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The moment Robb Smith took out a bunch of small jingling keys and opened the door of Long Beach Creamery of Bixby Knolls that had not yet been opened, I realized how unorthodox Smith's delivery service Alley Cat Deliveries really is.

"I have the keys to all their stores," Smith said truthfully. "They trust me."

Walking past the dim and empty ice cream shop, he found two dozen packed chocolate cakes, butter cakes and chocolate cookies. His task was to pick up the goods and deliver them to the ice cream shop in the city center. He piled them in a big blue freezer bag on the back seat of his Jeep Renegade, zipped and locked the door of the cream factory, then returned to his car and drove south along Atlantic Avenue with light fingers. Knocking on the steering wheel.

Robb Smith stacked Long Beach Creamery's baked goods in freezer bags for delivery on Friday, December 3, 2021. Photography: Cheantay Jensen.

He said that for jobs like this, he transports in-store products between stores or selects raw materials for local businesses (he is also asked to do it in the afternoon), which has become a life-saving straw for his delivery service, he said, because he gets As people once again choose to eat out and buy groceries, the requirements for food and grocery delivery are reduced. He said that at the height of the pandemic, when people were trapped in their homes, these deliveries "really made us stand out."

"I always just spin, spin, spin," Smith said. "Like now, we are doing airport transfers."

To be sure, it's not just a ride to the airport and grocery shopping. In the three years since the launch of Alley Cat Deliveries, Smith has gained a dazzling reputation as a deliveryman of choice. His Yelp rating is the original five stars, with rave reviews, and these comments show how personal his service can be.

He helped people move, picked up pets from doggy daycare centers, mailed packages, handed over court papers, and transported marijuana. He once opened a sex shop for a client, but said he would never do it again-the amount of information was too much.

"It's hard for me to refuse," Smith said. "Just like tomorrow, I have to get three bales of hay. I don't like to do it because I have done this and there are everywhere in my car... But what is a vacuum, do you know?"

Smith said he is also exploring small freight and cargo transportation. "I know we have a huge demand for it at the port," he said, "I am looking to the future."

Not long ago, Smith could only focus on the immediate future. Shortly after moving from Redondo Beach to Long Beach after the divorce, Smith lost his apartments on Fifth Street and Chestnut Avenue. With no money to pay for the new place, he and his two children, now 7 and 9 years old, have been surfing on the sofa for nearly a year. At the same time, Smith tried to make a living by delivering food to Postmates.

"I had to work nearly 10 hours a day to make $100," he recalled.

Working hours are particularly difficult, because he will do all the work on the BMX bike-rain or shine.

Exhausted, angry, and occasionally drenched by rain, he wondered if it was possible to develop alone. The business owners he chatted with during the delivery knew his name and liked him very much. Why not cut off the middleman?

Smith participated in the Downtown Long Beach Alliance Small Business Program and obtained a business license in 2019. He named his business Alley Cat Deliveries, which came from all the small streets and alley shortcuts that he remembered riding a bicycle through the city.

He first contacted Laurie Gray, the owner of Pie Bar, and asked her what her business needed.

"She said,'Well, they [delivering the app] took 24-30% of the profit from me. My question is how will you be different?'" Smith remembers Gray asking him.

Gray was referring to fee-based delivery apps such as GrubHub, Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Postmates that charge restaurants for services. According to reports, some delivery apps charge up to 30% of revenue per order.

Smith realized that he could gain an advantage on delivery apps by charging customers only a flat rate for delivery services. He chose a competitive 5 dollars, but today he charges 9 dollars.

"So she gave me the account. Romeo Chocolate gave me his account. It took me a year to get the fourth knight," Smith said. Today, he has 11 local corporate clients, including District Wine, Pita Pitaki, Long Beach Creamery and The Attic.

"They didn’t lose anything in me...that’s what makes me different. That’s why I want people to use us because we don’t take anything from these people. Everyone Won."

The biggest obstacle is persuading the customer to switch from the convenient click-to-pay delivery app to his service. To this end, Smith relies on the consumer's store-local mentality. This is also his pledge to return 20% of his weekly sales to the community, whether through donating food, clothes, or toys to local organizations, or providing help when he sees a need.

Over the years, he has fulfilled this promise. After the robbery in 2020, Rob sold his T-shirts and used the $6,000 he raised to repair broken windows and storefronts in nine downtown shops, including Pie Bar, Romeo Chocolates, Kress Market and Deli, as well as iNails and Spa. On Thanksgiving last year, he helped sponsor 11 families and hosted a multi-course Thanksgiving dinner.

After pitting during our Long Beach Creamery operation, we drove into the AIDS Food Store parking lot and delivered boxes full of cereals for their annual cereal event, which Smith also participated in last year.

On Friday, December 3, 2021, Robb Smith unloaded a box of cereal to the AIDS food store. Photography: Cheantay Jensen.

"This is a community support community," he said. He talked about this enthusiastically, mentioning it at least four times during our delivery trip, but for good reason.

"When we were homeless for a year, Long Beach Coffee & Tea was our supporter. This is how Santa came to our house for Christmas two years ago, when I didn't have a pot to pee," Smith explained.

At Christmas of the same year, the Long Beach Pedal Movement donated a beach cruiser to help Smith deliver goods. After a year and a half of express delivery, the local business owner provided their car for him to run until he was able to buy his own car in August 2020.

"I was sitting in the car and felt it for the first time, just like mine," he reflected. "I just feel proud. I feel so happy."

On Friday, December 3, 2021, Robb Smith drove his Jeep Renegade to deliver goods with his company, Alley Cat Deliveries. Photography: Cheantay Jensen.

He has gotten used to his car for a lot of time. Normally, he will deliver 10 hours a day, even though he worked for nearly 17 hours during the holidays (his busiest season) and then went home to adopt his child (now including a 9-month-old child) Not uncommon. Baby, go to bed first, and then climb into his own bed in his home in West Long Beach.

"I feel old now. I drove a lot of cars in two years," said the 36-year-old.

He is not as light as he was in the express era, but he still tested his six-foot-one-inch body. When we reached the location of Creamery's Downtown, he stuffed more than 40 pint-sized ice cream containers into a freezer bag and dragged them to the back seat of the car at an alarming speed.

Robb Smith filled a freezer bag full of pint-sized ice cream from Long Beach Creamery in the city center for delivery on Friday, December 3, 2021. Photography: Cheantay Jensen.

Back on Atlantic Avenue, we returned to Long Beach Creamery in Bixby Knolls. When Smith puts a pint of ice cream in the refrigerator, in the order of the packaging date, the owner Dina Amadril said that what she admired most was Smith's attention to detail.

"Rob went further," she said. "He always uses first-in, first-out packaging to ensure that the inventory is correct."

Smith said he learned this method while working in the hotel industry-one of his many odd jobs. He worked as a waiter at a pizza restaurant where he grew up in Hawthorne; a manager at Starbucks; a service assistant at a car dealership. In his last performance, he was an aerospace recruiter.

"I like it, but I lost my job without daycare," Smith explained.

For every job, Smith can take away some knowledge or some shrewdness, which helps him gain an extra advantage in Alley Cat. For example, when he runs pizza, he always puts the pies in a thermos bag so that they can stay level and hot.

"I'm not an on-demand service," he warned. "I prefer personalized service."

The ebullient comments on Yelp conveyed the particularly amazing (and atypical) run of the Dodgers jersey that Smith requested and needed before the evening game. He went to Dick's Sporting Goods and found that they were sold out. Then, on the way back from the run from Los Angeles International Airport, pitted at Santee Alley (Los Angeles’s fashion district) and bargained the $100 jersey to $70. At the same time, he FaceTiming his client so that she can see exactly To what she got.

"This person is indeed beyond the scope of his duties," the client signed in her comment.

Recommendations like this are easy to understand why Smith said 90% of his customers are repeat customers. But this is also the reason why he is reluctant to hire people, although sometimes he is very eager for help.

"It's really hard to find good people. I have tried hiring and I have some good people. I have some bad ones, but no one can carry it like I do. I just don't want to disappoint anyone," he said.

At this point, getting more organized is his top priority. All his orders are completed via text messages or phone calls and are recorded in the Notes application. Nevertheless, Smith envisioned a bigger picture. He explained that one possibility is that employees drive golf carts to reduce their carbon footprint.

"But I will sell advertising space, called Cool Cat, which you can see on the cart," he said. "My thoughts will not stop."

You can contact Alley Cat Delivery via Instagram, Facebook, or call 310-529-4839. The restaurant delivery fee is $9; the grocery store delivery fee is $25. Alley Cat Deliveries has just launched Winter Well Wishes Drive, and is looking for sponsors to help buy toys, clothes, blankets, socks, etc. More information can be found on Alley Cat Deliveries Instagram and Facebook.

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