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Seeking feedback for startup idea

Idea threads
D

Deleted48496

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I have seen so many food delivery businesses opening up in my area, which works like uber, but for food. So basic concept of them is, they tie up with F*ck ton of restaurants in many cities, and list them on there app, then a consumer can order and it will be delivered on a scooter.

HOWEVER, I have never seen such platform for chai (tea) and coffee. That's why I got this idea, of opening a business which will deliver many types of tea, coffee straight to doorstep (Yes, there will be no physical outlet, consumers will have to install an app, and order). It will be delivered hot, fresh and tasty in kettle along with disposable paper cups.

Any feedback about my startup idea? also, i have no idea how i'm going to estimate finance required or how will i pursue it further. Anyway, thank you for your time!
 
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Constantine$

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A couple of critical questions:
- What value are you delivering? I.e. how are you making my life better?
- Most people that like coffee have a coffee maker, so why not deliver coffee refills instead of fresh coffee? E.g. Nespresso cups in a monthly subscription form.
- Coffee is fairly cheap, so what profit margin are you expecting if you include delivery?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
 

startek

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Also, I believe a lot of coffee and tea drinkers like the experience of going to a coffee house. I know that I do. And my son and his girlfriend say the same.
 
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Deleted48496

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A couple of critical questions:
- What value are you delivering? I.e. how are you making my life better?
- Most people that like coffee have a coffee maker, so why not deliver coffee refills instead of fresh coffee? E.g. Nespresso cups in a monthly subscription form.
- Coffee is fairly cheap, so what profit margin are you expecting if you include delivery?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

-Consumers won't have to make coffee/tea. They will have a delicious hot cup of it with a press of button.
-Hmm, Nespresso cups? Like those capsules thing which you insert in keruig?
-I will be honest, I have not calculated numbers yet.
 
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D

Deleted48496

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Also, I believe a lot of coffee and tea drinkers like the experience of going to a coffee house. I know that I do. And my son and his girlfriend say the same.

Actually, I was thinking about that too.

Thanks for sharing your views on it, precciate' it!
 

cutthroughstatic

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I have seen so many food delivery businesses opening up in my area, which works like uber, but for food. So basic concept of them is, they tie up with F*ck ton of restaurants in many cities, and list them on there app, then a consumer can order and it will be delivered on a scooter.

HOWEVER, I have never seen such platform for chai (tea) and coffee. That's why I got this idea, of opening a business which will deliver many types of tea, coffee straight to doorstep (Yes, there will be no physical outlet, consumers will have to install an app, and order). It will be delivered hot, fresh and tasty in kettle along with disposable paper cups.

Any feedback about my startup idea? also, i have no idea how i'm going to estimate finance required or how will i pursue it further. Anyway, thank you for your time!

UberEATS is already doing what you are describing and they will own this market.

The opportunity I see here is starting a catering company specifically in the niche of coffee/tea.

The company I used to work for when I was slowlane would spend a ton of money every week for coffee for morning meetings. It also required an employee to run out and pick up/drop off the big coffee canisters from a local place. If you add up lost production from the employee and the cost of the coffee, I'm sure there's a way to provide better value.

Feel free to steal the idea.

Other than that, Coffee/Tea is usually going to be too small a bill to really make any money. By the time you pay the driver and pay for gas, hard to make money with two $3 cups of coffee.

But if you could do catering and sell jugs of coffee and supplies to local companies for events and meetings... maybe that's an idea.
 
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jon.M

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-Consumers won't have to make coffee/tea. They will have a delicious hot cup of it with a press of button.
Where I live it takes up to 40 minutes to deliver food - and even if you bring that down a lot, people could make their own fresh cup of coffee in 10 minutes. Heck, if they've got one of those fancy capsule machines it's down to 1 minute.

Not trying to bring you down, but I wouldn't pay MORE (you'll need to make a profit and pay the delivery) for a coffee that I'll need to wait LONGER for. Is there someway you could change that?
 

Scot

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Logistics here will be a nightmare. No one will want to pay more than $5 for a Starbucks coffee, so how will you be able to deliver coffee right to someone for less than $2.50 your cost?

At my former university, they had a startup that had an app to request coffee. A guy with a backpack coffee urn would show up at your class and pump a cup for you.

The only way I see this working at all is if you were in a very population dense city or office complex where you could have a mobile coffee cart.

Long story short. I'm not paying $5, plus a $3 delivery fee for coffee.
 

fhs8

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HOWEVER, I have never seen such platform for chai (tea) and coffee. That's why I got this idea, of opening a business which will deliver many types of tea, coffee straight to doorstep (Yes, there will be no physical outlet, consumers will have to install an app, and order). It will be delivered hot, fresh and tasty in kettle along with disposable paper cups.

It would be way too expensive for your customers, it would take too long for just coffee/tea, too expensive to acquire customers, and almost nobody wants coffee and tea delivery. You have UberEATS, Amazon Restaurants, Doordash, Grubhub, etc... All current competitors (Coffee and tea from McDonald's/Starbucks). The whole point of food delivery is convenience since it's difficult to make food at home. Making coffee/tea however is another story. You aren't solving any big problems. Someone who needs coffee/tea on a daily basis would buy a Keurig type of coffee machine.

Any feedback about my startup idea? also, i have no idea how i'm going to estimate finance required or how will i pursue it further. Anyway, thank you for your time!

I think that it's a horrible idea and it shouldn't be pursued.
 
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Tim Allen Jr.

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I have seen so many food delivery businesses opening up in my area, which works like uber, but for food. So basic concept of them is, they tie up with F*ck ton of restaurants in many cities, and list them on there app, then a consumer can order and it will be delivered on a scooter.

HOWEVER, I have never seen such platform for chai (tea) and coffee. That's why I got this idea, of opening a business which will deliver many types of tea, coffee straight to doorstep (Yes, there will be no physical outlet, consumers will have to install an app, and order). It will be delivered hot, fresh and tasty in kettle along with disposable paper cups.

Any feedback about my startup idea? also, i have no idea how i'm going to estimate finance required or how will i pursue it further. Anyway, thank you for your time!

Great job finding an undeserved market/area. A couple of thoughts:

1. What's to stop any of the companies you mentioned from going into providing coffee and mitigating your idea?
- This shouldn't stop you - just something to think of.

2. Test this idea - very easy to do.
- Go to an apartment building, knock on doors and ask if people would be interested in getting coffee delivered every morning (makes sense - before people go to work).
- Go to SMALL businesses - say you have x amount of people who want coffee delivered - would they join your 'company'
- This will help you validate the ideas from both a b2b & b2c perspective.

3. After doing this - think back to #1 - where is your edge compared to big companies - if you can't find one - you probably should think elsewhere.... which leads me to the last point

4. Don't get discouraged - all ideas are born 'not great'. If coffee delivery does not make sense - try to find similar areas that your 'idea' could branch into....
Example (these are great, but you need to spit ball): grocery delivery, pet food delivery, tools delivery.... all those suck, but do that enough, you'll find a decent one.

Hope this helps!
 

lowtek

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I see lots of people try to make the "Uber of X" - without really grasping what the point of Uber is.

The point of Uber was that it saw excess capacity in the economy and then provided a marketplace to bring together producer and consumers. It is essentially arbitrage. The value of a car sitting around in the driveway is low, but using it to transport people around is high value.

In other words, people have lots of free time, and they have cars...some people don't have cars, or don't want to find parking, or want to go out drinking, so why not connect them?

Same thing with airbnb/vrbo. People own properties, but don't always occupy them. This yields excess capacity, that can be leveraged into a marketplace to satisfy a demand.

Your proposal doesn't really find and exploit any excess capacity in the economy, and I don't see an arbitrage opportunity. The value of coffee is relatively low, so the spread you can make from connecting idle coffee to consumers is very low - as others have aptly pointed out.

I would not personally pursue the idea, though I think it's great you're getting the juices flowing.
 
D

Deleted48496

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I see lots of people try to make the "Uber of X" - without really grasping what the point of Uber is.

The point of Uber was that it saw excess capacity in the economy and then provided a marketplace to bring together producer and consumers. It is essentially arbitrage. The value of a car sitting around in the driveway is low, but using it to transport people around is high value.

In other words, people have lots of free time, and they have cars...some people don't have cars, or don't want to find parking, or want to go out drinking, so why not connect them?

Same thing with airbnb/vrbo. People own properties, but don't always occupy them. This yields excess capacity, that can be leveraged into a marketplace to satisfy a demand.

Your proposal doesn't really find and exploit any excess capacity in the economy, and I don't see an arbitrage opportunity. The value of coffee is relatively low, so the spread you can make from connecting idle coffee to consumers is very low - as others have aptly pointed out.

I would not personally pursue the idea, though I think it's great you're getting the juices flowing.

Thank you for such detailed explanation, I understood your point!
 
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D

Deleted48496

Guest
Great job finding an undeserved market/area. A couple of thoughts:

1. What's to stop any of the companies you mentioned from going into providing coffee and mitigating your idea?
- This shouldn't stop you - just something to think of.

2. Test this idea - very easy to do.
- Go to an apartment building, knock on doors and ask if people would be interested in getting coffee delivered every morning (makes sense - before people go to work).
- Go to SMALL businesses - say you have x amount of people who want coffee delivered - would they join your 'company'
- This will help you validate the ideas from both a b2b & b2c perspective.

3. After doing this - think back to #1 - where is your edge compared to big companies - if you can't find one - you probably should think elsewhere.... which leads me to the last point

4. Don't get discouraged - all ideas are born 'not great'. If coffee delivery does not make sense - try to find similar areas that your 'idea' could branch into....
Example (these are great, but you need to spit ball): grocery delivery, pet food delivery, tools delivery.... all those suck, but do that enough, you'll find a decent one.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for motivating me, but however, i have decided to drop this idea, and work on something else. But again, thank you so much for such detailed reply! I really appreciate it.
 
D

Deleted48496

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Update: I have gone through every post on this thread, and came to conclusion that it would be best for me to drop this idea, and work on something else.

Thank you everyone for their opinions!
 

Tim Allen Jr.

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Update: I have gone through every post on this thread, and came to conclusion that it would be best for me to drop this idea, and work on something else.

Thank you everyone for their opinions!

This might be just me (and I can be batshit crazy), and going against the grain here, but unless you have another idea in the pocket.... run with it, and LEARN.

I say this for a couple of reasons:

1. It gets you in front of real people and you'll start to talk to people and gain more confidence in learning/probing people for what they are looking for. Gets you into a problem finding mindset.
2. It might lead you to another idea by the conversations you have. Using the apartment example... during a conversation, they might tell you they don't want coffee delivered, but they do want 'x'.......
3. This forum is comprised of similar/like minded people, so your sample set of whether or not this idea is valuable (which i still think is iffy) is VERY limited and skewed. People are different and have different needs.
4. Your doing/learning instead of just 'thinking'
5. Either way - probably agree with you that this idea has some serious holes to consider, and might be best to stay away :).

Last thought.... It's wise to listen to advice, but if everyone listed to naysayers, we wouldn't have half the shit we use daily (facebook, google) and there would be many less successful people on this forum, and in the world.

Good luck in any endevaor
 
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Get Right

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I'll take the other side and say I like the idea. I can envision an urban bike with multiple drink options pulling up to building "x". It shows up at set times and the building occupants can run down for a cup. Scale it with lots of bikes and commissioned "hip" workers who name their own schedule. I'd buy it.
 

BrooklynHustle

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I have seen so many food delivery businesses opening up in my area, which works like uber, but for food. So basic concept of them is, they tie up with F*ck ton of restaurants in many cities, and list them on there app, then a consumer can order and it will be delivered on a scooter.

HOWEVER, I have never seen such platform for chai (tea) and coffee. That's why I got this idea, of opening a business which will deliver many types of tea, coffee straight to doorstep (Yes, there will be no physical outlet, consumers will have to install an app, and order). It will be delivered hot, fresh and tasty in kettle along with disposable paper cups.

Any feedback about my startup idea? also, i have no idea how i'm going to estimate finance required or how will i pursue it further. Anyway, thank you for your time!
A lot of those companies struggle with profitability due to the high cost of delivery. With an even cheaper product with less margin like coffee/tea, you're only making this problem more significant for yourself

What's the problem you're trying to solve here? Why does this business need to exist?
 

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