MobiSnacks Was Conceptualized In 2015
I was working at Sephora in San Fransico working as a senior software engineer. I had a daily routine after coming home after work. I would go to the corner store, get some snacks, then proceed to walk to my condo get blazed then have a munchie feast. During one of my cannabis epiphanies I had an idea. Why not create an app that allows you to order your snacks from local corner stores and have delivery drivers drop off the merch? I went and wrote a demo and showed it to my homie Shay the next day at Sephora. He thought it was a solid concept so I decided to show it to the aforementioned corner store.
Going forward a few months I had a few sales and things were going good….until they weren’t. I moved back to Kentucky and quickly things fell apart and I lost a lot of time and money. It was such a hit actually that I trashed the app, then a couple years later goPuff came out and essentially MobiSnacks was dead in the water. I was so embittered by the experience that I vowed to never touch the source code again.
The 2020 Resurrection
From 2017 – 2020 one of my best friends would occasionally ask me “Hey what’s going on with MobiSnacks?“. I knew he thought it was a good idea but I was done. One day we are chilling at his place and we are talking about startups and his wife cooked for us. While eating I had the thought “man screw UberEats I wish I could just order directly from chefs!”. At that moment a lightning strike hit my brain and MobiSnacks was reborn. I told my homie and asked him if he wanted to come on-board! During this time we were a couple weeks away from the lockdown from COVID-19. In hindsight the timing was perfect. We were approached by another local startup called Quarantine and Eatz; a platform where they cook the food and throw a virtual Instagram live party. They needed logistics and drivers and first day MobiSnacks did over 200 orders on the website! That was all the motivation I needed to go back full swing.
Building The Brand
Over the past year, the app has a little over 200 downloads with a growing social media presence. I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past so I’m taking everything slow. Talking to each driver, talking to each chef, and talking to each customer. It was during this time that I realized things about this platform I created I never considered. The first was that I was serving food deserts. Last May I got a order notification and when reviewing the order I realized I had NO IDEA who this woman is. I decided to give her a call and introduce myself as the CEO of MobiSnacks and ask her how she found out about our platform. She told me Facebook, which made me elated. I told her I would personally deliver the order and I drove out. I arrived to an independent senior citizen complex and met the lady. She told me that since the shutdown she hasn’t been allowed to see her adult children who normally grocery shop for her. The buses weren’t running at the time and she couldn’t drive. She was literally starving and was on a budget that UberEats was too expensive for her. This brought tears to my eyes and was the first time I heard the term “food desert”. I would have never thought that I would build something that literrally made a life-changing difference in someone’s life. I knew at that moment that I had something and I had to keep going.
Going Forward
MobiSnacks has a new feature called MobiSnacks TV, a platform that allows you to view pre-recorded and live-streamed content from chefs all around the world! The content line up comes out June 1st and I couldn’t be more excited. In addition there will be MobiSnacks+ the premium subscription service where you can get the fresh ingridents for the shows sent directly to your door. Also there will be updates including meal prep, 1-1 cooking classes and more! I am often asked what my exit strategy is, do I want to sell or do I want to run it in perpetuity. To be honest I go back and forth between the two options. I would love to sell to a Food Network or UberEats but I also wouldn’t mind running it if the numbers make sense. In either case MobiSnacks is a success and I couldn’t be happier. If you haven’t downloaded the app on iOS or Android then do so and leave feedback!
