How Little Italy Boosted Delivery Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction with Shipday

About Little Italy

In the heart of Groveport, Ohio, Avery Ward and his team at Little Italy have built more than just a restaurant — they’ve created a community hub. Alongside their pizza restaurant, they also operate Main Ground Coffee, a thriving coffee shop, and a food truck, all focused on delivering quality and experience. Their brand is rooted in transparency, community engagement, and a deep commitment to excellence — qualities that have fueled their growth both inside and beyond their four walls.

“Shipday truly helped us automate our delivery business. It gave our drivers a great system to utilize — it tells them what to do, where to go next, and ultimately makes the customer happy.”

The Challenge: Managing a Quadrupled Delivery Volume During 2020

Before the pandemic, Little Italy handled deliveries in-house with just two drivers. But when COVID-19 hit, their delivery business quadrupled overnight, skyrocketing demand beyond what their small team could handle. Managing delivery logistics, providing real-time updates to customers, and keeping stress levels down inside the restaurant became a major hurdle.

"We needed a solution to help better automate our delivery program," Avery shared. "When there are so many orders coming in, and a customer calls asking where their food is, you need to have an answer — or better yet, avoid the call altogether by letting them track it themselves."

Without a system in place, the growing complexity risked harming the very customer experience they had worked so hard to build.

The Solution: Shipday’s Seamless Delivery Management

In their search for a better system, Avery and his team discovered Shipday — a delivery management platform built to automate, streamline, and optimize restaurant deliveries.

Shipday offered a unique hybrid solution that fit Little Italy's needs perfectly: in-house delivery management, third-party driver integration (like DoorDash, UberEats, and Grubhub), and real-time tracking for customers — all in one platform.

One standout feature for Little Italy was the ability to dynamically outsource deliveries to third-party services when their in-house drivers got overwhelmed. “You can have in-house delivery and third party,” Avery explained. “So when you get too busy and can't handle the volume, you can ship them out to a third-party driver and make sure the order gets to your customer on time and not sacrifice the experience.”

Implementation: Seamlessly Integrating Shipday into Daily Operations

While specific timeline details weren’t recorded, what’s clear is that Shipday quickly became a daily tool for drivers, kitchen staff, and managers alike. Drivers now have a streamlined app "in their back pocket" that guides them through their deliveries stop-by-stop, eliminating confusion and reducing mistakes.

For the store, Shipday provided a centralized system that allowed staff to monitor delivery status in real time — reducing customer phone calls and allowing employees to stay focused on food preparation and service.

Results: Improved Efficiency, Higher Customer Satisfaction, and Stress-Free Growth

Since implementing Shipday, Little Italy has maintained the increased delivery volume that surged during COVID — without sacrificing service quality. The biggest wins?

• Increased customer satisfaction due to real-time delivery tracking.
• Reduced restaurant stress with fewer customer inquiry calls.
• Higher delivery capacity by blending in-house and third-party drivers seamlessly.
• Consistent brand experience, thanks to white-labeled delivery notifications.

In Avery’s words: "As long as your store can handle it, you supply the order, and it'll get to the customer's door on time and accurately."

The technology didn’t just improve logistics — it protected and enhanced the customer relationships that Little Italy values most.