Words by Smiley Team
When 32-year-old Rich Mason quit his job to pursue something more meaningful, he needed flexible work in order to get by. Like many in this situation, he signed up as a food delivery rider, launching himself into the gruelling waits in return for minimal pay that it entails.
“You end up sitting around waiting for your phone to buzz for five hours or so and in the end, you walk away with about £20 all day,” he recalls.
Rich started to wonder how this sector might be transformed. After moving on to work for a think tank, examining this area of work, technology and how this could evolve, he came up with an idea.
“Pulling threads together with a team of three others interested in this area, we decided to create Wings, a cooperatively run delivery platform that puts workers first," he says.
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Riders are paid a guaranteed hourly London living wage of £10.85. But what really sets Wings apart as an ethical delivery service is that workers have complete control over how the company is run.
“The main difference for our riders is that, rather than feeling like you're an automaton managed by an algorithm, you are in control,” he explains. To give everybody an equal voice in the company, they use consensus-run decision-making processes that Rich learned from activist groups he is a part of and keep everybody in close communication with one another.
Wings also gives riders the opportunity to progress in their careers. “Delivering with Wings could quite easily be a young guy’s first job aged 18,” he says. “Then later, we might train him in an operational role, teach him about leadership and consensus decision making and he could arrive in a back-office job. I think we're losing this culture of giving people the opportunity to gain skills and rise up in their work.”
Among the first riders to join Wings, is 18-year-old Yunus Khan, who Rich saw cycling fast through Finsbury Park one day when he decided, on the spur of the moment, to involve him in the company.
After sprinting to catch up with Yunus, Rich said: “You’re going really fast - have you been doing this long?” He gave the young man his business card and asked him if he’d be interested. “But it wasn't a job offer,” he clarifies, “it was the start of a conversation.”
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Another rider, Faycal Ariouat, joined Wings after being made redundant as manager of a Starbucks branch during the lockdown.
“He's in his 50s and flexible work really suits him, because it means that he can share childcare with his daughter's mother,” Rich explains.
Currently, Wings delivers only in the Finsbury Park area in London, but with time the team hopes to build in numbers, scale up and serve a larger part of London.
For more information about Wings or to download the app and order food locally, go to wings.coop.
