Words & Deeds
Toilet paper? Yes! Boise restaurants sell groceries online for pickup, free delivery
Shopping at Fred Meyer earlier this month, Original Sunrise Cafe owner Boomer Godsill got an uneasy hunch.
With the novel coronavirus spreading, sales had begun slipping at his six Treasure Valley restaurants.
Now he and his wife couldn’t find any toilet paper. “We couldn’t get anything we really needed,” he remembers.
Realizing that restaurants and grocery stores use separate suppliers, Godsill hopped on the phone.
“I reached out to my distributors and said, ‘Hey, do you have this and this and this? And if so, bring ’em in’ ” Godsill says. “We’re going to start selling it to our customers.’ ”
He posted items on Facebook. “It took off where we couldn’t handle all the phone calls anymore just within one day,” he says.
Toilet paper. Flour. Sugar. Vinyl gloves. They’re all being sold at SunriseGrocer.com. The online business offers curbside pickup at two stores and free, contactless delivery in Boise and Meridian.
The side hustle is pulling in almost 200 orders per day, Godsill says.
“It’s a service that I think is good for the community. It gives people a different option to be able to stay home if they need to. And it gives an option to help a small business.”
Across the nation, restaurants are reinventing themselves to sell pantry staples and cleaning supplies. Sunrise Cafe still serves takeout food at 6767 W. Fairview Ave. in Boise and at 805 N. Main St. in Meridian, the two Sunrise Grocer locations. Other Sunrise Cafe restaurants have closed temporarily.
Up the street in Boise, the Original Pancake House, 5900 W. Fairview Ave., launched its own online grocer this week at OriginalPancakeHouseBoise.com. “We’d rather be selling pancakes!” a flyer admits on the restaurant’s Facebook page. “But we’re selling beans and toilet paper. Huh?”
The Original Pancake House focuses on bulk, nonperishable food and personal care items. Curbside pickup begins next week. Delivery is not offered.
In the COVID-19 era, the Pancake House’s employees are safer selling pickup groceries than working in a restaurant environment, franchise owner Rome Acopan Jr. says. Plus, he can help Boiseans desperate for toilet paper, bleach or other scarce items.
“Basically, this is kind of a break-even business for the next three weeks, give or take,” he says.
Sunrise Grocer has a longer-term plan. Orders are averaging about $70, Godsill says. Around 75 percent of customers choose delivery, which is free in Boise and Meridian (with a $50 minimum order). Other parts of the Treasure Valley cost a few bucks. “We’re going all the way out to Payette for an $8 fee,” he says.
Godsill hopes other Idaho businesses will contact him and be interested in selling their products or services through Sunrise Grocer. He won’t charge them. “I’m not looking to make money right now,” Godsill says.
“I’ve gotten great feedback,” he says, “and that’s part of the reason I’m pushing so hard to do more and bring more in. To be able to help more people.”
As the pandemic has grown, restaurant and grocery store distributors have started communicating, Godsill says. This made things tougher for the restaurant-turned-grocer business. But he and Acopan Jr. plan to bring in scarce items as long as they can — and as long as customers buy them.
Both men say they do their best to offer good value, although prices might seem higher than in normal retail situations. Ten rolls of toilet paper costs $14 at Sunrise Grocer. The Pancake House sells eight for $10.
“Toilet paper is huge,” Godsill says. “Flour. Pancake mix. Our carne asada that we make in house is amazing — we sell a ton of it.”
Sunrise Cafe has kept half of its 130 employees working during the downturn, Godsill says. He’s hoping to grow that number soon.
“At this point, I’m losing money because of my payroll,” he says. “But I’ve got a couple of other things with Sunrise Grocer, and another thing that I’m getting ready to launch, that will hopefully give me the capacity to bring everybody back. Or give them the option to come back if they want.”
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