Trellus to offer same-day delivery of items from Sonoma County small businesses

A new delivery system focused on bringing local goods from your neighborhood shops to your door may soon roll into Sonoma County.

Trellus is an online marketplace that works exclusively with small businesses and focuses on same-day delivery. They use local drivers similar to DoorDash or Uber Eats to deliver local products to customers’ homes.

“People like shopping local but they like the convenience and we’ve made it easier than anywhere else to shop local,” said Trellus’s co-founder and CEO Adam Haber.

Haber said in a presentation to Go Local last week he was first inspired to start Trellus about eight years ago while driving his son to college. He noted there only seemed to be big box stores around and not the smaller businesses that he said gives a community its character.

“I don’t want to live in a community where I don’t know the shopkeepers. They’re the kids I’ve coached little league, served on the local school boards, or I know their children. It’s what makes up a community,” Haber said.

In 2021, he launched Trellus with co-founders Brian Berkery and JR Jensen in Long Island, New York, as a logistics company. They launched their marketplace this May.

Sonoma County would be the company’s second market. Haber said they chose the county because of its vast local offerings.

“Look around here, it’s all local small businesses,” Haber said. “Those are the kinds of businesses that thrive on our platform.”

Through Trellus, a customer can shop a local business from home. Trellus then arranges for delivery to the customer’s doorstep.

The service offers same-day delivery for homemade goods, wines and spirits, fresh flowers and packaged foods from small businesses. Haber defined a small business as any business with fewer than 20 locations. He said the only thing Trellus does not deliver is hot foods from restaurants.

To deliver a product under 35 pounds, it would cost $6.99 for the first 5 miles plus $1.50 for every mile after. Additional items less than 35 pounds would cost an extra $1 flat fee. For oversized items – between 35 and 50 pounds – it would cost an extra $4 per package.

For every sale, 10% goes to Trellus and 3% goes to credit card processor Stripe, along with the delivery charges. Haber said most businesses pass on the delivery charge to the customer and delivery drivers get 80% of the delivery fees.

Merith Weisman, the director of local business cooperative Sonoma County Go Local, said she sees Trellus as an exciting opportunity for local makers and businesses. She said it would deliver goods from Sonoma County merchants anywhere in the county, even to customers in Marin County, but Marin merchants would not be on the platform yet.

Haber said they are waiting for 40 local small businesses to join before setting up the logistics and that anyone interested should coordinate with Go Local or reach out to Haber. The hope is to launch the service before the holiday season.

“The idea that our local independent retailers, home-based businesses and producers, including farms and ranches, will be able to provide same day delivery within the county to residents – it blows things open for them,” she said.

R.M. Horrell, chief operating officer for Copperfield’s Books, said Trellus would give the bookstore a faster, cheaper and better way to deliver books to customers. People can currently make purchases online, but Horrell said it takes a few days to ship.

He said the focus on hyperlocal businesses gives Copperfield’s a competitive edge against big box stores such as Barnes & Nobles and Amazon.

“With Trellus, people don’t have to choose between their values – supporting local – or their needs,” Horrell said. “To me, that’s very exciting because I know Sonoma County, we shop with our values. We care about local, we support local and we want to see local businesses thrive but we also need to get our needs met.”

You can reach Staff Writer Melanie Nguyen at 707-521-5457 or [email protected]. On X (Twitter) @mellybelly119