The Virtual Bodega (and They Deliver)

Brooklyn Up Close - In Brooklyn, the Virtual Bodega (And They Deliver) - NYTimes.com

The Virtual Bodega (and They Deliver)

By NIKO KOPPEL

WITH its corrugated steel awning, a yellow and red exterior with stickers and assorted merchandise lined up behind scratched plexiglass, the bodega is a fixture of the city. And now this New York institution is available online.

In the tradition of FreshDirect, Kozmo and Peapod, two enterprising hipsters in Brooklyn have started Hyperbodega.com, which offers and delivers beer, cigarettes, condoms, plantain chips, cat food and other such items directly to doorsteps in Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Bushwick, neighborhoods closest to where the men live.

“Bodegas are convenient, and people want stuff late,” said Abe Jellinek, 23, a bookish occasional day trader and one of the service’s owners, who also works as its dispatcher from his sparsely furnished apartment in Williamsburg.

Open seven days a week between 10 p.m. and 4:30 a.m., the service maintains no inventory but instead acquires items from neighborhood stores and delivers them by bike. Orders have included everything from toilet paper to smoked gouda.

“I’m not going to get rich quickly; maybe it will lose money,” Mr. Jellinek said. “We’ll see what happens.”

After an order is placed on the Web site, the service’s other owner, Keron Richardson, 23, who also works as a deliverer for the Bushwick restaurant Life Cafe, negotiates a price based on the difficulty of finding the items, the cost and the distance to be traveled. The two men make about 20 percent profit on every order, which, they concede, doesn’t amount to much now. But they hope to increase their profit with a higher volume of orders.

Although the service has made just two or three deliveries a night — many to friends — since it started in September, the business is growing by word of mouth. On a recent Friday night, Arielle Ginsberg, a 24-year-old research scientist, placed an order for seltzer, a 40-ounce bottle of Colt 45 and either Cheez-Its or Goldfish crackers to be delivered to her Greenpoint apartment. The cost of the purchase was $8 with a $5 delivery charge.

“I do capitalize on the laziness of people,” said Mr. Jellinek, who added that the start-up was focusing on areas lacking grocery stores yet dense with 20-something residents.

Racing through East Williamsburg one night on a delivery, the burly Mr. Richardson, astride a fixed-gear bike, darted in front of passing cars. “Some people are artists; others are schemers and dreamers,” he said, referring to himself and Mr. Jellinek. “The end product is, it’s a luxury, like a concierge service for Bushwick.”

Stopping at a bodega, he strode down the aisles, collecting a container of Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and a can of chicken noodle soup, to be delivered to a brick apartment building on North Sixth and Havemeyer Streets in Williamsburg.

Standing in the doorway was Marianna Houston, a 24-year-old middle school teacher, who said she had placed her order after picking up a flier at a bodega around the neighborhood.

Ms. Houston was in the market for such a service, she said, because all four of her wisdom teeth had been pulled that day.

“I was particularly out of commission tonight, so I was feeling like I wanted to stay in,” she said, paying for her order and tipping Mr. Richardson $4. Back on his bike, as he tucked the bills in his pocket, he observed, “People find it so absurd that they tip a lot.”