St. Pete tech entrepreneur launches Uber Eats — but on Jet Skis

For many years John Bonaccorso was a garden variety Florida transplant. He moved from Syracuse, New York in his 20s and began his career in tech. He eventually sold his first company, e.Port Information Network, to Apple in the late 1990s. He was living in Melbourne with his sights on moving to Tampa Bay when his then-mostly standard story nearly came to an end: he was broadsided by a bus in January 2022 in Melbourne. It left him completely paralyzed for 18 months. 

“I couldn’t do anything,” Bonaccorso recalls, describing the gilded cage he was confined to at the time. But instead of despair, he opted to build a company from scratch. Then, in 2023, when he was finally ready to move, both physically and metaphorically, he had a new company, BoatBites: an ecommerce platform that delivers meals and goods to boaters via Jet Ski. The St. Pete-based company has been self-funded so far; Bonaccorso declines to comment on how much he's invested into the business. 

“I had 18 months laid up that I researched, ‘Why isn't there a national platform to deliver things to boaters?’” Bonaccorso, a boat owner who raised a family spending time on the water, wondered. “Why did Jeff Bezos stop ecommerce [at] the water's edge? Why did Uber Eats stop? Why did they not let their toes get wet?”

His research included sending out 50,000 surveys to boaters around the country, combing through statistics about the average number of people that go out on a boat for recreation, for how long, even how long it takes ice to melt in different brands of coolers. All to find out what his target demographic needs during a day on the water, and how much they’d be willing to pay to get it. 

Much like the land-dwelling platforms that came before, there is an app for the consumer and an app for the driver. A boater places an order, for example, of sunscreen, Band-Aids and a bag of ice, and a driver sees the order and decides whether to make the delivery. They zip up to the boat on a Jet Ski and make the drop. 

“We use jet skis for delivery for many reasons. We believe in the ecology and jet skis are the most efficient and less polluted. They don't have propellers to harm manatees or seagrass,” Bonaccorso says. 

That is just one facet of sustainability the company considers in their business model. 

In weighing the potential challenges of the business, “I thought, ‘what are the negatives people are gonna say about us? You add pollution to the water.’ So I immediately realized we needed to work to figure out sustainability,” he says. In addition to intentionally using Jet Skis, he also plans to incorporate fully biodegradable packaging and have drivers offer to take any trash with them back to the marina. 

Another challenge likely to be faced on a daily basis on any given summer day in Florida: inclement weather. “If there's ever lightning or weather, we cancel everything; shut things down,” he says. Canceled orders will be refunded and drivers and food vendors will still get paid. “There’s enough profit in this business that the company is going to eat [the cost].” 

Since it’s a completely new business model on the water, some challenges have yet to be foreseen and faced, and the company is ready for that, too. Bonaccorso notes, “Anytime you make new waves, something's gonna pop up. I don't know what it is, but it's gonna happen. And we'll deal with it.”

For now, the company is focused on meeting certain benchmarks, which include having 25,000 gig workers on Jet Skis in waterways around the country; memberships sold to users that secure rates during surge pricing times; major retail partnerships; and exclusive contracts with marinas around the country to ice out any potential competitors. “We think by the end of the year, we'll have control about 35% of the nation's marinas,” he says.

Beyond that, Bonaccorso has a bigger, more global vision for the brand that goes beyond recreational boating. “We're going to build ecommerce on the water that is going to function in a way that will bring food and medicine and services,” he says, noting Africa has 1,000 miles of waterways. 

“I get embarrassed when I talk about it, but this is a much bigger picture than just making money here,” Bonaccorso says, “Well, it's trying to change things.”

As captain of the BoatBites organization, Bonaccorso tends to lead with his gut. A storied career with a lot of switchbacks in the path along the way has shaped the principles that guide the business. “I had four near death experiences in the past three years. I know what's important in life. And we're gonna live by that.”