COLUMBUS, Ohio — Sean Black decided to get creative after not being able to get some food from his favorite local spots delivered. He launched an app called Trap Eats, a food delivery service app that helps support a number Black restaurants in central Ohio.

What You Need To Know

  • Trap Eats is a delivery app that hosts various Black restaurants

  • The app only charges the restaurants a 10% fee in comparison to the 30% charged by other delivery apps

  • The app launched August 2020

  • Trap Eats has a staff of around 500 drivers 
  • You can find comfort, soul, and Caribbean food on the app

You might not think combining a burger and fish is a good idea, but Randall Keys might change your mind. The owner of Fishburger said he got the idea when he decided he wanted to bring something new to the Columbus food scene. He uses fresh ground-up salmon, then deep fries the patties to create what he calls the fish burger.

He began selling the burgers out of his home and marketing to surrounding businesses.

“I went back to Alliance Data and started selling to my co-workers and different people like that and started building up with them,” said Keys. “Going to different barber shops and different tattoo shops and different places like that to sell the product.” 

His business has grown exponentially over the past two years. What started as something small out of his home has turned into a restaurant with its storefront.

“Now it's different people walking in from the streets and people I’m seeing out in the streets that know about it and going places and they notice it,” said Keys. “It's been a little bit overwhelming but we’ve been dealing with it.” 

They have been able to handle the hype with help from delivery services like Trap Eats. Trap Eats is a delivery service app that specifically caters to delivering Black-owned restaurants. The idea came to mind when founder and CEO, Sean black, couldn’t find any of his favorite local spots on GrubHub or UberEats.

He saw an influx of people ordering from food delivery apps due to the pandemic and thought it would be the perfect time to launch one of his own.

“I sat back and said, 'how can I get the food that I want' and was like you know what, let's create it yourself,” said Black. “I reached out to chefs that I knew, and networked and found chefs that I didn't know and different establishments that I didn't know about and just got them all on one platform and started delivering for them.” 

The app has more than 500 delivery drivers across central Ohio. You can find Soul Food, Caribbean and comfort eats like Fishburger. While most delivery service apps charge restaurants a 30% fee, Trap Eats only charges 10%, hoping to make supporting Black businesses more accessible.

“It’s really about using our platform to get these Black businesses together and let customers and consumers that are really trying to find these businesses and get on our platform and order the food that they really want to eat,” said Black. 

You can download the trap eats app to any Apple or Android device. Right now the delivery service is only available in Columbus but is looking to expand to Cleveland, Cincinnati and Tampa in the coming months. 

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