CASE STUDY
The acquisition of Portland Pedal Power by Waiter.com marks a successful and strategic exit, enabling the locally loved, bike-powered delivery service to scale its sustainable catering model with national backing. Now operating as Portland Pedal Power by Waiter.com, the company is well-positioned to elevate its service offerings for Portland’s business community while staying true to its mission of sustainability and service.
As one happy customer put it, “Their website is easy to navigate and they give you a large selection of restaurants and food carts to choose from… Easy peasy.” With a user-friendly platform and expanded reach, Portland Pedal Power is pedaling into a promising new chapter.
About Portland Pedal Power
Portland Pedal Power (PPP) is a Portland-based business that provides sustainable office catering, food delivery, and mobile advertising services—all powered by a fleet of zero-emission cargo bicycles. PPP partners with over 70 local restaurants, food carts, and vendors to deliver meals directly to offices and events throughout the city. By combining logistics, hospitality, and sustainability, Portland Pedal Power delivers a unique and eco-friendly solution for businesses seeking convenient catering and local brand exposure.
CLIENT FEEDBACK
“The team is good at setting expectations, notifying us when a certain story doesn’t work well.”
Former Owner & CEO, Portland Pedal Power LLC
PROJECT INFO
The Challenge
Portland Pedal Power (PPP) faced a series of ongoing challenges with their software development that significantly hindered their ability to scale and modernize. After their original developer, who built the initial platform, left the company after just one year, PPP struggled to find reliable technical support. Subsequent developers proved to be expensive, inconsistent, and lacked proper development practices like testing. These setbacks left PPP’s production software in a fragile state, containing partially completed, unreleased features and running on outdated servers that were more than three versions behind and had been neglected for years.
PPP’s site had also been hacked to mine bitcoins, causing critical business systems to slow to a halt. The outdated servers lacked defenses and couldn’t be updated until the code was refactored and relaunched. For months, Chromedia manually monitored the servers and fought off attacks while working toward migrating PPP to a new, secure environment.
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OUR PROCESS
The Solution
Chromedia provided a full-service solution to Portland Pedal Power’s long-standing technical challenges by taking over all aspects of their software development and administration. Chromedia’s first priority was to stabilize the environment by refactoring the existing Ruby on Rails codebase, resolving long-standing bugs, creating a structured QCl plan, and modernizing the server infrastructure. This included a full migration to AWS for improved scalability, reliability, and performance.
Beyond technical stabilization, Chromedia restructured the database to eliminate redundancy and improve efficiency. We also updated the application’s UI to deliver a more modern, user-friendly experience. In parallel, the team planned, developed, and successfully launched several key features such as recurring orders, pop-up calendars, and closing functionalities that improved both user and admin workflows.
1 Sr. Backend Developer
1 Mid-Level Developer
1 Quality Assurance
1 UI/UX Designer
Technologies Used
Bringing It To Life
The Result
As a result of partnering with Chromedia, Portland Pedal Power successfully transformed their outdated and unstable software platform into a modern, scalable, and reliable system. The comprehensive refactoring, infrastructure modernization, and feature enhancements significantly improved the platform’s usability and performance. This transformation allowed PPP to operate more efficiently with fewer internal resources, reduce operational risks, and offer an enhanced user experience to their customers. Most importantly, the improved technology foundation positioned the company for accelerated growth and strategic opportunities, ultimately enabling Portland Pedal Power to complete a successful acquisition.
Clutch
