Jingle is a marketplace where mobile sellers of food and services can find customers as they drive by neighborhoods.
Some call this company an “ice-cream truck with an app.” But Jingle has many kinds of vendors — from bakeries and pet groomers to knife sharpeners and artisanal-dinner creators.
Jingle is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, an investor in LinkedIn, Shopify, and Pinterest. Its partner David Cowan is one of the world’s leading investors, having funded seed-stage, Series A, and Series B rounds that led to more than thirty Initial Public Offerings (IPOs). His early-stage bets include Twitch (acquired by Amazon), Rocket Lab (Nasdaq: RKLB), and Skybox Imaging (acquired by Google).
Said Cowan of this startup: “Jingle is building a platform that turns the delivery model on its head. Mobile stores offer faster and cheaper delivery, and allow the business to have a direct relationship with customers.”
Last year, the U.S. food-delivery industry was valued at around $287 billion.
But within this industry, there are some growing problems. For example:
Many stores, restaurants, and small businesses aren’t benefitting from delivery services due to the high fees they have to pay. Meanwhile, customers are frustrated with delivery services that can take upwards of an hour to receive a meal. And fees are rampant on their end, too. A ten-dollar meal can quickly end up costing twenty or thirty dollars.
Finally, delivery drivers are under pressure to deliver quickly. And earning tips isn’t always guaranteed, even with speedy service.
Still, customers and businesses appreciate the concept of delivery and recognize its importance. That’s why they’re looking for new solutions. And Jingle has created one.
Through its mobile app, users receive notifications when mobile stores are nearby, so they can place delivery orders. They can also send requests through Jingle to encourage stores to drive through their area.
Here’s another way to think of Jingle’s potential impact:
When you order from a restaurant or an app like DoorDash, you’re essentially “pulling” food from that place’s kitchen. You order it and somebody gets it for you and brings it. The process of delivering it to you is what makes it so expensive for both businesses and hungry customers.
Instead, Jingle “pushes” food and services to customers by enabling food and delivery trucks to zip around town and meet demand for products. While its marketplace offers much more than ice cream, the concept is a lot like when an ice-cream truck would attract kids with the music and have treats ready to sell them close by.
With Jingle, vendors don’t need brick and mortar stores to open new locations. They can drive to an area in which they’d like to serve and sell from their mobile store. Deliveries can be done in less than fifteen minutes and come with minimal fees for both the business and customer. And if a driver wants to make deliveries, they can “microfranchise” and become a store’s mobile franchisee for a matter of hours at a time — no permits, leases, or waiting required.
In less than a year of launching in the San Francisco area, Jingle has attracted 12,000 users. And the average-order value has climbed from twenty dollars to forty dollars. The platform has more than sixty vendors and Jingle projects to generate more than $155,000 in revenue this year. Revenue is projected to increase to more than a million dollars next year and ten million dollars in 2026.