There's a place near UPenn that only serves bowls of cereal. Anything is possible! As a college student myself, one place really popular at school is an interesting non-chain yogurt shop that just started up this year, and it's not exactly cheap. So college kids appreciate something unique, and if you can provide that, you have a shot.
Ask YC: Advice on startup idea and funding.
21–30 of 39 posts
Re: Ask YC: Advice on startup idea and funding.
#22I think this is not a startup...
Re: Ask YC: Advice on startup idea and funding.
#23There are two cookie stores within a block from one another in Bloomington, IN (home of IU). They have both lasted for at least a couple years if I'm not mistaken.
Re: Ask YC: Advice on startup idea and funding.
#24I think this is not a startup...
Exactly: unless it's set up as a chain, the potential upside is more or less limited.
Re: Ask YC: Advice on startup idea and funding.
#25Are your cookies very good? Do people come around to your house to eat your cookies no matter how rude you are to them? If so go for it, if not well I'd be thinking about something else, the snack food market is incredibly competitive and done to death.
Even worse, say you do get it working whats to stop someone else opening a cookie shop next door? As others have said business schools are made for this sort of ahem 'cookie cutter' business model.
Run the numbers and if you think it will work well go in with both eyes open and good luck.
If there's three of you why not two get a job and the third run the shop full time, get some cheap student labor for busy times and as it takes off the other two can wind up their other jobs, or if your IT guys get short term contracts and rotate even if its wildly successful it will be a year or two before it could support 3 people full time.
Re: Ask YC: Advice on startup idea and funding.
#26My girlfriend and I stumbled upon a cupcake spot in Georgetown (Washington DC) this weekend. It's a somewhat similar model, and they have a site that gives you a sense of the branding: http://www.georgetowncupcake.com/
Cupcakes...there's a higher perceived value and a fun/childhood/novelty aspect. I paid $3.00 for one, it would be tougher to charge that for a cookie. The store was busy, people were buying them by the half dozen for parties. There was a viral aspect as people were walking down the street happily eating these messy cupcakes. Anyway, I love cookies and wish you luck! Let us know how you proceed.
Re: Ask YC: Advice on startup idea and funding.
#27Interesting idea, but be wary. I opened up a hookah lounge last year 2 blocks from Brighton Beach in Brooklyn NY. Before we opened we were hoping to get the chic, hip, free-wifi crowd, but instead got 18yr old troublemakers that don't spend a dime. It's one thing to want a particular clientele and it's another to actually get it. There's no guarantee, and with something like cookies, you don't know who you'll get. To…
Where in Brooklyn? On Coney Is?
Re: Ask YC: Advice on startup idea and funding.
#28Something cool would be if you could adopt a "web 2.0" cookie shop by continually getting feedback on the cookies, I'll explain:
You never get the same cookie twice, every batch is different, the ingredients are always different; you constantly change the recipe based on customer feedback.
Also, you could have a new recipe every month by like adding a few customer recipe's and having people vote on it, then every month you could come out with a new cookie or something like that.
I might sound crazy, just a few ideas I had based on hearing your idea.
Re: Ask YC: Advice on startup idea and funding.
#29Your best bet is to watch Ramsay Kitchen Nightmares, UK and US. If I were ever brave enough to open a culinary themed enterprise like yours then I would use those shows (especially the UK ones as the US get a lot of help with makeovers!) to give you a good grounding on what the difficulties can be.
Its a very hard idea I would say, good luck though.
Re: Ask YC: Advice on startup idea and funding.
#30Very flawed approach. The restaurant business is the hardest type of business to get into. It's terribly difficult to survive for more than a few months. And the only way to survive is if you have an extremly detailed financial breakdown, with all possible scenarios - worst case and best case. Only if those all look rosy should you start. And if you want to start that way, you need to do surveys of other businesses i…
One thing to note about bank loans: usually the bank asks that at least some of the credit line is made personally liable to you/someone on your team. It's like the first time you get a credit card and you have a parent/guardian underwrite it since you have no credit history.
The business is like a person, with its own Tax ID and everything (just as we have social security numbers), and when that business has no credit history you may need to use yours to get it started and establish a credit history. When you put some of your own money on the line, the bank feels a little better off since you're risking your own capital along with their capital, and not just their capital.