Snack makers test food delivery app for the beach

New York

JUSTIN Harter made an important discovery a few years ago while hawking ice pops on Rockaway Beach in Queens: "Once people get to the beach, they don't want to move."

That realisation, coupled with overwhelming demand for some of the exotic fare at the Rockaway Beach Boardwalk concessions (from overstuffed arepas to Mr Harter's ice pops, which come in flavours such as mango caipirinha), led Mr Harter and his business partner Matthew Blance-Stephany to make something new - a food delivery app for the beach.

It's called Combrr and it will soon allow people to buy items from concession stands from their towels, avoiding lines that lately stretch clear across the boardwalk.

On the beach, responses to news of the app were unequivocally enthusiastic. "Get out!" Cindy Solorzano, a yoga teacher who lives in the neighbourhood, said as she sat on a beach blanket nibbling a colourless sandwich that she had brought from home. "Yes, I would use that. The lines at the concession stand take so much time from tim…