How Joyride Coffee Pivoted To Respond To The COVID-19 Crisis

Launched in New York City in 2011, Joyride Coffee quickly gained a following among working professionals by offering high quality coffee and espresso through a mobile truck café. The founders — brothers David, Adam and Noah Belanich — then saw an opportunity to focus on office coffee service (OCS). They decided to sell the truck and start a brick-and-mortar business to bring the world's best wholesale coffees directly to offices.

Joyride is now available in some of the country's most innovative companies, with service throughout New York City and in Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The founders fine-tuned their business to deliver the world's best beans, craft beverages on tap and brewing equipment to their customers, all with first-class customer service.

However, the company had to pivot their business model when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. While many offices temporarily closed or encouraged employees to work from home, Joyride reacted quickly and broadened its business once again. They created a new channel, reorienting their e-commerce platform at www.drinkjoyride.com and their product offerings to serve individuals throughout the pandemic.

Joyride introduced a direct-to-consumer channel, enabling coffee drinkers to have Joyride products — including freshly roasted coffees, finely sourced teas and cafe-quality cold brew — shipped directly to their homes. Joyride also launched a new product, Joyride Boxed Cold Brew.

"We are looking forward to getting back to business with our office customers, but we are also thrilled that because of our ability to be so agile during this crisis, it opened up new opportunities for us as a business," said David Belanich, founder and president of Joyride.

He explained that the company has had so many "Joyriders" (the company's employees) "go that extra mile" during the COVID-19 crisis. Belanich said members of their operations team delivered kegerators to hospital workers in their four major markets. He enthused about how quickly their team worked to produce the new boxed cold brew. He also praised their marketing team for developing and executing a new channel within weeks, establishing Joyride as a business that is ready to serve at-home customers.

To manage internal communications, Belanich and his employees use Slack for messaging, as it cuts down on back-and-forth emails. While Joyride employees are working from home, their "Joy_4_Cabin_Fever" Slack channel has helped boost morale. One key component of this is encouraging employees to share what they are doing to stay sane during these challenging times.

"I've witnessed so many fun and creative ideas and activities," Belanich said about the Slack channel.

"Through all of the insanity, I've been amazed with the resilience and positive can-do attitude of our team," he continued. "COVID-19 may have taken the team out of the office, but it hasn't taken Joyride's core values out of the team. I'm seeing our core values of ‘Innovate Big and Small,' and ‘EnJoy the Ride' exemplified each and every day."

Read continuously updated and expanded coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here.