2014 was the year of the bicycle here at Dimo’s. We say this because it was our first year to fully transition to in-house bicycle only delivery. This was a huge step for us as it allowed us to directly support something we are very passionate about as a company. (We actually have a name for it called our Purposeful Passions and you can learn more here.)

Now that we have embarked on a new year, we decided to take a moment to look back and see just how much this transition has impacted our business. We gathered some data, did a little bit of research and were pretty amazed by what we found.

The first number we gathered was the total number of deliveries taken via bicycle over the course of the entire year. Turns out we took more than 23,040 delivery orders in 2014! Give yourself a little pat on the back if you helped contribute to that number. And an extra pat on the back if you helped so much that the delivery riders know you by name and have your order memorized.

So from here we started wondering just how far our bikers were taking these thousands of pizzas, come rain, shine or snow. To find this we gathered a sample size at random and did some calculations. On average our riders are traveling just over a mile per order. Given that our riders have taken upwards of 30+ deliveries in one shift, that adds up pretty quick! And over the course of the year our riders travelled over 48,000 miles across the city. To put this into perspective, that is very roughly the equivalent of traveling to and from New York City and Los Angeles eight times. On a bike.

As much fun as it is to think about how many orders were taken and how far we traveled, the real kicker here is the impact we had on our planet. After all, this is one of the main reasons we decided to switch to bicycle delivery. So the real question here is, how much gasoline did we save and how did that help our atmosphere? To figure this out we had to make some assumptions about the make/model of the cars we would have driven if we didn’t use bicycles. We also had to assume that not every order is taken individually, but that we sometimes group close deliveries together into one run, which cuts back on our total gas usage.

Keeping these limitations in mind, we estimate that we saved more than 3,700 gallons of gas over the course of the year. This equals out to 73,457 pounds of CO2 that didn’t get into our atmosphere as a result. It would require 27.3 acres of trees to convert that much co2 to breathable oxygen! And for an urban landscape like Chicago, that is a lot of green! Beyond these clear impacts it has on the health of our planet and city, we could also go into the healthy benefits for our employees and city infrastructure. We are lucky to live in a city with a strong cycling community and many bicycle transportation lanes. These are tools at our disposal that would be a waste not to utilize.

Of course, we did face our fair share of challenges over the year as we converted to bike only delivery. We learned how to attach a trailer to our bikes so we could deliver 20+ pies at a time to Riot Fest. We planned ahead for catering orders with a gang of bikers sharing the load to get an order out on time. And, well, we were reminded that Chicago still gets the occassional blizzard, which does not make for acceptable conditions for delivering pizzas on a bike. Through this all, we have had a team of smart, driven and all around badass delivery riders to conquer and continue to improve our systems. Together we look forward to an even better 2015 with more gallons of gas saved and more awareness raised about the benefits of biking.

Hey that reminds us, who's hungry?