James Beard winner Don Guerra runs Barrio Bagel and Slice in Gilbert, Arizona, using sourdough made from locally milled Sonoran wheat. He avoids DoorDash and Uber Eats entirely, instead offering his own app, web ordering, curbside pickup, and in-house delivery to keep more money and control over the customer experience.
I'm Oren Malodinski with Barrio Bagel and Slice here at Gilbert, Arizona. Don Guerra is my business partner and he's really the man behind the bread here.
And Don's been baking for decades here in Arizona.
We built this concept around Don's bread.
And around the sourdough method. And we even developed a bagel using Don's sourdough method.
And our white Sonoran wheat, which is.
Cultivated right here in Arizona.
It's all milled right.
It's a couple blocks away at Hayden, Florida flour mills. We have a bakery within the mill and also offering very healthy foods that are good for you. Nourishing.
We're part retail bakery, part bagel shop and pizza by the slice shop. You know, we open with the idea.
Of having ease of and efficiency for.
Our customers, but also making it efficient for our team members. Have people walk up and order in the store. We also have the drive through which.
A lot of folks use.
The nice thing about having the app.
As our primary ordering method and per.
Diem app is actually used quite a bit. What we've noticed is it helps free up our staff. And now that the per diem has gone online as a web based option as well, it even has opened up to more of our customers who didn't feel comfortable downloading an app for whatever reason. So now there's no excuse. So everybody uses it. And some of the cool uses we've adopted with our customers love is we have curbside pickup. We have five curbside pickup spaces. So they'll order their bread in the morning because we sell out of bread every day. We've seen a lot of folks, lunch is a big use for us. And then early morning meetings.
So folks who have early morning meetings are picking up bagels when we come.
In that we get here an hour before we open. When we come in, we'll see those per diem orders, the app orders starting to stack up, but it's all coordinated.
Through the app, which we love.
We also like the fact that we don't have to be onboard or Uber eats. So we just let all of our.
Customers know that hey, you can just select delivery on our app or online and it'll be coordinated and you'll have.
Your food delivered to you by the same service that avoids us having to.
Pay all those fees and raise our prices.
So I think that's one of the.
Biggest benefits or one of the greatest benefits we've had with the app is avoiding having to be on those websites where you pay astronomical fees just to.
Participate, pay and you have to raise your prices. We'd love for you to come out to Barrio Bagel and Slice. Have some great sourdough breads and bagels. Awesome sandwiches. Come and check us out at Barrio Bagel and Slice of Gilbert. Look forward to seeing you soon.
