Demand from Oahu’s aging demographic has inspired a Waikiki-based visitor grocery delivery service to expand its service via a sister company that caters to isle residents.

Entrepreneur Michael Eberle launched Island Grocery Service in 2010 and has been delivering ever since to guests at Disney’s Aulani, Hilton Grand Vacations, Aston Hotels & Resorts, Aqua Hospitality and Ohana Hotels and more. Now Eberle is introducing Oahu residents to grocery delivery via the Oahu Grocery Service, which debuted in January.

“At the beginning of the fourth quarter last year, my partner, Maria Lara, and I decided to expand beyond tourism,” Eberle said. “Our visitor industry requests were still consistent, but we saw a need for islandwide service after requests on behalf of elderly residents increased. Our phone kept ringing.”

A partnership with Charley’s Taxi, which has been on Oahu since 1938, gave the company the additional transport capabilities and personnel that it needed to expand its business offerings.

“The taxi drivers gave us the wheels that we needed to cover all of Oahu so that if we had an order at 2 p.m. in Chinatown, Hawaii Kai and Mililani, we could handle them,” Eberle said. “They will also deliver the groceries to the door and even unpack them if needed.”

Eberle, whose background includes an eight-year stint at the Ralphs grocery store chain in Southern California where he worked his way up from bagging groceries to a management role, also makes house calls. On a recent Monday he was Waikiki resident Conrad Smith’s personal shopper and grocery hauler.

“We saved you $52 with our discount Safeway card,” Eberle told Smith as he restocked his pantry, refrigerator and freezer. “I also added the butter and banana that you requested this morning.”

“Well, you know I like the sound of that,” said Smith, who doesn’t drive on Oahu and places a grocery order every two to three weeks. “This service is very definitely worth it. There’s a small store a quarter of a mile away, but the problem was carrying it. I tire easily, and when I walk even more so.”

For clients like Smith, who don’t drive and don’t live within walking distance of discount grocery stores or stores with loyalty programs, the cost of the delivery service is not much higher than what he would have spent on transportation to get his groceries.

A standard order is 20 percent of the register receipt and a $25 flat fee with add-on fees for customers who require multiple store stops, don’t meet the minimum spending requirement or live outside of the company’s delivery range.

The company also contributes $3 to the Hawaii Foodbank monthly for every order processed.

While Eberle expects most residential shopping requests to come from seniors, he’s already seeing steady growth from commercial clients, like the international accounting firm PKF Hawaii.

“Our commercial rates are the same,” he said.

The service model also is the same for visitors and residents, Eberle said.

“We consider ourselves the Nordstrom of grocery delivery — we try not to say no,” he said.

To that end, Eberle recalls that last year Island Grocery Service helped a client host an all-in-one celebration combining Valentine’s Day with a birthday and anniversary.

“We picked up flowers and a cake. We scattered petals on the bed,” he said. “And, like we do for 99 percent of our visitor clients, we made sure everything was placed in the room ahead of time so they could concentrate on their vacation.”

The tourist service also stocked a Kahala vacation home with gourmet groceries like mounds of king crab legs that were shipped over prior to a client’s arrival in a Gulfstream IV, a jet aircraft that’s so exclusive that it usually comes with a waiting list.

Eberle said the tourist service has kept him so busy that colleagues joke that Walmart will open a line for him. But in a few years, Eberle expects that Oahu Grocery Service will surpass its visitor-oriented sister company.

“We have a lot of repeat visitor traffic from our Canadian snowbirds, but in the long run the local market will be bigger than our tourist market, which is for the most part one shot and then they are done,” he said.

While many Oahu seniors get Meals on Wheels, Eberle said his company is providing a service that the program doesn’t accommodate. Eberle said the company also is in discussions with assisted-living facilities and local pharmacies.

“We’re making a major thrust to reach out to assisted-living facilities because we believe that our service can add value to their portfolio,” he said. “We’ll also be working in the next few weeks to contact major pharmacies to see what would be required for us to assist clients in picking up their medicines.”

For information: 922-4670, oahugroceryservice.com