Grocery delivery in Toronto is in high demand as companies like Grocery Gateway and Cornershop struggle to keep up with the overwhelming number of orders.  

So it's welcome news that local startups are looking to fill the gap. Food to You is one of these newcomers who just announced their local grocery delivery service this week. 

Urjit Dave and his friend, Vinu Lankaputhra, are the founders and currently the only two employees of the company.

Over the weekend they were talking about the pandemic when the idea came to Dave. And while neither have worked in the food handling industry before, they were compelled to help flatten the curve. 

"We wanted to do something to give value to society and help keep people safe at home. The first thing that came to my mind was groceries," he said. 

After doing some market research and figuring out the logistics, they launched the website Wednesday. 

Food to You offers to deliver groceries to customers across the GTA. There's no delivery fee or tips and the products aren't marked up, unlike their competitors Instacart and INABUGGY says Dave.  

Food to You only charges a 15% service fee, which covers transportation and safe food handling including disinfecting the packaging. 

"I wanted to find a cheap effective way to help everyone," Dave explained. "This is not to make money."

The whole process to place an order is pretty simple. First, you create a grocery list, just like you would at home and submit it. You can request specific brands if you want and Dave and co-founder Lankaputhra will do their best to source that for you. 

Once you submit your order an invoice is created that lays out the cost breakdown. You then review and pay the invoice via e-transfer. once the invoice has been paid, Food to You delivers your order to your door within 24-hours. 

Groceries are sourced from Whole Foods, Sobeys, Loblaws, PetSmart, Longos, Metro but if they can't find the product you requested Dave says they're willing to scavenge. 

"If the brand isn't available we pick next best option and if we can't find it we just return the money," he told blogTO.  

For a company that only started three days ago they've already gotten three orders and the first deliveries go out today. 

According to Dave, the eventual goal is to scale this and to hire people to do more deliveries. 

"We're still figuring out our capacity right now," said Dave. "I feel like if we do it in bulk we can handle 10 to 15 orders a day right now."

The current pandemic situation has put a lot of pressure on grocery delivery services so they might need to scale up faster then they anticipated. 

But for right now it's just the two man army doing their best to help.