24/7 online convenience store GoPuff offers 30-minute COVID rapid test delivery

GoPuff, a 24/7 delivery service that promises dropoff of everything from baby diapers to beer to Ben & Jerry’s in 30 minutes or less, has added another essential to its list: BinaxNOW and other rapid COVID-19 tests, and the originally pot-centric company says business is booming for this new addition.

“We saw weekly searches for COVID-19 tests on GoPuff rise more than 200% over the past six months,” a GoPuff spokesperson said. “So we started working with different distributors to source them.”

As COVID-19 rapid tests fly off shelves and are becoming increasingly difficult to find, GoPuff said it has a steady inventory of three brands of COVID-19 tests due to its direct relationships with distributors and its own inventory of products.

Customers in Boston and the nearby suburbs, as well as the Newton, Lowell, Needham and Worcester areas, can buy a pack of COVID rapid tests with two tests in a box for $23.99 plus a flat $1.95 delivery fee. Customers can also choose a no-contact delivery option.

GoPuff said sales of COVID test kits increased 330% in the last week, and sales of flu medication, cleaning products and hand sanitizer have also jumped.

GoPuff may seem like an unlikely source of the elusive rapid tests, given its initial mission. A 2020 Forbes article described the origins of the company, founded in 2013, as “a late-night service for college students to order junk food, rolling papers and condoms.”

The article called the company, started as an on-campus app, a “one-stop puff shop” for marijuana and tobacco smokers, offering hookahs, vaporizers, grinders and rolling papers, as well as eye drops for red eyes and snacks to cure a case of the “munchies.” The company stopped delivery at 4:20 a.m., a nod to in-the-know stoners.

Since then, the company has massively rebranded, calling itself “the go-to solution for customers’ everyday needs, fulfilling orders of household items, food, drinks, and in some markets, alcohol and fresh prepared food, in just minutes,” which operates throughout the U.S., U.K. and Europe.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3sN4a3c