By now, you’ve probably heard about Magic, the “we will bring you whatever you want” service. Send a text to the company saying what you desire—food, drink, hard goods, soft goods—and they’ll both procure it and deliver it unto you for a reasonable fee. It started as a small company’s experimental side project, like, a week ago, and has since exploded. The waiting list to give the app a shot now runs over 30,000 names deep.
We wanted to know just how magical Magic is. So I was given a mission: Spend $500 stress-testing Magic. Bring it.
I should note that I had to play the press card to gain access. This was not ideal, since it comes with the possibility that I’d receive preferential treatment. The company stressed that we’d be treated just like anyone else, but realistically, I think it would be naïve to think we weren’t seeing Magic putting its very best foot forward. Still, I think it’s valuable to see what the platonic ideal of this service would be. How would Magic work when firing on all cylinders in a near-perfect world? So we went for it anyway.
I’m Hungry
“Hey guys, I’d love two meatball sandwiches from Tommy’s Joynt. Can you get them to me while they’re still hot?”
The sandwiches took just a few messages back and forth. I gave them the address and set up a payment account through a secure link to Stripe, and that would pretty much be the last time I’d have to think about that stuff.
The food would be 45 minutes for delivery, and it would cost $25 total, including tax, Magic’s fee, and tip for the delivery guy. Having not seen the menu at Tommy’s in many years, that’s about what I’d expected to pay for a couple gargantuan sandwiches. It felt like a fair price. I said yes. It wasn’t until later that I looked up Tommy’s menu and saw a meatball sandwich only costs $5.25. A sizeable markup. But it seemed fair to me then, and it seemed like a downright bargain when I took that first bite. It was even better than I’d remembered. So Magic got paid, and everybody was happy.
I’m Thirsty
It was the same story for a pair of 22-ounce Ninkasi Tricerahops Double IPAs. Seventeen bucks and within 45 minutes. I deliberately picked a semi-obscure beer that I knew would be tough to find. They’re about $6 a bottle, plus tax, so $17 seemed like a steal. They arrived on time, in a bucket of ice shaped like a red plastic cup. I really started warming up to this premise.
I was feeling warm and fuzzy (a beer and a sandwich will do that), but I wondered what was happening on the other side of the line. What’s it feel like to be working at Magic? I asked CEO Mike Chen.
“For the people working here, there’s this attitude and culture of them kind of feeling like heroes,” Chen said. “There are a lot of standard requests that come in. ‘I need a pizza.’ That’s pretty easy to solve, right? But the ones that occupy more time, the challenging and interesting ones, where someone really has a problem they need to solve, that’s when the person working on their request will get really excited about: ‘OK, so how to I solve this? Who do I need to call? What do I need to do?’ And when they finally do figure it out, they’ll usually jump up and cheer, like, ‘Yeah! I got him the thing!’ Everybody’s just so excited to get people what they want, against the odds.”
Against all odds, eh? Time to step up my game.
I Need Some Clothes
Authentic Mexican wrestling mask and a ukulele chord book? No problem, we’ll have it for you within an hour and it’ll cost $70.
Now, I have no idea if this was a good deal or not (probably not), but knowing nothing about the price of luchador finery, I just went ahead and said yes. Besides, I still had $458 left to spend. Well, $388 after approving the purchase of the mask—Magic will always quote you a price and ask you if it’s OK.
Next up, something more decadent. I recently spilled candle wax on my favorite grey hoodie. It was from Uniqlo and cost $35. But what the hell, might as well upgrade, right? There’s a small company in San Francisco called Betabrand that makes some fun stuff. Searching its website, I found a ridiculous hoodie-blazer type thing. They’re normally $168, which is roughly $120 more than I’d ever normally spend on a hoodie, but it was on sale for $95. I asked Magic to send someone to the Betabrand store in San Francisco, try on the hoodie, then take a selfie and send it to me. I promised I’d buy it if it looked good.
I’d already seen that Magic was good with goods, so it was time to see how it does with services. This task ended up being more of a challenge. The store didn’t have the hoodie I wanted. They had it in black, but it was the original $168, not the sale price of $95.
My Magic guy sent the photo. It looked pretty good. But $168? I balked. Magic said, “…we’re seeing if we can get you a discount.” Impressive service, but again, I had to wonder if they were going above and beyond because they knew it could all end up in an article on WIRED.
“We were able to get 20 percent off the $168 jacket. So with all fees, it would cost $145 and you’d get to wear it today.”
It was too much. I knew it was too much. But wasn’t that kind of the whole point of this experiment? You’re paying more for added convenience. To get it now, to have it delivered, to have someone else haggle for you. I said yes. I now own a hoodie that is dry-clean only. I’m that asshole.
Some Accounting
It wasn’t until the next day that I crunched the numbers and saw that things didn’t really add up. Twenty percent off of $168 is $134.40. They were charging me $145. So ten bucks for the runner to go there, take a selfie, haggle with the store, and then deliver it to me seemed like a good deal, but it wasn’t. At least not for Magic. San Francisco has a sales tax of 8.5 percent, which means that Magic paid Betabrand $145.82 for the hoodie, and then also had to pay the guy they were hiring to run around and do all of that. I don’t know what the hourly rate they’re paying the people that run errands for them, but Magic definitely took a loss on this one. Such are the mistakes you pay for when your business is four days old and has completely exploded.
Things Get Weird
With $243 left to go, I fired off my next text.
“I’m unexpectedly spending the night at a friends’ place,” I said, and told them that I needed a toothbrush, toothpaste, a condolences greeting card, and a box of condoms. Also a house plant over three feet tall but under $50, which seemed like a good addition to a sexy sorry-for-your-loss package.
Magic didn’t bat an eye. 13 minutes later came the quote: “Okay about stuff for your sleepover. We can get you everything for $100. That includes the plant. Want to do it?”
The price seemed high, but sure, yeah. An hour later, there it was.
Now I had $143 left. This was all going entirely too smoothly. So I lobbed a grenade.
“I would really like a joint made of high CBD medicinal cannabis.”
Magic clearly states on its website that you can use it for “anything you want. As long as it’s not illegal.” Marijuana is federally illegal, but this is California, where medicinal marijuana is legal at a state level, provided you have a prescription from a doctor, which I did. How would Magic navigate this grey area?
With aplomb. They had to set up an account for me with a medical marijuana dispensary that delivers. I needed to text them a photo of my prescription and driver’s license. I would receive a code from the dispensary to verify my phone number (See? If pot-shops are using two-factor authentication you can too), which I would have to send to Magic. For this service, Magic would charge me $15 in addition to whatever I paid the dispensary directly.
The dispensary’s delivery driver showed up within the hour, ready to take cash or debit card. Because I was a first-timer, they even threw in an extra joint, a brownie bite, and a sample vial of hash oil. America! I collected the weed and retreated back inside.
Something felt off. I’d had fun, but I also kind of felt like a jerk, blowing through all this money, trying to trip up a week-old company full of very polite people. We had $78 left. One last errand before I’d surrender.
A High Note
Ten turkey sandwiches on whole wheat would be distributed to individual homeless persons around the Mission district of San Francisco, and it would cost $90. I figured we would never know for sure whether this task had been carried out—I wasn’t there to watch, and I certainly wasn’t going to request selfies to prove it. I took it on faith. An hour and twenty minutes later, Magic texted me a screenshot of the message they’d received from the runner: “Handed out all 10. They were all really grateful.”
The whole day had gone really well. Both for us and for Magic. But that hadn’t always been the case in the company’s long, four-day history.
“There were definitely some moments where we were adjusting the models in our head for supply and demand,” Mike Chen said, “There were some cases where people didn’t get the type of service that they should have, and we were pretty pissed about that. We went back and refunded those guys and gave them a call, and almost everyone was pretty happy with that and are still using our service.”
Chen said that running at full speed the last few days has helped his fledgeling company get a handle on the pace.
“We’re actually getting a chance to run models and predictions and know better how many people we can let in at a time,” he said. “Right now, though, our number one concern is quality, not trying to let in as many people as possible. That’s our philosophy. We know that what makes this magical is when it actually works.”
Which is exactly right—at the end of the day, it really did feel pretty magical. Obviously, the company was putting its best foot forward for me, but I had just spent $512 explicitly trying to inflict stress on its system. Would I use it again? Definitely. Not for something simple like a burrito—if I can’t handle that, I’ve got bigger problems. But if somewhere down the line there’s something I don’t know how to get, or if I just don’t have time/energy/mental bandwidth to deal with the logistics, I’d absolutely fire off a text and see if these guys can work some Magic.
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