Next time you’re at Hartsfield-Jackson, you’re likely to run into Omarie Mann somewhere in the terminal. But he won’t be with you catching the next flight out of town.
He’s busy building his startup, Rush The Line, an on-demand food delivery service for those who find themselves at the world’s busiest airport.
Users place their food order in the app, enter a flight number, and then wait for the Rush The Line team to deliver their order right to their gate or terminal seat area.
Currently, Rush The Line services all ATL terminals and has five restaurants signed on.
Mann got the idea while waiting at the Fort Lauderdale airport some years ago, and ultimately jumped into the startup full-time from his home base in Atlanta in January 2021. He quickly recognized that airline crew employees were an underserved market that could benefit from an “Uber Eats” type of service while at work.
And it is a large underserved market, Mann believes, given that airlines are on a hiring spree as travel booms back in 2022 and the fact that the Atlanta airport employs upwards of 60,000 people.
To reach potential customers like ramp agents, gate agents, and flight attendants, Mann deployed a unique guerilla marketing campaign. He purchased cheap plane tickets over the course of 2020 to get into terminals and in front of airport employees to test the idea.
He told Hypepotamus that the service captured over 325 customers to date during its pilot program, including several repeat orders from airport customers.
Ultimately, Mann says he sees Rush The Line as a B2B play as the team continues to build out relationships with airports in Atlanta and beyond. While focusing on airport crew for now, he also sees scaling the startup to serve the general public and ticketed passengers at airports across the country.
Rush The Line is scaling as airlines begin to ramp up service and staff to keep up with travel trends. Mann has been able to connect in the early stages of growing Rush The Line, and will be part of Atlanta Tech Village’s It Takes A Village Graduation and Demo Day on November 18.
For Mann, Atlanta is the ideal spot to grow an airline-focused startup. “Atlanta is the world’s busiest and the world’s most efficient airport, and we want to be a part of innovation there.”
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