Delivering results

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This article was published 10/02/2018 (2978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In a very short period of time, SkipTheDishes has become the poster child for what’s possible for a rapidly growing enterprise in the digital economy to achieve in Winnipeg.

It’s become popular to mention the name of the meal-delivery operation in just about every reference about the positive dynamics of the Winnipeg economy, but the company is so consumed with building out its operations so quickly that few outsiders have had more than a glimpse inside the offices.

But, recently the Free Press had a tour led by Kendall Bishop, Skip’s director of marketing for North America.

In the last year alone, the company’s Winnipeg workforce has ballooned from about 300 to more than 1,100, and recently made it clear that it will be “enticing hundreds of new software developers.”

“It’s unbelievable, but true,” Bishop said.

The company now occupies three floors in one Exchange District building, has filled up one floor in another building a block away and has two more in the process of being renovated. Bishop said a third undisclosed location in the East Exchange has been secured for later this year.

As much as it’s possible for a company with more than 1,100 employees — one of only a handful of private sector Winnipeg employers with that large a workforce — Skip keeps a low profile with no street signage on the exteriors of the buildings it’s in. But one tenant in one of Skip’s buildings said, “Just spend two days in the lobby. It is non-stop with delivery trucks and activity, with infrastructure people and furniture deliveries. It’s mind-boggling.”

David Pensato, executive director of the Exchange BIZ, said since Skip’s workforce has exploded so quickly, they haven’t yet been able to fully measure the impact on the neighbourhood. But he knows it’s huge.

“Just look at all the pedestrian traffic, even on these bitter cold days,” he said. “I’m sure it has had an impact on the sustainability of the restaurants and shops that are here.”

A ground-floor commercial space audit was just completed in the area and Pensato said there is huge demand for the 1,000- to 1,500-square-foot range, the kind of space many independent restaurants and cafés would want, and there is very little vacancy. SkipTheDishes is likely contributing to that pent-up demand.

Bishop said in addition to being able to successfully compete in the booming meal delivery business across the country — which has increasing competition, including from the likes of UberEats — it’s had to rapidly establish a management structure for a large and rapidly growing enterprise.

That’s meant, as well recruiting software and machine-learning specialists — some from as far away as Brazil — the company has also had to quickly ramp up its human resource staff as well.

When it comes to keeping up with it all from a staffing point of view, Bishop said, “We all need to scale together… which is an art a little bit more than science at this point.”

Just managing its “tens of thousands” of couriers takes considerable ­manpower. On a recent weekday afternoon, a couple dozen people, each facing at least a couple of computer monitors while talking on phones, were engaged in “on-boarding” couriers.

Marshall Ring, the CEO of Manitoba Technology Accelerator, helped the company founders get off the ground after they moved here from Saskatoon five years ago.

“Skip’s value proposition is the AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning they are using,” he said. “They manufacture customer relationships with AI and machine learning and automation and that is why they can scale so fast.”

Entering the logistics department (Bishop said they do not call it dispatch), you quickly notice it is more sparsely staffed than others.

“Our logistics operations used to have more bodies at any given time, but the majority of orders are now assigned by the AI system that we built, called SkyNet,” she said.

It has become more efficient over time, so now the system automatically sends the orders to a restaurant, ­assigns a courier to each order and ensures throughout the process that the proper courier is assigned to make the delivery in the quickest amount of time.

It’s that kind of technological innovation that has encouraged the U.K. company Just Eat plc, which acquired Skip in December 2016 for about $200 million, to start to implement Skip’s technology in some of its other operations throughout Europe and North America.

In a conference call to analysts in July, Just Eat’s chief financial officer, Paul Harrison, said, “I was very impressed in Winnipeg recently by the delivery system that our Skip team has developed and we are looking to incorporate elements of that into the Just Eat platform, as well.”

Just Eat recently upgraded its revenue forecast as a result of Skip’s strong performance over just its first six months. Harrison said over the first six months of 2017, Skip generated $28 million in revenue against initial expectations of $40 million for the full year.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca