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Founded in 2013 as a late-night service for college students to order junk food, rolling papers and condoms, GoPuff has gone mainstream, and now offers 3,000 items ranging from over-the-counter medicine and laundry detergent to pet food and nail polish—all delivered in around 30 minutes for a flat $2 fee.

“We started this business because the convenience store was anything but convenient,” says Ilishayev. Adds Gola: “The immediacy we offer is unmatched.”

Business has been booming since the pandemic hit. Sales reached an estimated $250 million in 2019, and orders are up 400% this year, but it is not profitable and admits it’s still not making money on a fourth of its centers.

Unlike other middlemen like Instacart and Uber Eats, GoPuff acts more like a retailer, buying directly from giants like Anheuser-Busch, PepsiCo and Unilever. It generates revenue not so much from the nominal delivery fee, but from slapping a hefty markup on the stuff and, increasingly, selling better placement on its app.

GoPuff’s mad growth also puts it in direct competition with a sea of larger rivals. “The model was beautiful when they were delivering to college students late at night. But it falls apart when you expand beyond that to be a general-purpose solution to everybody in a 50,000-person town,” says Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester.