From now on, UF students will not have to wait in line or leave their seats at the library to grab a cup of coffee.
A new coffee delivery service called GoJoe began to deliver cups of coffee to their first customers on UF’s campus Tuesday.
Spencer Muratides, a 22-year-old UF real estate graduate student and the founder of GoJoe, said that for this week, the company is currently using 100 testers who signed up during a tabling session in November.
These testers can send a text message with their locations, and within about seven minutes, a GoJoe employee will arrive on a bicycle with hot coffee.
The business will be open to anyone on campus beginning next week and will be accompanied by an app, he said.
“The app will allow you to drop a pin at your location, pay for the order and tip for the delivery all at once,” Muratides said. “The goal is for customers to be able to stick their arm out the door and grab a coffee.”
Customers can order a 16-ounce coffee for about $3.
GoJoe currently brews and delivers coffee from its sponsor, The Swamp Restaurant, at the corner of West University Avenue and Northwest 17th Street.
The company offers a free cup of coffee to unsatisfied customers and uses 100 percent biodegradable cups, Muratides said.
“At the end of each day, we want to give back to the students,” he said. “That’s why I started this company.”
Muratides said the idea came to him when he was at a coffee shop at the Hough Graduate School of Business on UF’s campus.
“It was only open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., and it was always so busy,” he said. “I would see people walk away from the line because they were so tired of waiting.”
The business filed to officially become a limited liability company at the end of October. Ten employees now help run the business.
Each driver carries a 30-pound coffee tank with a nozzle in a backpack, a sleeve of cups and a fanny pack filled with creamer, sugar and stirrers.
The tanks GoJoe uses were custom-created for the business with parts from Italy and Canada, Muratides said.
“The tanks were engineered to create a layer of creme in each cup to give the coffee a more-smooth flavor,” he said. “We’ve had people tell us that you don’t even need to add creamer to our coffee.”
Kelsey Torgerson, a 21-year-old UF political science junior, said she buys coffee on the go about six days a week and is looking forward to GoJoe.
“GoJoe would be a great and feasible alternative,” Torgerson said in an email. “A cup of coffee delivered right to my seat – now that is what I call first-class service.”
A version of this story ran on page 9 on 1/15/2014 under the headline "UF students pedal coffee with GoJoe"
