bread delivery would be a lot more fun, I think. (But the traffic danger might mean that kids really couldn't do it.)

So, that's my idea. Justin had a related idea which I'll blog shortly.