Student Begins Personal Grocery Shopping Business

Most Middlebury students have experienced the feeling: it is late at night, there is no food in the dorm, both MiddExpress and The Grille are closed and it is way too cold and entirely too far a walk to get food at Shaw’s or Hannaford — that is if they are still open at all.

Recognizing this problem, Mathieu Dubuc ’13 decided to start an online personal shopping business called MiddShop.

“I’ve always been an entrepreneur,” Dubuc said. “I wanted to start a business that would allow me to work with people. I was looking for something that nobody else had done, and I think that MiddShop is a good service to help students. I think it’s a great service for people who don’t have cars on campus or the time to go shopping for themselves.”

After Dubuc came up with his idea, he looked to friend Tom Cantwell ’12, current head of Middlebury Wash and Carry, for advice on how to get the business going.

“I just guided Mathieu to the appropriate people on campus,” Cantwell said in an e-mail. “His force, drive and enthusiasm toward the project are really what got MiddShop off the ground.”

Having run a business on his own, Cantwell was able to advise Dubuc on running MiddShop.

“The biggest advice I gave him was the importance of taking care of his customers —after all, they are our friends and classmates,” said Cantwell. “Treat your customers well, and they will return the favor.”

Dubuc also worked closely with Associate Dean of Students Doug Adams, who helped Dubuc talk through his business plan. Adams also helped him get in touch with key people on campus to get MiddShop up and running.

“[Adams] is a really good mentor as he has worked with successful on-campus businesses before, like Wash & Carry and Campus Storage,” Dubuc said. “He told me that the school would support me.”

After the project was approved, there was still a lot of work to be done to set up the MiddShop website so that students could access the business’s services.

“The whole process of working on the website started in September,” Dubuc said. “The website was the biggest part of the business. I had to program in all of the rooms, and I wanted it to have a specific design.”

After months of hard work, Dubuc was satisfied with the site. Students can go to his website at “go/middshop,” set up an account, and choose items to purchase from 18 different categories, including cookies, condiments, personal care, bakery, meat and produce. After entering one’s dorm room number and payment information, Dubuc said, “You can then expect your items to arrive at your room within 48 hours.”

Reeve Waud ’13 has been satisfied with the promptness of MiddShop’s service.

“The food arrived at my door within a day of placing my order,” Waud said. “I was very pleased with the service and plan on using it on a monthly basis.”

Although Dubuc had originally planned to have a minimum order amount of 25 dollars, he decided against having a base order.

Dubuc works with a local vendor, Greg’s Meat Market, to supply his business.

“It’s great to work with Greg’s Meat Market,” Dubuc said. “They’re really open to increasing selection, and they’re very fair on prices. And that’s an important part of MiddShop. The price that students pay for the items they purchase is the same as the price that I pay for the goods. There is no markup.”

With no mark-up price, Dubuc is able to make a profit only off the flat-rate delivery fee.

“I just want the service to be cheap and affordable to everybody,” Dubuc said. “I want to make sure students can get the most out of their shopping experience.”

Dubuc has high hopes for the new business, which launched on Feb. 10.

“I’m a student vendor, so this is truly my business,” Dubuc said. “Right now, I’m the only one working at MiddShop but, as the business expands, I will hopefully have other people working with me.”

As for selection and variety in products, Dubuc said that it is entirely student-demand driven.

“Right now, it’s really early to say where this business is going,” Dubuc said. “I hope it works out. If people like it and they have a demand for new and different products, why not? We will keep adding more items as people demand new and different things.

“Right now, we don’t carry meat, but we will in the future. That’s the biggest gap in our selection. We don’t carry everything that a grocery store does, but we have created a list that includes many high-demand products. And, if something isn’t on there, students just need to ask.”

Vivian Cowan ’14, a MiddShop customer, confirmed that MiddShop does respond to student requests.

“I don’t have a car at Middlebury, so it was hard to get to the grocery store,” she said. “They didn’t have the food I wanted [on the website], so I e-mailed them asking if they could get it. They added it to the website for me.”

Because of this personalized attention, Cowan said that she is very likely to use MiddShop again.

Eventually, Dubuc hopes the business will expand so that parents can order items for their kids that will be delivered directly to students’ rooms.

“I’d really like to involve students’ parents,” Dubuc said. “We carry personal care items, too [like shampoo, soap, deodorant, etc], so parents could order those things as well as snack foods for their students. I’d like to expand in that direction.”

Thus far, it seems that students are receiving the business well.

Peter Lynch ’13 expressed satisfaction with MiddShop.

“The service was great,” he said. “I was attracted to it because it was just so easy. All I had to do was place an order online and, for a small fee, the items would be brought directly to my room.”

The fact that the delivery fee is the same regardless of the number of items ordered is Lynch’s favorite part of MiddShop.

“If I want to pool together an order with some of my friends, the extra amount of money we are spending is pretty much nothing,” he said.

Dubuc is also satisfied with MiddShop’s reception.

“People have said that it’s a great service,” Dubuc said. “People don’t always want to walk all the way down to the grocery store. It’s a way for students to get items that they want and need without having to undergo the inconvenience of going to get them.”

As for his future, Dubuc envisions more entrepreneurial work for himself.

“I definitely want to stick to the entrepreneurial areas as I get older,” Dubuc said. “Managing a business or starting a business in the future would both be great careers for me. I’m an economics major, and I’m definitely a business guy. I want to eventually get a job where I could use that background in a business.”

For now Dubuc is happy with the current success and future potential of MiddShop.

“The biggest thing that I want students to know is that it’s a service for the them and we’re really open to any questions and suggestions,” Dubuc said. “Anything they suggest will make a difference in how the business works. It’s going to be shaped by what students demand, and I’m excited to see how the business will grow in response to that.”