As busy New Yorkers we’re used to having everything appear at the tap of a finger. There’s meal service for our dog’s food, our weeknight dinner, our parties, but the city’s bakeries have largely been left out of the delivery economy. That’s something entrepreneur Ed Chang hopes to change with Sweetist, a delivery service that combines his love of food and tech.
It started with a party, or rather during the planning of one for his wife’s birthday.
“I wanted Lady M Cakes delivered to the restaurant as dessert but there were a lot steps involved, I ended up getting a Taskrabbit” Chang said.
The techie in him, Chang has worked for HP and Apple, knew there had to be a better way and in 2015 launched Sweetist with co-founder Puja Singh as a way to connect city dwellers with sweets.
Sweetist is selective, focused on curating high quality goods from local bakeries. Manhattan residents can choose sweets ranging from doughnuts to cakes from 27 bakeries and by the end of year Brooklyn residents will be able or order from bakeries including Dough, Baked and Jam Jar Bakery. While, Sweetist does same-day deliveries the majority of orders are a few days out, making it slightly different than the traditional on-demand model.
For Chang, Sweetist is a marriage of his love of food and tech. Growing up in Houston he worked at a bakery throughout high school and Sweetist isn’t just a delivery service, they’ve developed cloud-based back-of house technology for inventory and order management to help bakeries scale.
“I see us as a true end-to-end partner to bakeries: helping them deal with the rise of on-demand, both from a managed delivery and back-of-house efficiency standpoint,” Chang said.
