Lee Roman is the owner of DubVEatz, a food delivery service operating in Morgantown, West Virginia. His company delivers food around the town from over 50 restaurants in the area, and has been operating for just over a year now.
By all accounts Lee’s decision to start his own business has gone well so far, especially since he had the foresight to set up shop in a university town – all but ensuring that he will have plenty of customers wanting easy meals. He tells his story here.
Lee, how did you choose the name DubVEatz?
This one is pretty simple. Dub V is a nickname for the state of West Virginia. It’s also a nickname for the West Virginia University sports teams. You put that with eatz and you have a short, but catchy name for a food delivery service.
What made you decide to start your own food delivery business?
We felt like this was something that could bring a lot of value. A few more have popped up, but at the time this business started there wasn’t much out there as far as food delivery services in Morgantown. Our goal was to give the residents and students in Morgantown a massive selection of restaurants to be delivered to their home. Now that we have been in business for over a year, we were able to do exactly that. Let Morgantown residents have literally any kind of food they want delivered to their home.
The West Virginia University campus is in Morgantown – is that where most of your business comes from?
We get business from WVU students and non-student residents alike, but we’d be lying if we didn’t admit that a huge portion of our business comes from the students. During the school semesters there is more business. Additional to that, students and non-students order food for the big WVU game that’s coming on.
Also, we get a lot of business from people at work. Whether it is people at a hospital or a law firm there are orders all year-round from people at work that are sick and tired of pizza and Chinese. Or they want the Chinese restaurant that we offer that no one else does.
Do you have many competitors in the area for food delivery services?
There are other competitors. While it has become challenging with more competition in the area, we are able to hold advantages over them that allow us to still thrive. For one, we just have more options. None of the other food delivery services are able to bring as many options to the table as we are.
Another advantage we bring over our rival companies is we get the food there extremely fast. Our app gives an estimate of exactly how many minutes it will take for us to get to you. When you combine that with the reputation we have established as THE food delivery service in Morgantown, it allows us to continue to thrive.
What would you say are the biggest challenges your business faces?
One of the big challenges is continuing to thrive when the students are gone for the summer for winter break. To combat this we have built relationships with non-student customers as well as local businesses to get past these times.
We have a lot of people who are looking to get delivery food, so we are constantly recruiting drivers to work for us. Not only do we offer a food delivery service, but a great part-time option for college students to earn money.
Do you have any plans to expand your business to other towns?
As of now we do not. We won’t rule anything out in the future, though, as we do have business partners in other cities.
Are you thinking about increasing the products you offer?
We are constantly reaching out to every restaurant we can in hopes of offering delivery services for their restaurant. Every month we are adding new restaurants to our roster. The more options, the more customers our service will appeal to. Another service we offer is grocery delivery. People can shop for their groceries online and have us deliver the groceries. That is a very convenient new service that many customers have taken advantage of.
Do you have any problems with finding enough drivers?
With the compensation and flexibility a DubVEatz position brings, we haven’t had much trouble finding enough delivery drivers. Sure there are times when situations come up and we have ran a little thin, but the good thing is our mobile app and website accounts for those situations and warns customers of delivery times being extended. So no matter what happens with delivery drivers, customers are in the know when they are using our service.