The Warm Cookie Delivery

A couple years ago, I had a dear friend that had had a particularly bad week. I knew she was overwhelmed, overworked and exhausted. Things had not been going her way. I would have loved to zoom over to her house, watch her kids for a few hours or deliver dinner. But this friend lived several hours away from me.

So instead I opted for the next best thing. I ordered some fresh cookies to be delivered to her doorstep. This friend had recently moved, so I wanted to make sure I had the correct address to send these delicious warm cookies to. I checked the address I had for her in my phone’s contacts app - was this her old address or new address? It was hard to say. She hadn’t moved far, so I couldn’t decipher from the address alone. So I did a quick maps search to see if it looked to be in about the right spot. It looked good! I ordered the cookies and waited.

At the time of the scheduled delivery I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize, which I ignored. A minute later I got a text informing me that I had sent the cookies to the wrong address. Palm forehead! How had I done that?! I quickly called the delivery person and asked if they could still deliver the cookies. They said yes as long as it was close and I could get the address to them quickly.

I was frantic. I quickly text my other friends in the same friend group. Quick! Can someone send me her new address? I waited 30 seconds. No response. I really didn’t want to text her directly because it would ruin the surprise. But the clock was ticking and I needed an address. So I did what any rational person would do - I did a google search.

After several minutes of searching, and this time a google earth check to make sure the house looked right from the street, I was able to get her correct address and pass it on to the delivery person just in time. Phew, crisis averted! My friend got her (still) warm cookies and felt so surprised, supported and loved. Even though I was hours away, I was still able to connect with my friend just when she needed it most. It was just what I was hoping for.

Have you ever found yourself wanting to connect with a friend, but not doing it? Maybe you’ve wanted to send flowers after the birth of a baby, or send a care package when you know someone is struggling, or take them a gift for their birthday. You have wonderful intentions, but you never actually get around to turning intentions into reality. Would you be more likely to do so if you always knew you had their most current contact information? At Avenue, we say absolutely! A person’s address, phone number and other contact information represent the potential for connection that is always present, just waiting for action.

At Avenue, our goal is to give you so much confidence in that contact information, that you will always default to action. Send that card! Stop by for a visit just because you’re close by! These are the moments that make up our dearest and truest friendships. And with Avenue, they can be even easier because you can know you have the info you need right when you need it the most. If we can help facilitate even just a few extra of those interactions every year, we will feel like we have succeeded!

How Avenue Began

The idea for Avenue, the auto-updating address book, was born when I was a young mother of two small children, and pregnant with my third baby. My husband and I were moving houses and sending out Christmas cards in the same month.

Christmas cards have always been important to me. Not only do I love summarizing our family’s year and sharing it with friends and family, but I also delight in getting Christmas cards in the mail. The beautiful design, photos, and yearly updates from friends we haven’t seen for awhile are so valuable to me and help me feel connected to them even though life and other circumstances have taken us apart.

But keeping my address book up-to-date for this yearly tradition has proven to be frustrating and time-consuming. Many of our friends will move, but I can never be sure who has switched addresses and who hasn’t. Additionally, communicating address changes is inefficient. I may have jotted down a new address on piece of paper (who knows where that ended up?!), or I would know a friend text it to me, but the endless scrolling through our messages yields no address. If I have somehow managed to copy an address into my phone’s contact app, I can never be sure when I had done it and if the address is actually current.

This particular year, not only was I texting friends to be sure their address was correct, but was also sending our new address to everyone I thought may need it. I couldn’t help but feel the entire process was incredibly inefficient. Each one of my friends were doing the same work I was doing, which meant we were duplicating each other’s work several times over. And even with all the care and time going into my address gathering, I knew there would inevitably be someone I would miss and others that would send the card meant for us to the wrong address.

There had to be a better way!

I remember vividly the first time I vocalized the idea for Avenue to my husband. It was a cold winter night in November and my husband and I had a rare kid-free evening and a long drive on winding mountain roads to talk and enjoy each other. I felt only what I can describe as “on fire” as I talked through virtual address book connections and auto-updating profiles. At this point the idea was still so new and groundbreaking, it didn’t even seem obvious it should be an app.

We’ve come a long way from that cold winter night!

A fourth baby, another house move, starting three new companies with my husband, and several years went by. Through it all, I always had the quiet confidence that Avenue was in my future, and was something that would come to fruition when the timing was right. Then in the Spring of 2020, just after the Covid Pandemic hit the world, we decided to hire a full-time developer to start building Avenue for real.

And here we are with a Beta app nearly ready to introduce to the world. It is a bit mind-blowing just how far we’ve come. When you use the app, you might be surprised at just how simple the concept and solution are. This is just how it is intended to be! The reality of that simple app is that it’s taken years of my life to test, investigate, distill, refine and build a solution to the real life problem I experience on a regular basis. Most truly great solutions are born this way.

My hope for Avenue is that it won’t only make it easier to send and receive Christmas cards, but that it will make any interaction with the people that matter most easier; sending flowers to a friend that just had a baby, mailing a thank you card, surprising a friend with a visit. These moments matter deeply in a digital world that too often keeps friendships limited to behind a screen.

At Avenue, we want to make sure real life connection with the people that matter most is not just easy, but delightful! We can’t wait to see where the next few years take us as we introduce Avenue to the world. Thank you for being along for the ride!