Delivery services have started to experience a rise in the amount of takeout orders they receive daily due to the stay-at-home order. Many restaurants are closed and have turned to takeout and deliveries to keep business going. The stay-at-home order is set to conclude on May 4. 

The stay-at-home order has kept all nonessential businesses closed for the time being to avoid the spread of COVID-19 including restaurants, salons and gyms. Many of Ellensburg’s restaurants are now delivering straight to the front doors of local residents and essential businesses, such as KVH Hospital.

Services like DoorDash, Ano Delivery and GrubHub are assisting not only businesses but the locals who wish to support the businesses in these times. Customers can use these services via a website, phone call or an app. 

D&M Coffee, a local coffee chain in Ellensburg, is one of the few businesses that has started using delivery services. 

D&M delivers freshly roasted coffee beans straight to local doorsteps on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 

Ellensburg residents looking for their coffee fix are still able to use D&M’s drive-thru location and “takeout” their coffee when they order from D&M’s website.

Genesis Ballard, a barista at the D&M drive-thru location, said their busiest delivery location is KVH Hospital in Ellensburg.

The D&M Coffee inside KVH Cafe is temporarily closed due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The coffee shop has designed an online drink ordering platform so they can support KVH while the D&M KVH Cafe location is closed. 

The nurses working at the hospital can put in their coffee orders on D&M’s website and have the option to order up to 30 minutes in advance or order for the next day.  According to the D&M website, the company has started to arrange coffee orders to be delivered to four KVH locations each weekday morning. Ballard said these delivery times are 8-10 a.m. 

“We had about 11 coffee orders in just one morning come from the hospital,” Ballard said. “We normally make about 20-30 coffee deliveries daily.” 

DoorDash is another service that had its employees change their delivery process as takeout and delivery orders have risen.  According to a DoorDash employee who wishes to remain anonymous, they’ve started adapting to cleaner and safer ways of delivering orders. Customer orders will be marked as a “no-contact” order by default and Dashers, a name for DoorDash employees, have started to leave orders at the door. 

Dashers are no longer allowed to open orders when they need to confirm all the contents are there. They must confirm the name of the customer and their order contents at the restaurant they are picking up from.

Locations that DoorDash picks up from in Ellensburg include Sak’s Family

Restaurant and fast food joints such as Burger King and Wendy’s. Ano Delivery is a delivery service started by CWU students and Ellensburg residents Dante Palmisano and Juan Zamorano. They just celebrated a year of being open on April 15. 

Ano delivers food from multiple restaurants in Ellensburg including The Daily Bread, The Porch and more. 

Ano Delivery is one of the services that has seen a growth in delivery requests daily, going from 20 to 30 orders to about 30 to 40, according to Dante Palmisano, co-founder of Ano Delivery. 

“We have had to hire two drivers on the team to help us out with the increase in orders,” Palmisano said. “We used to have Mondays off, but now we have had to change that because of how busy we have become.”

Palisano said in an earlier interview that a lot of the restaurants that provide delivery services have reached out to Ano Delivery. The restaurants wanted to help promote Ano by offering to pay the delivery fees customers have to pay to help support the company. 

The relationship between Ano Delivery and local restaurants has included cross-promoting each other. This has meant both parties are getting the assistance and help they need to stay afloat while the stay-at-home order is still in place, according to Palisano.