Bringing food to you

FoodJets, a new service that delivers your favorite restaurant food in Chico right to your door, is a brand new venture for owners Andrea and Chris Duffey. Andrea, who is originally from Maryland, and Chris, who grew up locally by the Sutter Buttes in the small town of Meridian, met in Gridley while they were both living there in 2000. Together, they moved to Virginia, then back to California, to Auburn, and finally settled on Chico as the place they wanted to live. Andrea had worked for 12 years as a physical therapy assistant, later to become a stay-at-home mom to 5-year-old Reagan (pictured), and Chris is an engineer who earned his degree at Chico State. As luck would have it, one of their neighbors in Auburn is the CEO of FoodJets—he started the company 25 years ago as Food to You in Sacramento, but changed the name and business model in the last couple of years. He suggested the Duffeys open up a franchise when he learned they were moving to Chico. The couple are enjoying the new challenges and the freedom of running their own business. There is a $4.99 delivery charge, and restaurant partners include Inday’s Filipino Restaurant, the Foodie Cafe and LemonShark Poké. Check them out at FoodJets.com, or download their smartphone app.

What’s the best part about your new business?

Andrea: I like to be busy, and it’s keeping me busy, so that’s good. I was busy in health care and I was busy as a stay-at-home mom, but now that Reagan’s in kindergarten, I just really wanted to get back into doing something while she’s at school.

Chris: I’m still an engineer; I work full-time and then help Andrea out with FoodJets. FoodJets is mostly her, she’s handled all of it, or most of it, and I help out wherever she needs me to.

Andrea: I do everything until I can’t and then I say, “Hey, can you do this?”

How does your “Give $5, get $5” promotion work?

Andrea: When you create an account with FoodJets, you get your own promo code to give your friends. So, [for example], if I give you my promo code, you can save $5 the first time you use FoodJets, and I get a $5 credit into my account for a future food order. We’ve had a few people use it, but a lot of people don’t know about it yet.

Are you involved in the community?

Chris: We partnered with the Chico Children’s Museum to do a donation for the museum. Any time anybody uses the promo code “museum” [when placing their order], we’ll donate out of our proceeds $1 for every order. So if we can get 100 people to do it, we’ll donate $100 to the museum this month.

Andrea: That’s another good thing about the locally owned FoodJets franchises; we give back to the community.