Willy2Go, a new student-run food delivery service which allows students to order takeout on Friday and Saturday nights and have their food delivered to their dorms by student drivers, launched on Saturday. For its debut, six student drivers brought 30 deliveries from the McDonald’s in North Adams to dorms from 8 p.m. until 2:30 a.m. on Sunday.
Students order through the service’s website, and through some back-end management the Willy2Go team places the order with McDonald’s and sends a student driver to retrieve it.
Uyi Osayimwen ’25 and Nyamekye Akosah ’25 came up with the idea for Willy2Go during their sophomore year. They said that the concept aims to address the lack of options to meet demand for food on Friday and Saturday nights after late night dining hours have ended. “There’s a certain point at night that the school becomes a food desert where there’s nothing accessible,” said Akosah, the startup’s chief financial officer.
Osayimwen, the chief executive officer, was also motivated to create Willy2Go after he noticed that students who didn’t make it to late night dining at Whitmans’ before its 1 a.m. closing time, would drive to McDonald’s — sometimes after drinking.
According to him, drunk driving to get food late at night has become a part of the party culture for some at the College. “There’s no stigma really about it,” he said. “Trying to curb that is a big thing, because if we save one life, one person from drunk driving, I feel like that’s a positive contribution.”
The pair began started working on Willy2Go over this Winter Study, when they enlisted their friends Kevin Pepin ’25 and Keel Brissett ’25 to help build the Willy2Go website. Together, the group spent many late nights designing the website. “They were on board from day one,” Osayimwen said.
Osayimwen also recruited his younger brother, Osegie Osayimwen ’27, and Ryan Carney ’25.5 to help market the service before its launch, using social media, posters, and email blasts.
Osayimwen hopes that Willy2Go will also provide flexible employment for its roughly 15 student drivers, who can sign up for any shift they desire between 8 p.m. and 2:30 a.m. The drivers get paid an hourly wage plus any tips that students add through the online ordering form. Akosah and Osayimwen wouldn’t disclose the hourly rate, but said they’ve received no complaints from their drivers.
“If you don’t get your job in the beginning of the school year, that first month, it’s very hard to get employment,” Osayimwen said. “I think the advantage we provide is that we’re very flexible.”
Matthew Nachamkin ’28 worked as a driver on Saturday night from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., making roughly three trips to McDonald’s over the course of the night. “Delivering orders to hungry students has been a blast, but more importantly, I’m proud to be a part of a team that prioritizes safety on the road,” he said. “It was pretty awesome to get the amount of business we did on the first night.”
On the night of Willy2Go’s launch, Akosah and Osayimwen set up two pop-up tables — one at the Purple Pub and another on Hoxsey Street — and handed out free McDonald’s food to promote the service face-to-face. “It’s one thing to see something on an Instagram story, and another thing to actually engage with them in person,” Akosah said.
According to Akosah, Willy2Go exceeded sales expectations on its first night of deliveries. “I could not be happier with the service,” said Charlie Maier ’26, who used the service on its first night. “It was easy and the food came fast and was still warm.”
For now, Willy2Go only offers delivery from McDonald’s. The founders met with the management of the franchise location multiple times to give them a heads-up that Willy2Go would bring an increase in orders on Friday and Saturday nights. Osayimwen and Akosah said they hope to add more food options soon, including potentially Dunkin’ Donuts and Chipotle.
Akosah and Osayimwem funded the startup themselves. While they said they hope to break even by the end of the semester, profitability was never their only goal. “We’re not gonna get rich,” Osayimwen said. “We’re gonna go work our jobs that we signed contracts for next year … But it’s a great experience.”
In addition to recouping their initial investment, the founders hope that Willy2Go will be successful enough to continue operating after they graduate. “The goal is, once we leave, to have something firmly established from the front-end to back-end,” Osayimwen said. “So that people are walking into an inherited company and not a phase-one ground-level startup.”
Osayimwen hopes that younger students will get more involved, or that the service could potentially form an official partnership with the College. He noted that the administration should also see the value in attempting to curb drunk driving. “I think it’s a concept that everybody can agree is necessary here — having easy access to food and limiting inhibited driving are both positives,” Osayimwen said. “The special part of the College is… the community kind of helps to sustain each other, and this is just an extension of that.”
