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I might be worth looking at where kozmo.com went wrong with a similar attempt during the dotcom boom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com
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GP is pointing that this challenges appears to have already been solved, quite successfully, by many small non-technological business in many cities. Was it snarky? Yes. But it was also insightful.
He's merely stating the obvious facts that, for some reason, a lot of people here are totally overlooking when they think that this idea is somehow "innovative".
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"It'd be a strange thing to pitch to investors too." I think there is something here actually. For example it's a constant annoyance to me that when I get chinese food or sushi from the same places on a regular basis I actually have to make a phone call and talk to someone. At one place where they know me they actually make me give them my phone number which allows them to pull me up in their system. Just having to r…
What area are you in? The simple solution to that is to get local restaurants to join an online ordering site like GrubHub -- I would be surprised if you're in a major suburb and none of the restaurants are already enrolled there or on a similar site. They're the "BCC" for online-enabling restaurants. The thing that makes it so easy is that it operates on fax. It seems antiquated, but that means any restaurant with a…
You can even order from bakeries (at least in the Portland area). I use them all the time for food delivery, and it's rare an order takes more than 45 minutes to complete.
Just picked it up (two people in a black Prius :) They seemed swamped (they were 10 minutes late and were visibly frazzled) but upbeat. Bread was decent. I suspect that if you go into pastries, you probably can command a higher margin (I really dislike keeping desserts in the apartment, and "dessert on demand" definitely would be appealing)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It'd be a strange thing to pitch to investors too." I think there is something here actually. For example it's a constant annoyance to me that when I get chinese food or sushi from the same places on a regular basis I actually have to make a phone call and talk to someone. At one place where they know me they actually make me give them my phone number which allows them to pull me up in their system. Just having to r…
What area are you in? The simple solution to that is to get local restaurants to join an online ordering site like GrubHub -- I would be surprised if you're in a major suburb and none of the restaurants are already enrolled there or on a similar site. They're the "BCC" for online-enabling restaurants. The thing that makes it so easy is that it operates on fax. It seems antiquated, but that means any restaurant with a…
I call in orders now--or just wait till I'm there; they're pretty fast.
I might be worth looking at where kozmo.com went wrong with a similar attempt during the dotcom boom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com
What makes you assume something went wrong? It sounds like they were doing really well, but the bust hit them extremely hard, like it hit many others.
Snark off. There is a viable business model for deliveries given correct demographics, population density, etc.--and a willingness to pay for the incremental costs of the delivery. Works widely for some things (e.g. Pizza, Chinese food). Works as a niche for grocery delivery-usually in combination with a physical store presence of some sort. Delivery models work, usually as an adjunct to a physical store, but it's situational. Delivering individual video rentals like Kozmo did (among other things) is probably not one of those situations.
I might be worth looking at where kozmo.com went wrong with a similar attempt during the dotcom boom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com
What makes you assume something went wrong? It sounds like they were doing really well, but the bust hit them extremely hard, like it hit many others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They sell bread. They got 150 orders in 2 hours. Their idea was validated.
Was the idea really validated? Is their business model "get on the front page of HN daily"? If not, absolutely nothing was validated.
What a brilliant way to validate an idea. No online payment processing, no fancy dropdown modals asking me to make an account, just pay when you get the bread. I hope it stays this simple.
No account is mandatory, although such functionality is offered if you want to save your preferred pizza toppings, your address, and so forth for greater convenience during future orders.
You can prepay, if you want, or just pay the delivery driver once the pizzas have been delivered.
I'm not really sure what needs to be "validated" here. This approach has been successfully used by many other organizations offering the exact same type of service.