Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe in Washington, D.C., has been using the food delivery app Postmates to deliver books. Postmates users within a 4.5-mile radius of Kramerbooks can look at the store's "Book Menu" on the app and place books in their cart. They pay through the app, and a Postmates driver picks up the book and delivers it, with a guaranteed time of less than an hour.
More titles are being added to the Book Menu daily, and if a customer wants a title that is not on the menu, they can call the store and ask if it is available. If it's in stock, they can then add a book by its price and write the title in the notes section. For example, if someone wanted to buy The Handmaid's Tale but it was not listed on the book menu, they would add a general $18 menu item to their cart and write The Handmaid's Tale in the notes.
Kramerbooks first tried using Postmates for books during the 2019 holiday season as a sort of pilot program. The store already had a cafe menu on Postmates, and the team thought it made sense to add books to their delivery offerings. The process, however, was not an easy one. When the team initially approached Postmates, it took some time for the delivery company to understand exactly what was being asked for and how they would implement it. Kramerbooks had to "make a real case with them" for adding books, and there was a lot of back and forth on commissions and credit card fees.
With every purchase, the Kramerbooks team adds a custom thank you note as well as a mystery galley, and they include a $25 gift card with every order over $100. Some items from the Afterwords Cafe menu are also available through the Kramerbooks menu, so someone could easily get a side of fries delivered with their copy of Where the Crawdads Sing. And while delivery is guaranteed in less than an hour, most customers receive their deliveries in only 20-30 minutes. And so far, the response from Kramerbooks customers has "been incredible," with many sharing posts about their purchases on social media.