February 16, 2021
Kiya Stanford
At the beginning of the year I took the time to sit with a few small business owners to shine a light on the entrepreneurs that help push local economies. The first interview was with Phil Shobo of PhiSho Delivers in Atlanta, Ga. We had an interesting conversation about how his business came to be at the height of COVID and his plans for 2021. With many businesses closing their operations permanently due to the pandemic, it is refreshing to discover and support the entities that came to being and have found success in spite of the economic circumstances 2020 causes.
PhiSho Delivers (pronounced fa-show) came to be in April 2020, just a month after lockdowns rolled out across the world. With the stay-at-home mandates, delivery services that offered on-demand goods ,like food takeout and groceries, boomed. Shobo notes he pulled inspiration from the InstaCart business model to start PhiSho. “I began freelancing the concept to people I know. I used Zelle and CashApp for payment at first.” When I asked Shobo why this type of work, he indicated that grocery shopping takes more effort than other jobs in the gig economy. He found that there can be a quality control issue when receiving produce and fresh goods from shoppers on apps like InstaCart. He felt that he could fill this gap because he would be the shopper each time. His customers would choose where their items came from, who handled them, and the time they arrived without the markup on market price consumers experience with the larger delivery services.
When asked were there any partners in starting his business Shobo said “I am a complete solo-preneur. Complete one man operation.” He had plans to be a business owner before 2020. “The pandemic, for a lot of people, cut off their main source of income”, says Shobo. Like many people who were affected by the economic downturn the pandemic brought, Shobo had to come up with a new means to create cash flow. This led him to create his own avenue of creating income.
PhiSho Delivers hopes to continue to grow in 2021 and potentially bring on team members as the need arises. The key thing that Shobo wants customers to associate with PhiSho Delivers is that it provides the same shopper, any store you prefer, with zero markups. He strives to be the go-to stop for food delivery in metro-Atlanta.
You can connect and shop with PhiSho Delivers through the Dumpling app at https://shop.dumpling.us/phils99. Make sure to support the next time you are in need of grocery delivery.
