Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1243824
96 PAPERCITY PROMOTION S ince the ride-share's 2018 launch, Alto has prioritized safety and cleanliness — qualities that now make the brand attractive as Texans adapt to a new normal. Thankfully, Alto will be around to see the transition: When demand plummeted in March 2020, they quickly pivoted to save their company, a move that helped support many local businesses in the process. PaperCity spoke with Will Coleman, Alto's CEO, about their new on-demand local delivery and how they plan to keep customers safe. Tell us about Lunch, Please! and The Market. To save our business and continue to serve our customers, we had to quickly build a way to deliver the things our customers needed while they stayed safe at home. It felt pretty clear that food and essentials were good places to start but that we needed to do it differently to stand out. With our strong local presence and long-standing focus on safety and cleanliness, we decided to partner with other local brands to get their products to customers safely. Because we have W2-employee drivers and our own fleet, no one else in the industry can offer the same standard of delivery (or rides) that Alto can. Plus, in these stressful times, the last thing customers want is more stress in navigating complex online grocery sites or food-delivery apps just to learn the things they ordered are unavailable for weeks. We created The Market and Lunch, Please! to eliminate this stress. We curate a narrow set of high-quality local items, including a daily lunch (and now drinks and dinner, too) from a favorite local restaurant partner and deliver them to your door safely and cleanly in a matter of minutes. Next cities where you might launch Alto? We just launched in Fort Worth and are actively growing our presence there. We're still planning to launch in another Texas city, as well as expand outside the state. What sets Alto apart from other ride- sharing options? We built Alto with the goal of bringing safety, quality, and consistency to ride- sharing. Having employee drivers and our own fleet allows us to double down on this promise. Our fleet has always been deep-cleaned daily to standards that exceed WHO and CDC guidelines. But we have enhanced those proactive measures and now use EPA- registered disinfectants between every ride. Drivers are temperature-checked before they start each shift (and have sick pay and health benefits, which is unheard of in the industry). We've installed HEPA filters in every vehicle, which remove 99.99 percent of airborne particles from the cabin. We've treated each vehicle with PermaSafe, which creates a covalent bond to every surface of the interior and will kill 99.99 percent of microorganisms on contact. Drivers wear masks and gloves for all rides and delivery interactions. We're in the process of custom- designing and installing a commercial- grade plastic protective barrier between drivers and passengers. Any plans to drive between Texas cities (Houston, Austin, San Antonio). Yes, we offer trips between Texas cities today. Email us at reservations@ridealto. com for pricing and scheduling. Business takeaways from this pandemic time period. For small businesses and startups like ours, we believe you have to innovate to survive. We've accepted that we can't "wait this out," because we're not returning to normal — we're going to return to a "new normal" in which consumer behavior will be changed dramatically. So, over the coming weeks, you'll see us continue to test new offerings and try to fill more of our customers' needs as we all figure out what it means to move again. Personal takeaways. The last two months have been the most stressful but also some of the most exciting months of my personal and professional career. The resolve, conviction, and speed that we can operate (as a company, as a city, as a country, as a world) when faced with these sorts of existential threats is really powerful to watch. Community involvement and philanthropic affiliations. Through our current partnership with Jubilee Park and Community Center, we've been able to transport donated goods to those in need and also support their food drives with additional donations from our member base. If you'd like to donate a produce bundle to a resident of Jubilee Park, you can do so at our Market at market.ridealto.com. GETTING TO KNOW ALTO Alto CEO Will Coleman