Beer delivered by bike the same day in Lausanne (and we chose who pedals)

Tuesday, 12:47. Six people are coming over at seven, and your fridge holds two lukewarm cans forgotten since winter. Until now the ending wrote itself: sprint to the shop, or order online and get your beer... tomorrow. A bit late for tonight.

You have thirteen minutes left. After 1pm it's gone for today, but before that, your beers reach your door this very evening. By bike.

How it works, in three lines

Order before 1pm: delivered the same day, before 7pm. Order after 1pm: delivered the next day, between 2pm and 7pm. That's it. No slot to book, no algorithm to beg.

Money side: free from CHF 100, CHF 12.50 below that. Same price as our parcel delivery, except here you drink tonight instead of watching your letterbox for a delivery notice.

Why 1pm and not 2 or 5? Because the courier leaves once your order is packed, and we would rather announce a time we can hold than one that looks good on a banner. After 1pm your box sleeps here for a night. It doesn't complain.

The zone, stated plainly

We're not going to let you fill a basket and then tell you at checkout that you live too far. The bike covers Lausanne and three neighbours: postcodes 1003, 1004, 1005, 1006, 1007, 1010, 1012 and 1018 for the city, plus 1008 Prilly, 1009 Pully and 1020 Renens.

Beyond that, nothing changes: we keep shipping the whole catalogue anywhere in Switzerland as a parcel, with the same CHF 100 threshold. Just considerably less romantic.

Who pedals: VéloCité, since 1999

We could have picked the cheapest carrier. We picked the neighbours.

VéloCité is a Lausanne company born in 1999 in the head of a literature student at UNIL, one Blaize, who reckoned an economy could serve people without running them over. Twenty-seven years later it has branches in Lausanne, Yverdon, Neuchâtel, on the Riviera and in Valais, and more than 200 riders have worn its jersey. When the load gets serious, and a case of beer is serious, out comes the electric cargo bike.

Eighty kilometres a day, fully loaded, in a city that more or less invented the gradient. Hats off.

Why them, and not an app

Because since 1 May 2019, bike couriers in this country have a collective labour agreement, with a minimum wage of CHF 20.35 an hour. Translation: the person carrying your six cans to the third floor without a lift is an employee, insured, paid by the hour rather than by the drop.

We know the other model. The one where the rider is "self-employed", funds their own bike, absorbs the costs and gets deactivated for turning down two jobs in a row. It's faster, probably. It's cheaper, certainly. We looked at it, and we passed.

Incidentally, a bike wakes nobody up on rue de la Tour at 6pm, doesn't hunt for a parking space and emits precisely nothing. Three arguments we'll happily bank as a bonus.

What goes in the bag

Anything sitting in the catalogue, and there's plenty. Shortest trip first: La Nébuleuse, brewed in Renens, which is to say inside the delivery zone itself. Then L'improbable, which left Lausanne for bigger tanks out at Ependes, deep in the Vaud countryside. And higher still, La Meute, three friends who moved into an old tinsmith's workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds back in 2016. The rest of the world behind them, in whatever order suits you.

One piece of advice: the run leaves our shop at room temperature, and the courier has no fridge on the rack. If you want it cold by seven, order at noon and get everything chilling the moment it lands. He delivers fast, he doesn't deliver frozen.

Bottom line: you have until 1pm to turn an ordinary Tuesday evening into a decent apéro, without leaving your chair and without anybody getting squeezed along the way. The best courier in Lausanne has been pedalling since 1999. About time we handed him our beers.

— Lupulynn