'Indie Eats' service taking off in Sudbury

Indie Eats helping patrons support local Sudbury restaurant owners have launched a new app they say will support local dining. It's a food delivery service without the high rates.

A new food delivery service in Greater Sudbury designed to help patrons support local eateries is making waves.

It's called Indie Eats. Right now it's only a website, but work is underway to turn it into a smartphone app. The goal is to provide lower fees to Sudbury-area restaurants while also supporting drivers.

The service is only being made available to independent restaurants. It's the brainchild of three restaurants: Di Gusto, P&M Kouzzina and MIC.

"So we tried to figure out how to bring the service to independent restaurants where they can actually make a dollar and customers are paying reasonable fees," said Chuck Barbeau, owner of DiGusto.

"The chain restaurants get cut rates, these little mom and pop restaurants don't get cut rates from the big guys. But we offer a sustainable number. The other avenue or other thing we want to talk about here is on the drivers' side. We want to make sure our drivers' have sustainable wages."

Matt Moutsatsos and Justin Chaumont are managers at P&M Kouzzina. To them, it just made sense.

"We didn't have delivery before and it's been exciting for us, it's been exciting for the customers who are able to get our food delivered to them because that is the new way of doing things," said Moutsatsos.

"Everyone is busy, everyone needs convenience and time so we can offer that now, which is exciting for us. It also provided a great way for us to bridge the gap for this lockdown for a lot of our staff."

So far it's been a big hit with customers. They've since expanded to nine local restaurants and they have others that are currently signing up.

They plan to keep it in Sudbury for now to see how it goes, but if it takes off, they're hopeful residents could soon start seeing it across northern Ontario.