Confusion and logistical hurdles doomed Dispatch Goods’ reusable container service, but restaurants hold out hope for greener takeout packaging.
At the height of COVID-19 lockdowns, when restaurants survived off takeout and delivery and residential trash bins were brimming with discarded to-go containers, Dispatch Goods launched a reusable container restaurant service that, many hoped, would be the long-awaited elegant solution to the scourge of ballooning restaurant refuse.
By January 2021, the San Francisco-based company with a distribution facility in Hayward announced it was expanding the restaurant service. But customer confusion and complicated logistics proved to be stubborn problems, and the company sunset the program at the close of 2022.
The Bay Area startup founded by UC Berkeley MBA graduate Lindsey Hoell that aims to remove single-use plastic from the waste stream recently published a blog post detailing why it ended its beachhead model that provided San Francisco and East Bay restaurants with reusable takeout containers.
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