I currently work a lot for my finals about entrepreneurship ideas, and I am imagining some of them in the two sectors I like: the Internet and the food industry. I recently had an idea in the latter one, and I just wanted to get some feedback on it.
I think that we have all experienced (ok, I amend myself: all the women have experienced) a sudden longing for a specific dish, sometimes in the middle of the night. When I work late at night, at around 2:00am, I am sometimes starving for a “fondue au chocolat”; pregnant women are also well known to feel like eating strawberries in the middle of the night, and I am sure that you can come up with a moment when you think “I would love to have that in my fridge right now”.
Hence the idea of creating a 24hrs delivery service allowing you to make a call and order anything you want, from basic strawberries to the most complex dishes. The company doing that would of course charge a large premium, that I believe some customers (at least women!) would be willing to pay to get what they want when they want it, and have longer delivery time than traditional delivery services. In terms of operations, the “kitchen” would have to be located really closed to a 24hrs food wholesaler so that the company wouldn’t carry any unmanageable inventory.
Of course it is a raw idea with plenty of hurdles, so:
- First, do you think there is a market for this service or am I just the only one ready to wait 2 hours at 2:00am to have some “fondue au chocolat”?
- Do you know if this service already exist? I couldn’t manage to find anything like that on the web. But if it hasn’t been done in any part of the world, it should definitely mean that either there is no market or it is not profitable.
- Do you think that it is manageable in terms of operations?
- Do you think that it is possible to make a profit, knowing that there is absolutely no economies of scale?
It is definitely not an idea I will develop, I’m just surprised it doesn’t exist already, so do not hesitate to bash it, it is just a trial to see if I can get some feedback on my ideas thanks to this blog.
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My feedback is: no idea, sorry.
There’s two things I would check into here. One is on the economics of delivery service, in particular choice, pricing, and timing. I have personally never heard of an all-night service, simply because it adapts to the times of a restaurant or retail-outlets. I’m sure high quality food exists, but is attached to high-quality restaurants, with highly trained staff. There’s also shopping-delivery services, also based on similar principles.
The second thing I would check is that crazy delivery company that got all the hype during the dot.com boom and which busted badly. I understand they delivered anything at anytime. I realise that you’re trying to overcome that with higher pricing, but still, probably a good case-study. Forgot the name sorry, I think it was short like Moo.
Personally, I have considered something similar in the past (though only similar in regards to home-delivery), but have always found it necessary to start with the retail/restaurant/weed-coffeeshop (hey, I’m Dutch) first. I think the competition is fierce and focussed on low prices mostly, which is something I definitely don’t like, except as a marketing thing.
I’d probably have more to say about it in a few weeks, when I have more time. If you’re still thinking about it, don’t hesitate to send me a mail.
Vince, I would love to be able to say as many things as you are saying when I have “no idea” about a topic. Thank you so much, I will definitely check to see if I manage to find the company you are talking about; I never heard of it. Good luck for your thesis!
I have another approach: in the absolute, we know that this system can only set up in the big cities in the world. And in these, there are food shops more or less big opened all the night. So, I imagine your idea as a new service to be created with these companies and not with a wholesaler (of course for basic food) . Yes, it seems to be complicated to propose great meals in real-time. The only thing I found is Dinewise.com, but it is only the customer service who works 24hrs a day…no the chef and his stock…
I would find out two things to quickly gauge the demand for such a service. Conduct a quick survey of approximately 50-100 people and ask them at least these two questions:
- would you use such a service?
- how much (extra) would you pay for it?
That will give you an initial feel for how large the market is and what your profit-margins would be (hopefully more than 0%). You could also ask a third question about what, if anything, they would like to be delivered at home. That could give you an idea about future or alternative businesses.
You might want to check-out the story of Webvan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan
Somehow similar to what you want to do.
Hello,
I can’t speak to the business aspect of it, but it sounds like a really good idea to me. I love to work late and sometimes I get really hungry. I also like to eat late at night so I can stay up working more without needing caffeine. I am a college student and do not always have food in the hall’s fridge — I don’t even like to use the communal fridge that often. So if I could order anything at whatever hour, I would be really happy. And I’m in a suburb, I’m not in a major city. I think this service could be done in big enough towns or for a whole group of suburbs, since my area is a lot of very wealthy suburbs near a big city. I’ve been told that good business comes when people actually put a somewhat decent idea into practice; it doesn’t necessarily come from the most innovative idea. Also, as an American who studies French very seriously, your English is fantastic. Félicitations.
@Bea: You’re right, except that it is not only a grocery delivery, but more a catering service of anything you would like to eat. Sometimes I starve for a “boeuf bourguignon” and I would not hesitate to order one if possible, but I wouldn’t order all the ingredients to prepare it at 11pm. But for this kind of complex dishes, there is of course the problem of delivery time.
@Vince: I’ll try to do that and post the poll on the blog.
@millevazion: thanks a lot for the link! The story of Webvan is not really encouraging, but it seems to me that 1) they only provided groceries delivery and not “cooked food”, 2) they invested way too much in the infrastructure and I’m not sure that such an infrastructure is really required for this concept (but I don’t really know, it is just an opinion)
@G: Thanks a lot for your comment, and for your compliments! Your feedback is really useful, and the target of college students (I am still one!) is probably a good lead, as they work late at night, are not offered quality food on campus, and are eager to experiment this kind of concept, especially in groups. Concerning location, you’re also right, wealthy surburbs are a good target as the inhabitants may be willing to resort to delivery services but traditional American mothers seem not to like traditional delivery food (pizzas, sushis) that much for their kids, and more elaborated dishes can be appealing for this kind of surburbian families. Good luck in your French studies, do not hesitate to send me emails if you need reviews on your French essays!
Another thought. To avoid the infrastructure complexity, you might want to create a fast-food/restaurant network with high quality standards that would produce your orders. You would basically only manage the ordering/delivery pieces. There’s the problem of 24/24 coverage. Not an easy one.
However I’ve never seen a service that you can call up and order what ever you fancy. A king of PizzaHut service that offers from Sushis to Cassoulet.
The nice about that is it’s a win/win/win situation. Win for the customer that has a unique fast food call in service to remember. Win for the fast-foods/restaurants from which you order as you can offer them more visibility and grow their business. And a win for you as you basically become a pure service-based company with little infrastructure to deal with.
Interesting new site that relates somehow to this: http://mashable.com/2007/12/03/foodiebytes/
This is a great idea! And it definitely solves the problem of delivering in a short time complex dishes that you have to cook for hours, because you can find in your network a restaurant which has already cooked a large portion of that for its customers… It might definitely work in a city like San Francisco which has plenty of really diverse restaurants and all types of cuisine.
The problem of 24/24 is a tough one as it is an essential aspect of the value proposition to the customer, but difficult to tackle operationnally. Are there many and diverse restaurants open 24/24 in big cities? In Paris, I can think about quite a few (like Hippopotamus for quite complex dishes around meat) but I don’t know if it would be sufficient to have a whole range. I’ll try to take a closer look, taking for example a city like SF (geeks work late at night, so it’s a good target ;-))