A UF student is hoping to solve the grocery woes of the carless.
Gator Grocery was the brainchild of Alex Green, a UF finance freshman. With his service, students stranded on campus can choose from more than 2,000 items at Publix and have them delivered to their doorsteps. He launched the site this month with his friend Joshua Montiel, a 19-year-old UF economics freshman.
“I felt like it would work perfectly for a college place because most people don’t even have cars,” Green, 18, said.
To place an order, users can visit gatorgrocery.com and choose from categories or search for products using keywords. Either Green or Montiel will go out, buy it and deliver it for as little as $5. Customers can send them an email about products not listed on the website.
Montiel said he knows a lot of students whose busy schedules keep them from getting to Publix.
“So if they just go five, 10 minutes online, they could order anything they want from the store, and we’ll bring it to you, guaranteed,” Montiel said.
Gator Grocery is looking to compete with local delivery services, such as Lazy Delivery.
However, Patricia Potestades, the Lazy Delivery director of media relations, said only about a third of its deliveries are groceries.
“While these new services are somewhat in the same market as us, we still do a lot of non-grocery deliveries,” Potestades said.
Green and Montiel are optimistic about the future of Gator Grocery and hope to see it expand to every major university in Florida.
[A version of this story ran on page 3 on 3/24/2015 under the headline “UF students start own online delivery service, Gator Grocery”]
