DwellSocial brings some of Chicago’s favorite foods to the suburbs

In a pivot that only the pandemic could inspire, a company that started as a way to bring together homeowners and contractors now brings food from some of Chicago’s favorite restaurants to the suburbs.

Since 2020, DwellSocial has been bringing meals from well known city eateries like Pequod’s Pizza, Frontera Grill, Manny’s Deli, Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba! and many more to towns across the suburbs.

“I call what we do, not food delivery, but community catering,” CEO Allen Shulman said. “We bring a bunch of food to communities in very specific areas. It brings the city to you and allows you to enjoy this great food from Chicago in the comfort of your own home, which is kind of cool.”

The company was founded in 2017 as a site that would aggregate neighborhood demand for home services, such as plumbing. Homeowners and service providers both save through the efficiency of doing multiple jobs on the same street.

Once the pandemic hit and people weren’t having as many contractors in their homes, Shulman found a way to pivot and fill a void at the same time.

“I’m sitting in my house in Northbrook and every restaurant is closed,” he said. “They’re trying to figure out how to stay alive and, at the same time, we’re all tired of the same old, same old and we can’t go out to eat anymore. That’s when it clicked for me.”

Shulman figured he could take the same efficiencies of aggregate neighborhood demand but apply it to food delivery. To bring orders to towns well outside normal delivery areas, they create group restaurant events, doing 10 or 20 deliveries from a Chicago restaurant to a particular town on the same day.

Restaurant events are found on their website or through their app.

Most of the meals are prepared with chef instructions on how to be finished at home so they’re always hot when it’s time to eat.

“It makes a big difference over food that was hot when it left the restaurant and then is sitting in a car during a delivery,” he said. “We’re never going to be quite like the restaurant, but oftentimes we’re close.”

They started with Pequod’s Pizza, which recently was named the number one pizza in America by Yelp.

“Pequod’s is our GOAT (greatest of all time), they’re the OG,” Shulman said. “They do extraordinarily well on our platform, and since it’s par-baked the pizzas come out of your oven tasting almost like you’re at the restaurant. It’s so much better than a typical delivered pizza.”

The service started by doing delivery meetups in parking lots across the suburbs. They’ve since mostly switched to a home delivery model. Their technology allows customers to track the driver’s progress and provide real time updates on their arrival time.

“When we started doing that we started realizing that not only were people much happier because they weren’t having to go pick up, but they knew where the driver was at all times,” he said. “It was just a real pleasure of an experience.”

Turns out it also took drivers less time to make 20 deliveries to a targeted area than piggybacking pickup times one after the other in a centralized location.

In addition to bringing food from places with names people know and love like Geja’s Cafe, Honey Butter Fried Chicken and Do-Rite Donuts, one of the things the company offers is access to cuisines that aren’t often available in many suburbs, Shulman said.

“We have a restaurant on our platform called Laos To Your House, and it’s one of the only Laotian restaurants in Chicago,” he said. “People love it, and Laotian cuisine doesn’t exist in almost any community in Chicagoland, and yet we’re able to bring that kind of cuisine to people.”

They work with a rotating roster of about 40 restaurants. Group events happen around the suburbs Tuesdays through Sundays. They break the suburbs down into about 10 zones, meaning restaurants repeat in each zone every couple of months, keeping the choices fresh.

“By and large, every restaurant on our platform is considered one of Chicago’s best, maybe not fanciest, but best from across the cuisine spectrum,” he said.

All orders are charged with a flat $5 reservation, as well as an 18% service charge that goes to the driver in lieu of a tip.

Restaurants pay 10% for the service, which is “a lot lower than the other platforms,” Shulman said.

“When I’ve shared our fee structure with restaurants, I’ve never gotten any push back, which probably means I’m not charging enough,” he said.

In addition to being cheaper for restaurants, another benefit is that for 20 orders going out the door, they don’t have 20 different drivers. And the deliveries are normally picked up during the slower early afternoon hours so drivers can make it to their suburban pickup windows of roughly 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.

“We’re never going to replace the restaurant experience, and that’s not our intention,” Shulman said. “But sometimes it’s just easier and more enjoyable to have the food brought to you rather than schlep all the way to the city and pay for parking.”

Shulman said he hops into the action to make deliveries every few months.

“It’s good for us to understand what it’s like for our drivers and our restaurants,” he said. “But it’s also nice to see how much people enjoy the service we provide. You leave after the deliveries with this renewed sense of energy toward the business.”