On Wednesday, February 3, Portland-based SoupCycle will make its 10,000th bicycle delivery. The year and a half old company makes and delivers soups, salads and breads to customers who sign up for a Soupscription. The bicycle delivery company says that customers not only appreciate the fact that one tasty meal a week is taken care of but that it comes to them in a sustainable way—by pedal power.
SoupCycle has three delivery people who load coolers onto large blue bike trailers every Tuesday and Wednesday morning. When fully loaded these trailers weigh over 200 pounds and carry 40 quarts of soup. Since launching the business, SoupCycle has biked over 3,300 miles delivering soup—about the same as biking from Portland to Miami Florida.
SoupCycle is a member of the Bicycle Business League, a newly formed coalition of businesses working to promote bicycle based solutions. SoupCycle Co-Owner Jed Lazar says “It’s great to see new bicycle based businesses starting who were inspired by our success. That was one of our goals when we started this business—to show that bicycle delivery can be done successfully.” Not only is bicycle delivery a more sustainable solution, Co-Owner Shauna Lambert says it is also less expensive “We don’t have to deal with the expense of a vehicle or the rising costs of gasoline. And surprisingly, bicycle delivery isn’t that much slower than delivery by car. In fact downtown deliveries are faster because you aren’t competing for limited parking.”
SoupCycle’s soups are made from local, organic ingredients. Their delivery area covers much of downtown and on the eastside stretches from Ainsworth to Holgate and as far east as 52nd Avenue.
SoupCycle
3300 SE Woodward Street
Portland OR 97202
Great that they're not using cars, but are they using disposable packaging for their products? If so, there's still a huge gap to close to make the service truly "sustainable."
Hi Acmetiger,
Thanks for the comment on recyclable vs. reusable containers. I couldn't agree more- reusable containers are the more sustainable route. It's one of my dreams that SoupCycle will someday (hopefully soon) make the shift to reusable containers. There are a few issues we're working out before we can make the switch: finding a durable reusable container that can handle the bumps from bike delivery, how a small company washes an extra 300 containers each week and how to add the extra weight of heavier glass containers to our delivery rider's load, to name a few). That said, it's important to us and we'll do everything we can to make it happen.
SoupCycle uses recyclable packaging. In addition, SoupCycle has the organic produce used to make their products delivered to them [by bike] by another local company called B-Line. You can read more about B-Line here.