Meet Wes Garrison | CEO, tech guy, people-lover

We had the good fortune of connecting with Wes Garrison and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Wes, is there something you can share with us that those outside of the industry might not be aware of?
Takeout Central is a locally-owned family business. We never thought we would have to compete with a company like DoorDash, who lost over a billion dollars last year. Their entire growth strategy was to come into a new market, like our markets in the Triangle, and list every restaurant in that market on their platform, most of them without any kind of relationship. Then Google let them *list themselves* on the Google My Business listing of all of these restaurants, which any reasonable customer would think meant they had permission to be there. The only way for us to get there is for restaurants to add us themselves.

For many years, restaurants have helped subsidize the cost of food delivery by giving us a discount on the food. They did this to make delivery more affordable, so that when customers couldn’t come to their restaurant they would still be able to serve them, instead of having the customer go somewhere else.

DoorDash has used their aggressive money-losing growth strategy to drive these discounts down to very low levels, so now customers are having to pay large service fees and markups on menu prices in order to get delivery. Customers aren’t just bearing the full cost of delivery; they are paying even more.

What should our readers know about your business?
Takeout Central is a restaurant delivery service. Back in 2018 and before, people didn’t know what that was, and would say things like “huh, that’s a really good idea!”.

Nowadays, since we have DoorDash and UberEats, everyone knows what a restaurant delivery service is, but not everyone knows about us, and that they have a locally-owned option.

I’m most proud that over all these years, we’ve maintained a local customer support and dispatching staff right here in North Carolina. If a customer, restaurant, or driver has a problem, they can call and speak to a real human being and we’ll help. Most of our customer support staff has been with us for at least 4 to 5 years.

I’m also proud that we grew the right way. I made friends with other folks in our industry in North Carolina, and supported them in small ways when I could, so when they were ready to move on to other things, I purchased their businesses from them for a fair price. We expanded into Greensboro and Winston-Salem when we bought Takeout Triad and Dining Dash from Nate Simmons and Phil Black, respectively. We bought Valet Gourmet in Asheville from my friend Kenan Hopkins. We bought 919Dine in Cary and Apex from Dan and Sarah Bernard, who started it back in 2008. And we bought Surfside Express in Wilmington from Josh Cleghorn, who is still our partner.

Instead of raising billions of dollars in VC money to put these folks out of business, we took out SBA loans and paid them fairly, and I think that means something to people.

It has never been easy, but just as we were really starting to achieve success and hit our stride, DoorDash came into our markets, losing billions of dollars each year. It’s been hard to compete with that kind of Silicon Valley money and influence.

I want our community to know that if they care about these things, they need to spend some effort to seek out locally-owned businesses, then patronize those businesses. Shop at your locally-owned hardware store and your family-owned appliance store when possible. They are not usually much more expensive, if they are at all.

The people I work with at Takeout Central care about each other, and about our drivers, restaurants, and customers, and that makes all the difference in the world!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I love visiting Hillsborough Street and the local restaurants there, but older-me really appreciates things like the warehouse district. I’m a Weaver Street nerd, and I love going there and sitting down with a coffee and something from their amazing hot bar, and just watching all the interesting people come and go.

We’re also lucky to have so many great microbreweries in the area. Gizmo is one of my favorites; I love their “Forbidden Fruits” Gose and the Stilletto Stout. I’m also a big fan of Linwood Grill Brewery. It’s great to be able to have an outdoor beer from great local brewers with friends.

We’re so lucky to have the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh, but I also love the history museum downtown, and (since I was a Biology major) the Natural History Museum as well.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Two folks really stand out in helping me succeed. First is my college friend Ryan Faircloth, who encouraged me near the end of college to be an entrepreneur. We started our first business together while we were still in school, providing Internet service and support for UNC organizations like fraternities and sororities. We’ve had a few business ventures together over the years, and he’s been a source of support and advice for me that I can always rely on.

The second is my business partner Charles Douthitt. Charles joined Takeout Central when we were Tar Heel Takeout, and he brought some much needed organization to the company. It’s because of Charles that we built the systems we needed to help Takeout Central scale, so that we could focus on growth instead of being bogged down handling mundane tasks. Charles was a friend who became my business partner, and he was so helpful that I promoted him to become my brother-in-law! He is always excited to tackle new challenges, and that has really helped us survive and thrive.

Website: https://www.takeoutcentral.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/takeoutcentral_triangle/

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