NoCo NOSH a local restaurant-owned and operated food delivery service

NoCo NOSH, owned by Fort Collins, Loveland, and Greeley restauranteurs and locally operated, to deliver food from restaurants to the Northern Colorado region.

They created NoCo NOSH in January 2019 when several Fort Collins, Greeley, and Loveland restaurant owners joined forces to form a restaurant-owned delivery service focused on local independent restaurants. Jon Sewell of Iowa City, founder of CHOMP Delivery, assisted the Northern Colorado group of restaurant owners in bringing together a similar venture to the NoCo region.

Sewell started CHOMP Delivery months after behemoth online and mobile food-ordering company Grubhub bought the OrderUp! service operating in Iowa City and proposed to double commission rates it charged restaurants in the area. A former health care executive and owner of a restaurant in Iowa City, Sewell saw an opportunity to set up a model familiar to him in the health care setting: a business owned by some main stakeholders involved (in that case, hospitals using medical services such as a mobile MRI machine). Sewell approached some main restaurants in town to become co-owners of CHOMP Delivery.

So far, over 50 of the most iconic Northern Colorado restaurants have become co-owners of NoCo NOSH, and although only owners get a seat on the board, any restaurant can be on the NoCo NOSH platform.

The restaurant owners who created NoCo NOSH believe in creating a fair and sustainable alternative to the companies that are setting the tone of food delivery nationwide. They believe that restaurant owners themselves should be involved not only in the decision-making of the delivery of their food, but they should also be charged commission rates that are fair and sustainable, and not the current national rates, which are way above most independent restaurants’ margins. Last, NoCo NOSH owners believe that food delivery extends the service they provide in their own restaurant. Since there are so many issues with the customer service provided by the third-party delivery companies available in the market today, NoCo NOSH will focus on customer experience and aim for total customer satisfaction. Unlike the national firms that rely on call centers in Chicago or San Francisco (or even overseas) for customer service support, NoCo NOSH will use residents of the Front Range region to resolve any restaurant or customer issues related to its service- related issues.

Also, because they believe in the importance of keeping the millions of dollars generated through online food delivery in their community—not in the pockets of the venture capital firms that fund the national delivery companies—all the restaurants that co-own the new platform will only be available on the NoCo NOSH platform.

NoCo NOSH offered delivery services in mid-April with a soft opening and it now has over 20 restaurants active with another 50 waiting to come on the service.