From Boston Market to a Multinational Business
Chris Heffernan’s first taste of entrepreneurship was crunchy, greasy, and sold with a side of beeper salesmanship.
His dad ran a pager store in the '90s—back when phones were wired into your car and $1,000 got you 60 minutes of talk time. Chris worked the counter, slinging beepers to middle schoolers and businesspeople alike. He lived above the shop in Glenside, PA, and today, his house and office are still on the same street. But his story has gone far beyond a few square blocks.
After climbing the ranks in telecom, Chris walked away from a job after a new boss came in quoting The Art of War and managing through fear.
“I’d never quit a job with no notice before in my life,” Chris said. “But I handed them my iPad and badge and just walked.”
A few weeks earlier, on vacation in Delray Beach, Chris noticed a Philly cheesesteak joint with a sticker: We deliver with Delivery Dudes. Curious, he asked what that was—and realized nothing like it existed back home. So he started his own delivery service. The tech? A hacked-together sneaker website he rewrote to order cheeseburgers instead of Air Jordans. The team? Just him, a 2011 Toyota Camry, and a few friends willing to deliver for tips and leftover food.
That first company was scrappy, local, and ultimately overwhelmed when giants like Uber Eats and DoorDash came to town. But a conversation at a Boston Market changed everything. A manager told Chris he had big catering orders—$250, $300 apiece—that no one could deliver reliably.
Cue the pivot.
Chris launched dlivrd, a logistics platform built for large, scheduled deliveries. Not “I want a burrito right now,” but “I need a 50-person lunch for a sales meeting at 11:30 tomorrow.” He bought white-label delivery software from India, hired a developer on Upwork to customize it, and started hunting for clients.
His growth hack? Craigslist job boards. Chris would reply to listings from restaurants hiring delivery drivers and pitch Delivered instead: “Why hire one driver when you could have a hundred?”
Today, dlivrd operates in 170 markets across the U.S. and Canada, with 10,000 active drivers. They’ve paid out over $28M to drivers and offset every single delivery mile with carbon credits through Ecology. The team spans four countries, including a 53-person support center in Colombia and an engineering team in Pakistan.
What’s next? Chris wants to help restaurants manage all of their deliveries—from catering to courier services to UPS shipments. He’s building an ecosystem of tools to give brands total visibility and control.
Twelve-year-old Chris, pager in hand, would be proud.
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