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Rebound Indiana: ClusterTruck tests grocery delivery in Carmel

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Posted at 5:23 PM, Apr 23, 2020
and last updated 2020-04-23 18:48:46-04

CARMEL — Before the COVID-19 pandemic, ClusterTruck was always very busy during the lunch hour. But since many people are now working from home, they are seeing their business shift during this time.

ClusterTruck is busier at another time of day and they are also testing out a new service to meet their customer's needs.

"For the past three years outside of COVID, it's been lunch, lunch, lunch," Nakul Deo, logistics manager for ClusterTruck, said. "Now we are seeing dinner, dinner, dinner."

For ClusterTruck, about half of their business comes from people ordering lunch in office buildings. Since that has slowed down for the time being, they are trying to figure out what the current need is. In Carmel, they started testing out grocery deliver packs.

There is a small, medium and large with a different assortment of dairy products, meat. They also have a paper pack with paper towels and toilet paper.

"A lot of the restaurant suppliers are stuck," Chris Baggot, ClusterTruck co-founder and CEO, said. "They have all this inventory of chicken breast and hamburger and bacon and paper goods that are packaged in a huge bulk to sell to a restaurant. We are taking those from the Cisco's breaking them down into individual servings and using our technology to deliver to customers in Carmel."

On average, customers receive their groceries about 15 minutes after ordering.

ClusterTruck is constantly trying to figure out how they can get more of these items. Since starting to deliver groceries last week, they have sold out of the products nearly every day. They hope to eventually expand the grocery delivery to other cities like Indianapolis in the future.