Pedal-power delivery, fruit to cleansers

What's an urban farmer to do when he has product to sell but lacks the means to broaden distribution?

In the case of Dylan Baird, business manager for Neighborhood Foods, a West Philadelphia cooperative, the answer is to team up with another Philadelphian who is unafraid to try the unconventional.

That would be Gabriel Mandujano, who more than two years ago started offering laundry pickup and delivery service to city residents, businesses, and institutions via bicycle. Beginning May 24, Mandujano's Wash Cycle Laundry will add produce, bread, coffee, honey, and jam to its delivery menu.

These are locally sourced items that Neighborhood Foods provided last growing season (late May to late October) to its 68 community-supported agriculture members and to three farmers markets and four restaurants. Delivery took place at centralized drop-off sites throughout the city and Narberth.

With Wash Cycle's help, Baird hopes to expand Neighborhood Foods' reach to 110 customers and more markets and restaurants this season.

But the new duties for Mandujano's intrepid cyclists doesn't stop with food. Also to be added to the containers they tow are household products from Sun & Earth, another environmentally and socially conscious local business that thinks consumers who have chosen a laundry service dedicated to a smaller carbon footprint will be interested in its vegan and plant-based offerings.

"We've proven we could do it," Mandujano said of his pedal-powered laundry business, which has cleaned one million pounds of clothing and linen, and is closing in on $500,000 in revenue and profitability.

"This is a test case to see if people are interested in food, as well, and household products," he said of his new venture. "Who knows where it could go next?"

For starters, Wash Cycle will need a more fitting name if fruit and vegetables, biodegradable cleaning wipes, and citrus-concentrated dish-washing liquid become a regular part of its bikers' cargo.

For now, there are more pressing logistics, such as ensuring that Mandujano's fleet keeps its plastic transport containers protected from prolonged exposure to the sun when they are packed with sensitive crops such as arugula and mesclun mix.

The containers are not refrigerated. What's harvested each Friday morning will be delivered within eight hours in wax-coated boxes kept cool with ice. Neighborhood Foods' two primary growing areas are two acres near the sports complex in South Philadelphia and 1.5 acres tucked behind rowhouses at 53d Street and Wyalusing Avenue in West Philadelphia.

How the orders for Sun & Earth products will be communicated to Wash Cycle's helmeted couriers is still a work in progress. But Andy Clibanoff, director of retail and the Web for Sun & Earth, was showing no signs of worry one afternoon last week as he joined his new business partners in a makeshift open-air "office" at Neighborhood Foods' West Philadelphia planting site.

"What he's doing is so interesting and complex yet makes so much sense," Clibanoff said of Mandujano, citing a "predominant" preference by consumers for convenience and buying local. His 25-year-old company has a history with Wash Cycle as supplier of its laundry detergent.

Sun & Earth's fresh association with Neighborhood Foods brings new opportunity for the company, which moved its sales and distribution operations last week to East Falls from its plant in King of Prussia. Inspired by Neighborhood Foods, Sun & Earth has developed a soon-to-be-released new product: a plant-based fruit and vegetable wash.

Under the business arrangement, each entity will keep all the proceeds it earns: Wash Cycle, the delivery fees; Neighborhood Foods and Sun & Earth, the revenue from their product sales.

Mandujano likened the synergies among the three to those that rendered "UPS a match made in heaven for e-commerce."

Just 30, he has already developed a vast band of admirers in Philadelphia's entrepreneurial and investment community, including Patricia Blakely, executive director of the Merchants Fund, a Philadelphia-based charity that issues grants to small businesses.

"Gabe is always rethinking his paradigm," Blakely said, insisting that's essential for any small-business owner's success.

Mandujano's latest alteration to Wash Cycle, Blakely predicted, is "a durable business model."

"Green and local are finally past the just-hip-and-in-the-moment [stage]," she said. "This is where the DNA is moving."

at 215-854-2466, dmastrull@phillynews.com