Business administration junior William Tregenza lived on the Cal Poly campus during his freshman year — and during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On-campus dining options were scarce during his first year due to staffing shortages and restricted hours induced by the pandemic. Tregenza, like most 2020-2021 freshmen, relied primarily on the Vista Grande dining complex for most meals, but the complex was limited in variety of products and hours of operation.
Tregenza did not have access to a car, so most off-campus stores were inaccessible.
“The only options I had were what Cal Poly had to offer,” Tregenza said.
The lack of variety in on-campus dining facilities, as well as their limited product selection made it difficult for Tregenza to access certain “college essentials.”
“If I needed solo cups for my dorm, I couldn’t get them unless I went [shopping off-campus] earlier that week,” he said. “If Friday night comes and I don’t have them, that’s a problem because there’s no way to get them on-campus.”
Tregenza raised the issue with Matthew Menno, also a business administration junior, and they began to devise a solution in the form of Quickie, a delivery service that would increase the variety and accessibility of essentials like snacks, energy drinks and frozen meals to college students.
Quickie currently offers around 300 “convenience store items,” according to Menno. Cal Poly students who live on-campus or within a two-mile radius of campus can order online through Quickie’s website, and their products will be delivered in 10 minutes via electric scooter or bicycle.
Quickie first soft-launched in November of 2021, operating four days per week for about a month. The soft-launch was successful, and the startup officially launched in January of 2022. With their launch, they increased their hours of operations from four to six days per week, 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. on Mondays through Thursdays and 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
Quickie will be expanding their services to seven days per week when Cal Poly’s 2022-2023 school year begins in September. They also hope to expand their product selection to include healthier options, Menno said.
While they wait for classes to resume in the fall, the Quickie team will be participating in the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Summer Accelerator program.
The Summer Accelerator is an intensive, 13-week program that provides Cal Poly students and recent graduates with the resources needed to build a business — including mentorship, networking opportunities and $10,000 in funding.
“Of course there’s the $10,000, which is going to help any business, but the leadership and the mentors that you can gain from the Accelerator are just invaluable,” Menno said.
Quickie’s involvement with the CIE began with the Hatchery, an on-campus CIE program that helps Cal Poly students build their own businesses.
“We went to the Hatchery, and the Hatchery was closed,” Tregenza said. “I couldn’t get in, but on the door, it said ‘Jose Huitron. Schedule a meeting.’”
They reached out to Huitron, the Director of Student Innovation Programs, and began working with the Hatchery — and working on their application for the Summer Accelerator.
The 2022 Summer Accelerator began in June, and with its start, the Quickie team dove headfirst into building their business, leveraging the program’s resources along the way.
“We’re sophomore business majors, going into our third year now,” Tregenza said. “Our scope of the business world is pretty limited, but there’s a lot of people here who have years and years of experience. Bouncing ideas off those people, having them look over our budget — it’s super helpful because they have a perspective [shaped by] experience, whereas we’re still fresh and still learning.”
Tregenza and Menno, along with the rest of the 2022 Summer Accelerator cohort, will pitch their startup and showcase the progress they made throughout the summer at Demo Day, on Sept. 13 at 4 p.m. at SLO Brew Rock. In-person and virtual tickets are available here.
