HSA Unveils New Grocery Service

For those students too busy to make the trip to CVS for bottled water or red plastic cups, Harvard Student Agencies (HSA) will now deliver these grocery items to their doors at less than retail price.

In addition to renting out water coolers and microfridges, starting this week, HSA is offering a service that delivers bottled water, soda, juice, energy drinks, cups, and plastic cutlery in bulk quantities to students’ dorm rooms.

Students place an order on the HSA website and receive bulk quantities of grocery items that are delivered one day each month. The deadline for orders this month is Feb. 14 for a Feb. 16 delivery.

“[Students] were paying exorbitant prices, buying them at vending machines or paying for them at restaurants,” said HSA rentals manager Michael E. Kopko ’07, who thought of the idea with his assistant manager, Jorge R. Aviles ’07, at the end of last semester.

He said the water cooler delivery service currently has between 350 and 400 customers, and he projected that the grocery service will be used by many more students.

“We started looking at this service because the bottled water service has been so successful. It’s sort of a natural extension of it,” said HSA president Caleb J. Merkl ’06. “There’s not a lot of grocery stores around, and it’s always a big ordeal to get a car and then make a trip somewhere.”

Merkl said the service may be particularly attractive to students planning parties or club meetings and tutors holding study breaks.

“I think it would be useful for many tutors. Most tutors that throw study breaks tend to get pizza or Felipe’s,” said Peter T. Wilson ’99, a resident tutor in Eliot House. “It all depends on if the tutors have a car, how easy it is for them to get a car.”

Merkl also said that Quad residents could find the service particularly useful.

“It’d be great if they could deliver bottled water to us,” said Melanie A. Tortoroli ’07, a Currier House resident. “There’s nothing really around here, and we have to walk really far to get everything.”

Kopko estimated that HSA will make a revenue of about $2,000 during the first month of deliveries, and he projected a total of around $10,000 by next year. He said any profits from sales will be reinvested in expanding delivery services and the number of student jobs. The service will create 20 extra delivery jobs, he added.

Kopko said the delivery service might expand, offering more frequent deliveries and a greater variety of groceries, depending on student feedback.

Another student-run service, crimsonfood.com, which delivered food from Felipe’s Taqueria and Pinocchio’s Pizza to students’ rooms at night, is taking a hiatus, according to its president Alexander Arapoglou ’06.

Arapoglou said that sustainability, not lack of student demand, has put the service on hold.

“The numbers we got for our first two weeks could be described as overwhelming. Out of 1000 plus students in the Quad, almost 300 registered at our site,” he said. “We want to make sure we can get this right and continue it sustainably.”

But Arapoglou noted that the HSA service will probably have an easier time sustaining itself because it only offers delivery once a month rather than being open four days a week.

“It’s really not a business where you have a lot to lose because you will react to orders as opposed to be open all the time to accept them,” Arapoglou said.

—Staff writer Tina Wang can be reached at tinawang@fas.harvard.edu.