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Show HN: Fresh-baked rustic sourdough bread, delivered within 20 minutes

getbreadbox.com

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Re: Show HN: Fresh-baked rustic sourdough bread, delivered within 20 minutes

#51

Post by objclxt »

camillomiller wrote: post #27

That's very cool, but jeez is that really in line with the price of baked bread in San Francisco? This morning, 3,50€ bought me half a kilo of 5-cereals focaccia, two loaves of cereal breada and half a kilo of white bread. That's bread for a eight people lunch. That's probably one of the few things I'm gonna miss about Italy when I'll leave.

It's not outrageous for a decent loaf of sourdough in SF. It seems like a really niche market though...doesn't really feel like a business to me. I don't think SF is short of places to get bread - there's a local bakery and a whole foods ten minutes walk away from me. Seems like a solution in search of a problem, really...

Re: Show HN: Fresh-baked rustic sourdough bread, delivered within 20 minutes

#52

Post by nols »

doktrin wrote: post #43
smacktoward wrote: post #36

I guess I'm just at a loss as to what is even remotely "hacker"-ish about this. It's a bakery that delivers. That's great, I guess, but there's nothing particularly technical about it. They're not using tech in some unusual or interesting way to cut down on delivery costs, or make bread in a different way, or anything. It's just... a bakery, that delivers. There's a Web form to order your bread through, but in 2014 t…

What stands out about this promotion is same-hour delivery. Implementing and scaling even same-day delivery is a serious logistical challenge. It's also quite possibly the future of retail. I guess my standards for 'hacker'-ish are lower. I see a company potentially making an attempt to push the envelope, and that's enough for me. edit : I was thinking in terms of general retail and not really food. Fair point : 1-ho…

Pizza places have been delivering like this (made to order in fact) for decades

Re: Show HN: Fresh-baked rustic sourdough bread, delivered within 20 minutes

#53

Post by lnanek2 »

smacktoward wrote: post #36

I guess I'm just at a loss as to what is even remotely "hacker"-ish about this. It's a bakery that delivers. That's great, I guess, but there's nothing particularly technical about it. They're not using tech in some unusual or interesting way to cut down on delivery costs, or make bread in a different way, or anything. It's just... a bakery, that delivers. There's a Web form to order your bread through, but in 2014 t…

Amusingly, they don't even do things other startups don't already cover. At the LAUNCH hackathon everyone had a free $25 from Postmates: http://postmates.com/

Where you can just order delivery from any store, bakeries included. The Postmates implementation is much better too, with an app where you can watch exactly on a map when someone takes you order (happened in seconds when I tried) and their progress as they go to the store and get you your stuff. Then there's even more general purpose apps like Exec.

Anyway, this is what you are told to do at Startup Weekend and the like. Perform customer validation and try your idea out any way possible even before you have an app, but the idea is just something we already have in spades in SF, like you said.

Re: Show HN: Fresh-baked rustic sourdough bread, delivered within 20 minutes

#54

Post by getbreadbox »

Hi everyone!

Thank you all so much for your interest in this!

The spike in interest from HN has been totally overwhelming, so while we are thrilled with the validation of this concept, we are running out of stock and falling behind on delivery schedule.

I'll be sure to reach out individually to everyone who submitted an order.

We can't wait to launch this service in a way that can handle demand spikes like this -- thank you all for yor support.

Edit: for reference, we've had orders for 150 loaves of bread in 2 hours.

Re: Show HN: Fresh-baked rustic sourdough bread, delivered within 20 minutes

#55

Post by spartango »

rgbrgb wrote: post #13
dangrossman wrote: post #7

Strange business, if that's what it's going to be. I've never had a sudden craving for a loaf of bread and wished I could order just that online. Not that I can't already; the local grocery store has a delivery service, and they bake their own bread every morning. I'm sure there's at least one bakery that delivers in the city, and there's a half dozen restaurants on GrubHub in my area that offer some kind of bread de…

There's a high end bakery in the mission called Tartine where people queue up every day to buy $13 loaves of bread. I could never justify the expense but from the line outside I'd say there are definitely a lot of people in SF who can. You might have a hard time scaling this outside of really posh areas, but I'd bet that if you can make a profit delivering 5$ loaves in SF that you could do it for cheaper with the sam…

While you may be right that there exists a price point at which posh people will pay for this type of delivery service, the example of Tartine is a poor one.

Tartine has been regarded as one of the best bakeries in SF for a number of years, having cultivated its reputation and following for over 10 years. It commands high prices not just because of quality, but also by its brand.

This is relevant not merely to pick apart your example, but more as a sort of chicken-and-egg challenge that faces many food service businesses. By default, bakeries are a low margin businesses, making it difficult to survive the long years you need to build the reputation that enables higher margins. The businesses that have circumvented this struggle have done so by such means as owner/chef fame.

With that said, I'm confident there are other ways of quickly achieving high-margin status. OP's company will have to be clever in doing so. It's unclear to me that delivery is a sufficient vehicle in this respect, except in bulk where ACME dominates.

Re: Show HN: Fresh-baked rustic sourdough bread, delivered within 20 minutes

#56

Post by lifeformed »

TillE wrote: post #50
lifeformed wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the 20 minute delivery is a big part of it.

If you live in a city or near a town center, you can probably walk to a decent bakery in five minutes. You can also buy frozen or vacuum-packed half-baked bread from a supermarket, keep it around, and make some very nice fresh bread by sticking it in the oven for 20 minutes.

Yeah, but sometimes I'd pay $2 to someone to walk 5 minutes to get me a $3 loaf of bread.

Re: Show HN: Fresh-baked rustic sourdough bread, delivered within 20 minutes

#57

Post by larrys »

unreal37 wrote: post #39
smacktoward wrote: post #36

I guess I'm just at a loss as to what is even remotely "hacker"-ish about this. It's a bakery that delivers. That's great, I guess, but there's nothing particularly technical about it. They're not using tech in some unusual or interesting way to cut down on delivery costs, or make bread in a different way, or anything. It's just... a bakery, that delivers. There's a Web form to order your bread through, but in 2014 t…

They're applying for YC though, so they're validating an idea. Gotta appreciate that they're learning what it means to deliver bread on demand. If I lived in SF, I'd have them bring me a loaf of bread today.

"They're applying for YC though, so they're validating an idea."

I suspect it's more than that (and I say that positively). A slow news day. They stand a good chance of getting attention which is of benefit in terms of YC most likely. So at the very least anyone investing knows they have a clue about how to play the game.

To take this one step further they might want to try matzoh on Passover which is coming up shortly. NYC would be a good city to test if the delivery scaled.

Re: Show HN: Fresh-baked rustic sourdough bread, delivered within 20 minutes

#58

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

georgeecollins wrote: post #47
smacktoward wrote: post #36

I guess I'm just at a loss as to what is even remotely "hacker"-ish about this. It's a bakery that delivers. That's great, I guess, but there's nothing particularly technical about it. They're not using tech in some unusual or interesting way to cut down on delivery costs, or make bread in a different way, or anything. It's just... a bakery, that delivers. There's a Web form to order your bread through, but in 2014 t…

This seems to cross the line between "startup" and "lemonade stand".

Before clicking, I wondered if this was going to be an artisanal fresh-backed parody made from locally-sourced ingredients.

Re: Show HN: Fresh-baked rustic sourdough bread, delivered within 20 minutes

#59

Post by reso »

smacktoward wrote: post #36

I guess I'm just at a loss as to what is even remotely "hacker"-ish about this. It's a bakery that delivers. That's great, I guess, but there's nothing particularly technical about it. They're not using tech in some unusual or interesting way to cut down on delivery costs, or make bread in a different way, or anything. It's just... a bakery, that delivers. There's a Web form to order your bread through, but in 2014 t…

They're doing something that doesn't scale in order to learn more about their potential customers. It doesn't have to make sense as a long-term business in order for them to get good data out of it.

Re: Show HN: Fresh-baked rustic sourdough bread, delivered within 20 minutes

#60

Post by mfkp »

getbreadbox wrote: post #54

Hi everyone! Thank you all so much for your interest in this! The spike in interest from HN has been totally overwhelming, so while we are thrilled with the validation of this concept, we are running out of stock and falling behind on delivery schedule. I'll be sure to reach out individually to everyone who submitted an order. We can't wait to launch this service in a way that can handle demand spikes like this -- th…

Cool - was wondering why there was no text confirmation in over 30 mins, this explains it. Must not be an automated process.
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