How do you deliver something as delicate as a cupcake in New York City using a Bilenky cargo bike? “Very carefully,” says Brad Baker, co-owner of Trackstar Courier in NYC. “The logistics of transporting cupcakes by bike? You really have no idea,” he laughs.
Baker, who opened the Manhattan-based business in 2003 with his two partners, invested in a cargo bike at the suggestion of Hodari Depalm, the 2005 Cargo Bike World Champion. Depalm owns Checker Courier, a delivery service also located in Manhattan that uses only cargo bikes.
“We decided to go with the Bilenky because that bike was the nicest,” explains Baker, who says much of the cargo that his staff of seven riders transports is heavy stuff. Many of the clients who rely on Trackstar’s cargo bike services are fashion and PR companies, so delivering cupcakes is an entirely new experience for his couriers.
“I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to use them,” says Debbie Weiner, co-owner of Sugar Sweet Sunshine, the Manhattan bakery that makes the cupcakes. “But they’re willing to work with us to try to come up with solutions. It’s a whole new animal for them. Most of them have delivered food before, but delivering cupcakes is a different thing compared to delivering fried chicken and mashed potatoes.”
Weiner learned of Trackstar from a neighbouring establishment. She believed from the start that using a bike to deliver cupcakes would be a good match with her burgeoning business. And in the two months they’ve been working together, she has been more than pleased with Trackstar’s speedy delivery times and professionalism. “They were able to get the product [to customers] super quick on the bikes,” she says.
Working together to figure out how to get the cupcakes where they need to be and to avert disasters has taken lots of experimenting and a willingness to think outside the box, according to Weiner.
“The first week that we used [Trackstar], it was really like trial and error. We had a lot of customers call and tell us that the cupcakes had been annihilated,” she says.
In addition to the obvious complications that come to mind when one thinks of transporting cupcakes by bike, melted icing was one thing Weiner hadn’t anticipated.
“We realized that with Trackstar we got a greenhouse effect where the cupcakes’ icing just melted completely. And the cupcakes were bouncing up and down. We don’t have that problem when we use foot messengers, which was curious because they go in the subway. And we didn’t understand why the heat was so extreme so that the cupcakes would be destroyed on the bikes.”
Baker and his staff use CETMAracks and Ortlieb bags, as well as refrigerator bags and ice packs, to deliver the delicate little cakes. And while Weiner says that refrigerating cupcakes is not something the bakery normally does, it has become the solution that keeps the icing from melting during transport.
“Everything that we sent out using Trackstar we refrigerated for a half-hour prior to their picking [an order] up.”
To put this method to the test, Weiner conducted a few experiments.
“I took a few of my major customers and randomly sent over cupcakes without telling them beforehand … I asked people to tell me how the cupcakes got to them, what condition they were in, and how they tasted. And what we were doing seemed to work. They said the cupcakes looked great and tasted fantastic, and there were no complaints,” she recounts.
Baker estimates that Trackstar delivers between 80 and 100 cupcakes per week, with their largest delivery so far containing more than 200 cupcakes. But, according to Weiner, business will be ramping up soon.
“This is our slow time. So this is a good prelim of what these guys can expect come the fall.”
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