A Toronto woodworking company is pivoting to hand sanitizer delivery during a time when business has slowed down tremendously.

Bread&Butter Designs didn't initially start out making hundreds of contact-less deliveries of sanitizer. Head of the company Blake Shaver started trying to make use of his more abundant free time during the pandemic delivering essential items to neighbours.

The business normally deals in creating all kinds of coffee tables, feature walls, shelves and other design features using reclaimed materials.

"About 6 weeks ago my business hadn't made a single sale in over a month," says Shaver. "I realized that I had a delivery van just sitting in the driveway."

He then moved on to offering free pickup of sanitizer which he obtained through a wholesaler.

"At this point I had about 70 strangers show up at my door to grab whatever they needed," says Shaver. "We even had a social distancing lineup down my sidewalk at one point. This went on for about four to five days."

As of April 9, there's been such a high demand for deliveries that Shaver has even been able to hire back three previous employees who lost their jobs due to a renoviction of Bread&Butter Designs from their wood shop in January.

"We are literally flying by the seat of our pants with orders and deliveries right now and to be honest we're having fun with it," says Shaver. "We are frantically working on our back end to track orders, build delivery schedules and track our fulfilment.

"As soon as I can get my head above water we'll be moving our ordering system on to the Shopify platform so we can keep our focus on offering as speedy as possible delivery."

You can follow along with Bread & Butter designs on their Instagram story as they make their deliveries, and simply DM them or Shaver to ask about pricing and how to get sanitizer delivered. You can also donate sanitizer to be delivered to a hospital of your choice within the GTA.

"Our goal is to be the cheapest in the GTA, staying well under retail price," says Shaver. "I am personally vetting any large orders to ensure that anyone who purchases any of our products knows that we will report them if we find that they are adding margin that we consider anywhere close to gouging.

"We have been selling the hand sanitizer for $9-$10/unit which includes contact-free delivery to your home or business within the GTA. We have a minimum order right now of 6 units to cover our cost for delivery."

If you're all stocked up on sanitizer but getting super bored around the house and are looking for a DIY project, they can help with that too: they're offering contact-less delivery of materials and rental of tools to build your own feature wall.