Dianna Ward, owner of Charlotte NC Tours, had a booming business that had grown to offer walking and bike tours, ghost tours, and segway tours of the city’s neighborhoods. Her business grew to host Segway tours in other cities, including Chattanooga and Greenville. When Covid-19 caused tourism to come to a near stop, however, she worked to find new ways her business could operate.

“I was just like, OK, I could be down in the dumps about this, but we lived in a way where it wasn’t going to take us down,” Ward says. “When we’re not doing tours, the only thing we’re really paying is rent and utilities, so we knew that once this thing was over, whenever that was, we were going to be fine. But I also had employees to think about, and wanted to come up with something that we could pivot to.”

Her friend and biking mate, former Mecklenburg County Commissioner Matthew Ridenhour, suggested delivery, as many restaurants feel taken advantage of by popular third-party delivery services.

“What’s crazy is that we’ve been talking about doing that for years,” Ward says. “And I was like, now is that time.”

She decided to begin offering delivery using electric bikes, naming the new business InTown Charlotte E-Delivery Service. Ward applied for a grant through Charlotte Center City Partners’ Small Business Innovation Fund program, a grant intended to award money to businesses adapting to the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her pitch was to deliver food from local restaurants — only charging them the credit card processing fee — and does so sustainably by traveling via e-bike. Profit comes from a delivery fee charged to customers.

Ward won the grant, and was able to purchase electric cargo bikes to get the new business up and running. Its drivers pick up and deliver within the Uptown area and surrounding neighborhoods, catering to apartment building residents and those who live in densely-populated areas within a close distance to restaurants. The bikes not only make for easier parking for the drivers, but are a more eco-friendly alternative to national companies that deliver by car.

“We are a sustainable company,” Ward says. “We are delivering on e-bikes. We’re not having thousands of cars running around to restaurants, lining up, polluting the atmosphere.”

Thanks to a second grant — this one from Beyoncé’s small business initiative — she was able to hire temporary help to increase the number of restaurants available on the site. Pure Pizza owner Juli Ghazi, who has been working with InTown since its inception, says not only is her business only charged the credit card fees to be part of InTown, she is happy that the money stays with a local business.  

“Now, more than ever, it is critically important to support your small, locally owned businesses,” Ghazi says. “We are watching our beloved neighborhood shops go out of business the longer the pandemic continues. By supporting local, we keep spending local and reinvest back into our communities, therefore we are not contributing to the continued growth of large corporations.”

Ward currently has four people working for her, and hopes once people learn about InTown, she’ll have the capacity to hire more drivers and support local restaurants even more. First, however, she needs to expand brand awareness — both with the restaurants they hope to work with and customers. As she has approached restaurants about the idea, Ward says, she has found plenty of support and excitement about an alternative to DoorDash and Uber Eats, for example.

“National chains pay next to nothing — McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, all of them,” she says. “They pay next to nothing. But local, locally owned? Oh, my gosh, locally owned restaurants are the ones that are keeping those delivery services afloat. And that’s really egregious. There was not a single [restaurant] that wasn’t ready to have another solution. The problem is, the end customer doesn’t realize who they have become accustomed to using.”

InTown’s delivery area currently includes zip codes 28202, 28203, 28205, and 28208. Its app is available for download for iPhone and Android.

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