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Morning Coffee - Get Starbucks Straight to Your House

yourmorningcoffee.herokuapp.com

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Re: Morning Coffee - Get Starbucks Straight to Your House

#51

Post by corin_ »

Are you actually planning on buying from a shop and then delivering as everybody assumes? If you are, have you considered:

There's a step between being a Starbucks customer and being a Starbucks shop. See for example http://www.starbucks.com/business/office-coffee

I don't know how costs would improve/get worse, but I imagine it would at least be operationally easier if you could brew on the road rather than constantly having to go back to the shop, and dealing with drinks getting cold.

Potentially I can imagine them selling you branded equipment (cups, tissues etc.), coffee (just big bags) and the extras you might need (e.g. syrups), then as long as you made it well, so as not to give them a bad name, they could just leave you to it.

Re: Morning Coffee - Get Starbucks Straight to Your House

#52

Post by capsule_toy »

michael_fine wrote: post #6
arkitaip wrote: post #4

I can't really see how this mvp can scale beyond a few dozen customers if manual delivery is going to be used (how many minutes do you have before the coffee gets cold? This sets all kinds of limitations on your business). $15 per customer/month isn't much if you're going to pay for (gas), salaries, etc. Unless, of course, this is Starbucks' MVP and they are figuring out the parameters of coffee delivery. Now that wo…

You're right, this really is just introductory pricing for the MVP. We really need to work out what a sustainable pricing model is, but we decided that we should first work on the MVP. Do you have any suggestions?

A sustainable pricing model should be a part of the MVP. It's less of a concern in software for different reasons: relatively low costs and decent margins, even as it scales.

Of course, you can treat this as an educational experience to learn more about what you need to consider for these types of businesses going forward. Just realize that proving you can sell a product at a low but unsustainable price point does not prove the product is viable.

Re: Morning Coffee - Get Starbucks Straight to Your House

#53

Post by corin_ »

michael_fine wrote: post #35
pclark wrote: post #28

It'd be interesting you did demand delivery pricing, so that pricing became more expensive at peak times (eg: 8AM) that way you can manage the effect of everyone wanting their drink at the same time. You should start hyper local, one neighbourhood in San Francisco - SOMA? Hayes Valley? Mission? If you did it in a hyper local area you might just turn a profit at $1.50 delivery each. I think this would also be hugely v…

Yeah, demand delivery pricing is a good idea as well. I did coffee for a couple reasons: one, because I love coffee. 2: Because aside from laundry, it's the most universal.

Consider adding other "universal" things that can fit easily on top of coffee.

For example I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, and other than when I remember to buy a carton ahead of time I generally end up going to a shop each day specifically to buy them, they don't fit my general groceries timetable.

Somebody already suggested newspapers... maybe a few other easy-to-deliver snacks/drinks (can of coke, crisps..)? I'm sure there's some more things that X% of people are already buying once a day and would like to save hassle on.

The more you bring, the more the delivery charge looks good to the customer. Let's say each day you brought me a coffee (at cost), a pack of fags (at cost) and a can of coke (buy in bulk you could sell at retail cost and make some money there), still charge $1.50 delivery fee, but suddenly you're saving me three times as much hassle.

Re: Morning Coffee - Get Starbucks Straight to Your House

#54

Post by glimcat »

patio11 wrote: post #42

This seems like a curious choice of potential business when no US-based store will deliver a $3.50 product on a regular basis despite having access to large pools of labor at arbitrarily low costs, while if you're capable of typing in "git push" to get that website up your presumed opportunity cost is rather high. Consider carefully whether you are likely to have a competitive advantage in delivery operations over an…

> P.S. Note how I do not anchor costs around the price of coffee.

Well, neither does Starbucks.

Re: Morning Coffee - Get Starbucks Straight to Your House

#55

Post by tptacek »

glimcat wrote: post #54
patio11 wrote: post #42

This seems like a curious choice of potential business when no US-based store will deliver a $3.50 product on a regular basis despite having access to large pools of labor at arbitrarily low costs, while if you're capable of typing in "git push" to get that website up your presumed opportunity cost is rather high. Consider carefully whether you are likely to have a competitive advantage in delivery operations over an…

> P.S. Note how I do not anchor costs around the price of coffee. Well, neither does Starbucks.

Huh?
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