We have our customer validated idea. We have our awesome PowerPoint deck. We've got our pro forma income statement, our marketing plan, and our advisers. We've been working on our pitch. Now, its time to get in front of complete strangers- strangers with some credibility in this field, be they investors, entrepreneurs, or other impressive business folk- and see what they think about Morph- the Uber of food-delivery.
At the pitch party, a hundred booths are set up, with teams representing different ideas behind them. There were foods like pecan milk, apps to get your car washed, apps to help diet and cook, products to never need to tie shoelaces again, and what seemed like a million more. Judges walk around and talk to as many of these companies as they could, learning, asking questions, and probing further into the business model to decide how feasible and scalable the idea really was. To the ideas they liked, they awarded a million dollar bill. To others, they gave advice. I was looking for the former, and thought that we were far too smart and prepared to bother listening to the latter. That, right there, was my biggest mistake, and one of my greatest learnings of this whole year.
As the event wore on, our stack of money did not increase nearly as much as I expected. I was feeling down and slightly desperate, and began walking far from our booth, poaching judges. I'd come up to anyone who would listen, and begin my spiel about Morph. I'd tell them about the problems we learned about, how our solution is better than all others, how easily and well we can scale. And then I'd expect the money, because I was so confident that we deserved it.
But alas, little came. The advice, however, was essential, and it took a tap on the shoulder and a private talk with Ollie, one of my GLOBE class team members, to set me straight. "Listen," he said. "Listen, write down their issues, and come back to them. Learn what you don't know, and figure that out."
And so I finally did. I stopped trying to pitch our idea for some monopoly dollars, and instead took the whole event as a chance to gather as many critiques as I could and, hopefully, find some insights we hadn't thought of. I was asked legal questions about how we would handle charges like those faced by Uber. While previously I would try to deflect it and tell them about how quickly we would serve customers, I now would nod and tell them that its an important subject to learn into.
When asked about the market size before, I would reply with our revenue projections, hoping that would be enough. Now, I admitted it was an important piece of missing information, and replied with a question: "How would you go about sizing this market? Do you have any suggestions?"
This whole experience was- and should have been- an opportunity to learn. Financially, the best case scenario was $1000. Not a make it or break it amount by any means, but I had seen it as validation of our hard work and, more personally, my credibility and ability to be an entrepreneur. But with so many smart judges around, all who came to donate their time and ears to our idea, it was the advice that I should have recognized as the most valuable part of this whole event, not some fake money that would tell me I'm good enough to do this.
So there you have it. Look for advice when its offered to you for free. Admit the gaps in knowledge, and fill them as immediately and completely as you can. Asking questions is more than fine- its encouraged. And do all this to prepare yourself to fight another day.
We're finishing up 2014 with this post. The last weeks of the year were spent researching the issues that came up at the Pitch Party. Just before school let out, I came up to May, the one American on my GLOBE team, and talked to her about Morph. I told her that it's been an awesome experience working with her on this, but I don't think we should be quite finished yet. There is a lot we can do, and I want this to be much more than a class project. Is she willing to get to work, and see where we can take this? Does she want to join me, and try to turn this idea- an idea that began as a pizza app- into something real, tangible, and potentially huge?
Luckily for me, she did. Because there is no way I could have done this alone, without her. In my next post, I'll talk a bit about how we structured meetings, what we did, and how we set goals for ourselves. This is all leading up to the Carolina Challenge, which, soon, should get us to the present day.
Much love,
A
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Saturday, April 25, 2015
The Second Idea
So, I'm learning more about the needs of the customer. Per Jim Kitchen's emphasis on "lean" methodology, per Diana Kander's emphasis on "All In", customer interviews- open ended questions learning about customers' biggest problems (or 'migraine problems', as Kander calls it)- has led the idea through some twists and turns.
I understand that restaurants want to deliver, but this desire is surrounded by problems. Price, customer service, efficiency, labor, insurance- all of these variables, and a dozen more, make it a headache. In what way would we be able to come up with a solution to help solve the problems?
Well, let's look at how they are currently solving it. Companies like Takeout Central, Crunchbutton, and hundreds of others around the country, some with heavy VC backing like Door Dash, and some with regional market power like Delivery Now in New Jersey, are doing their best. They have a set number of drivers under contract, divide up the shifts, and serve as many restaurants in a region as they can. This way, in exchange for a cut of the profits that varies by company, a restaurant can deliver without the headache of managing drivers. A whole new market opens up to them, they have their menu on line, and they can grow their business enormously.
But obviously, as I learned from interviewing restaurant managers, many are still unhappy with these options. Additionally, personal experience coupled with a survey of the UNC student population told us that end customers- the hungry people who order delivery and drive the whole industry- are also unhappy. High delivery costs, limited options, and, most importantly, slow delivery times make customers annoyed with their options, but resigned to use them, as they don't have any alternatives. How can we create a better model to this existing system?
Well, what do we need to do? Get food to customers faster than anyone, in a way that costs restaurants less. We also need to do all the little things- better customer service, smoother ordering interface, access via mobile and web. But if we can deliver food faster and cheaper, we can win.
I drew pictures, made tables, and wrote whole pages of notes by hand discussing the problem, trying to figure out how to solve it. The problem with current third party delivery services is that they don't have enough drivers. Often they might have just 8 drivers on a weekend dinner shift for 60 restaurants, leading to delivery times of over an hour and a half. So we need more drivers. But managing all their shifts, telling them to work certain times- all of that seems like a headache.
So what do we do to have more drivers on the road, with less pain of managing them? How about an Uber model? If drivers can come in and out whenever they want, as long as we have enough drivers in the system, then only a small percentage of them needs to be working at any time, and we'd already have more people on the road than our competitors. We can serve any number of restaurants, because the more restaurants, the more orders. The more orders, the more business for drivers. The more business, the more drivers want to apply to work. The more drivers in our system, the more restaurants we can serve. And as long as we always have a surplus of drivers, customers will always get their food faster from us, than any alternative.
So we finally had something. An idea very different then our first, inspired by customer interviews, and solving a serious customer 'migraine problem'. We're ecstatic.
We continue to interview, asking more about statistics and metrics than before. How many orders do you do a day? How many drivers do you employee (if you do). We use all of this information, begin coming up with our financials, our marketing plans, our pitch deck. This is a validated idea worth working on. Our amazing team put in hours of work and effort, and beat out the work until we had something to be proud of.
As the semester finished up, our idea was getting better. We though of incentives to make sure we've always had drivers on the road. We had marketing strategies, and recruitment tactics. We had estimates for our revenue streams our our profit projections. Basically, out of an initial idea came a target customer, and out of interviews came a problem, and from the problem a solution. We've got something here, now its time to get validation from others.
All of this work prepared us for the Pitch Party, an annual UNC entrepreneurship pitch competition. Over 100 teams pitch their ideas to judges who walk around the room, giving us monopoly money to reward an idea that they thought deserved backing, culminating in a final "pitch off" of the top 10 teams. We were looking forward to this for a long time, and we were ready! I'll tell you how that went next time, on the Dr. Oz Show with your host- Adriel Oz.
Much love,
A
I understand that restaurants want to deliver, but this desire is surrounded by problems. Price, customer service, efficiency, labor, insurance- all of these variables, and a dozen more, make it a headache. In what way would we be able to come up with a solution to help solve the problems?
Well, let's look at how they are currently solving it. Companies like Takeout Central, Crunchbutton, and hundreds of others around the country, some with heavy VC backing like Door Dash, and some with regional market power like Delivery Now in New Jersey, are doing their best. They have a set number of drivers under contract, divide up the shifts, and serve as many restaurants in a region as they can. This way, in exchange for a cut of the profits that varies by company, a restaurant can deliver without the headache of managing drivers. A whole new market opens up to them, they have their menu on line, and they can grow their business enormously.
But obviously, as I learned from interviewing restaurant managers, many are still unhappy with these options. Additionally, personal experience coupled with a survey of the UNC student population told us that end customers- the hungry people who order delivery and drive the whole industry- are also unhappy. High delivery costs, limited options, and, most importantly, slow delivery times make customers annoyed with their options, but resigned to use them, as they don't have any alternatives. How can we create a better model to this existing system?
Well, what do we need to do? Get food to customers faster than anyone, in a way that costs restaurants less. We also need to do all the little things- better customer service, smoother ordering interface, access via mobile and web. But if we can deliver food faster and cheaper, we can win.
I drew pictures, made tables, and wrote whole pages of notes by hand discussing the problem, trying to figure out how to solve it. The problem with current third party delivery services is that they don't have enough drivers. Often they might have just 8 drivers on a weekend dinner shift for 60 restaurants, leading to delivery times of over an hour and a half. So we need more drivers. But managing all their shifts, telling them to work certain times- all of that seems like a headache.
So what do we do to have more drivers on the road, with less pain of managing them? How about an Uber model? If drivers can come in and out whenever they want, as long as we have enough drivers in the system, then only a small percentage of them needs to be working at any time, and we'd already have more people on the road than our competitors. We can serve any number of restaurants, because the more restaurants, the more orders. The more orders, the more business for drivers. The more business, the more drivers want to apply to work. The more drivers in our system, the more restaurants we can serve. And as long as we always have a surplus of drivers, customers will always get their food faster from us, than any alternative.
So we finally had something. An idea very different then our first, inspired by customer interviews, and solving a serious customer 'migraine problem'. We're ecstatic.
We continue to interview, asking more about statistics and metrics than before. How many orders do you do a day? How many drivers do you employee (if you do). We use all of this information, begin coming up with our financials, our marketing plans, our pitch deck. This is a validated idea worth working on. Our amazing team put in hours of work and effort, and beat out the work until we had something to be proud of.
As the semester finished up, our idea was getting better. We though of incentives to make sure we've always had drivers on the road. We had marketing strategies, and recruitment tactics. We had estimates for our revenue streams our our profit projections. Basically, out of an initial idea came a target customer, and out of interviews came a problem, and from the problem a solution. We've got something here, now its time to get validation from others.
All of this work prepared us for the Pitch Party, an annual UNC entrepreneurship pitch competition. Over 100 teams pitch their ideas to judges who walk around the room, giving us monopoly money to reward an idea that they thought deserved backing, culminating in a final "pitch off" of the top 10 teams. We were looking forward to this for a long time, and we were ready! I'll tell you how that went next time, on the Dr. Oz Show with your host- Adriel Oz.
Much love,
A
Friday, April 17, 2015
Three divisions of customer
So here is what we know. Restaurants don't care about ordering. As long as a customer has access to their entire menu (not just two options with easy click), they're satisfied.
The big problem is delivery. After walking around to a dozen restaurants, I am able to divide them into three categories: those that manage their own delivery, those that use a third party, and those that don't have any delivery whatsoever. Always writing and taking notes and making charts, I begin to think heavily about each of these groups.
Restaurants that manage their own delivery do so for two reasons. First, delivery is a huge part of their business, often up to 50% of their entire daily revenue. Second, they have some obvious issues with third parties. Some are too expensive, some provide unbearably poor customer service, some are too slow. Whatever the case, they find it simpler to manage their own delivery. However, this is no easy task. When your core competency is making food, managing drivers, understand routes, and taking orders is an annoying, and difficult process, that only a few restaurants are able to get right. Chains like Jimmy Johns have the operational efficiency to do it well. Delivery reliant business like Bskis need the right manager. Speaking to Babatunde Omari Williams, a former manager of Bskis, I learned that once he left, their delivery almost fell apart. You need the right guy in charge of something that complicated, and it isn't easy to find the right guy.
Then you have restaurants, which make up the majority in Chapel Hill, that use third party services. Locally, that was primarily Takeout Central (formerly Tar Heel Takeout), but a California based app called Crunchbutton was newly introduced and had a few restaurants on its platform. These services gave an ordering platform for customers, faxed or emailed the restaurant when an order came through, and sent one of their own drivers over to pick it up. They were a huge help to restaurants, who could run a reliable delivery service and create an additional revenue stream without any of the managerial issues. However, there were problems here too. On the restaurant side, some services charged a 35% fee off of each order, while others do an awful job providing customer service. On the customer's end, high delivery fees, limited options, and, most importantly, slow delivery make these options a turn-off. Though with no real choices, neither hungry customers nor profit-driven restaurants have much of a choice.
Lastly, there are the restaurants that don't run delivery at all. They're either fed up with the issues with third party services, unable or unwilling to deal with the problems associated with running their own delivery, or just not ambitious enough to undertake delivery at all. Either way they are- and they often know that they are- missing out on enormous potential revenues by avoiding delivery.
The restaurant is, in many ways, the customer most important to please. We need to provide cheaper service than Takeout Central, better support than Crunchbutton, more efficiency than self-managed delivery, and better technology than anyone else out there. But we can't forget the hungry food-orderer, whose chief complaint is slow delivery times. How do we combine all of these issues into one, multi-fold solution? Next time, on Good Morning America.
Much love,
A
The big problem is delivery. After walking around to a dozen restaurants, I am able to divide them into three categories: those that manage their own delivery, those that use a third party, and those that don't have any delivery whatsoever. Always writing and taking notes and making charts, I begin to think heavily about each of these groups.
Restaurants that manage their own delivery do so for two reasons. First, delivery is a huge part of their business, often up to 50% of their entire daily revenue. Second, they have some obvious issues with third parties. Some are too expensive, some provide unbearably poor customer service, some are too slow. Whatever the case, they find it simpler to manage their own delivery. However, this is no easy task. When your core competency is making food, managing drivers, understand routes, and taking orders is an annoying, and difficult process, that only a few restaurants are able to get right. Chains like Jimmy Johns have the operational efficiency to do it well. Delivery reliant business like Bskis need the right manager. Speaking to Babatunde Omari Williams, a former manager of Bskis, I learned that once he left, their delivery almost fell apart. You need the right guy in charge of something that complicated, and it isn't easy to find the right guy.
Then you have restaurants, which make up the majority in Chapel Hill, that use third party services. Locally, that was primarily Takeout Central (formerly Tar Heel Takeout), but a California based app called Crunchbutton was newly introduced and had a few restaurants on its platform. These services gave an ordering platform for customers, faxed or emailed the restaurant when an order came through, and sent one of their own drivers over to pick it up. They were a huge help to restaurants, who could run a reliable delivery service and create an additional revenue stream without any of the managerial issues. However, there were problems here too. On the restaurant side, some services charged a 35% fee off of each order, while others do an awful job providing customer service. On the customer's end, high delivery fees, limited options, and, most importantly, slow delivery make these options a turn-off. Though with no real choices, neither hungry customers nor profit-driven restaurants have much of a choice.
Lastly, there are the restaurants that don't run delivery at all. They're either fed up with the issues with third party services, unable or unwilling to deal with the problems associated with running their own delivery, or just not ambitious enough to undertake delivery at all. Either way they are- and they often know that they are- missing out on enormous potential revenues by avoiding delivery.
The restaurant is, in many ways, the customer most important to please. We need to provide cheaper service than Takeout Central, better support than Crunchbutton, more efficiency than self-managed delivery, and better technology than anyone else out there. But we can't forget the hungry food-orderer, whose chief complaint is slow delivery times. How do we combine all of these issues into one, multi-fold solution? Next time, on Good Morning America.
Much love,
A
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Writing it out
Writing has been an important part of my life for a very long time. As a child, I tried writing another edition of the fabulous, historic Captain Underpants series. In high school, writing comedy sketches for Cabaret Night was an exciting and defining moment of my development. And more recently, I have used writing to help myself sort through questions, issues, and worries, as well as to document and remember successes.
Throughout the course of building this business, writing has helped me develop ideas, draw out concerns, and record thoughts. I've filled a full yellow pad with notes and drawings, have at least 10 notes on my iPhone, a dozen on Evernote, and various scribbles and ideas all over my class notebook. Anything I think of, or question, or learn, I immediately write down. This helps in two ways: record keeping, and analysis.
"The palest ink is stronger than the best memory." Or something like that. I've heard it, but never has the saying been more applicable to my life than with this business. Here, where every detail matters, where every fact or quote or observation can lead to a light bulb going off, recording conversations I have with advisers and customers, making notes about competitors and the industry, and writing about the progress we've made from start to present all aggregates to help me understand what the business is today, where else it can go, and all of the alternatives to what we might be doing.
While record keeping helps me categorize and monitor my learnings and thoughts, writing also helps understand what I want and can do. Pros and cons lists have become a weekly tradition. I have a number of paths I can take? I make a pros and cons list. I'm deciding between accepting cash or using only cards? Pros and cons list. Deciding on a date to launch? Pros and cons list. These lists help put into perspective the many decisions available, and give me a platform on which to come to defensible conclusions.
Writing all of this down allows me to think through things in a different way. I write for an hour straight, anything and everything that comes to mind, and look over it afterwards. A lot of it is nonsense, but there are always a few hidden jewels in there that help me unlock the answers to questions I grapple with.
So after all of my customer meetings, I sat back at my yellow pad, and began writing. The problem isn't ordering, exactly. Its delivery. If we can solve delivery, customers would flock to us. But why hasn't it been solved? Why isn't it working? What can I do about it? In the next post, I'll talk about the idea that writing led me to. We were obviously moving away from the world's easiest ordering app. Customers told me we have to. But where are we going? That's for next time, but until then,
Much love,
A
Throughout the course of building this business, writing has helped me develop ideas, draw out concerns, and record thoughts. I've filled a full yellow pad with notes and drawings, have at least 10 notes on my iPhone, a dozen on Evernote, and various scribbles and ideas all over my class notebook. Anything I think of, or question, or learn, I immediately write down. This helps in two ways: record keeping, and analysis.
"The palest ink is stronger than the best memory." Or something like that. I've heard it, but never has the saying been more applicable to my life than with this business. Here, where every detail matters, where every fact or quote or observation can lead to a light bulb going off, recording conversations I have with advisers and customers, making notes about competitors and the industry, and writing about the progress we've made from start to present all aggregates to help me understand what the business is today, where else it can go, and all of the alternatives to what we might be doing.
While record keeping helps me categorize and monitor my learnings and thoughts, writing also helps understand what I want and can do. Pros and cons lists have become a weekly tradition. I have a number of paths I can take? I make a pros and cons list. I'm deciding between accepting cash or using only cards? Pros and cons list. Deciding on a date to launch? Pros and cons list. These lists help put into perspective the many decisions available, and give me a platform on which to come to defensible conclusions.
Writing all of this down allows me to think through things in a different way. I write for an hour straight, anything and everything that comes to mind, and look over it afterwards. A lot of it is nonsense, but there are always a few hidden jewels in there that help me unlock the answers to questions I grapple with.
So after all of my customer meetings, I sat back at my yellow pad, and began writing. The problem isn't ordering, exactly. Its delivery. If we can solve delivery, customers would flock to us. But why hasn't it been solved? Why isn't it working? What can I do about it? In the next post, I'll talk about the idea that writing led me to. We were obviously moving away from the world's easiest ordering app. Customers told me we have to. But where are we going? That's for next time, but until then,
Much love,
A
Monday, April 13, 2015
What does the customer think?
You hear it over and over again, but you don't really believe its value until you do it for yourself. "Go talk to the customer," everybody tells you. And that's exactly what Jim Kitchen told me. "Go talk to customers, and then you'll find out if you've got something worth sticking with."
It makes sense. If you build something incredible- like the world's smallest bar stool, and are super excited about it, if you don't ask the sitters of the world if they would enjoy being closer to the ground, then you've really got nothing worth selling.
So, armed with my brilliant idea of easy, one push food ordering, I marched down to Franklin Street, the epicenter of Chapel Hill restaurants (epicenter being a dramatic, though accurate word, as Chapel Hill is essentially one small street with a dozen restaurants.)
Before I get to my first visit- just a quick note on what its like to "cold call" in person. Walking into an establishment and asking questions, often personal questions, is weird. And its annoying for all parties. The manager could be cleaning, or working, or taking a much deserved break. All of my friends are day drinking in the back yard, why can't I just join them? Doing this takes some initiative, but mostly it takes a big smile. Be excited to talk to your customers! People are fun, and these people in particular might be paying you a lot of money pretty soon. Do it with a smile, I tell myself, and anything is fun.
And here's how I do it. I walk into the restaurant, dressed casually, but cleanly, in jeans and a t-shirt. I've heard the term "first impression" so often that I have nightmares about giving off the wrong one. So I walk in, head held high and fancy Kenan-Flagler padfolio in hand. I try to give off a friendly but professional vibe. Not intimidating in a suit, not slobbish in athletic shorts. A healthy medium. I respectfully stand to the side until the cashier is finished speaking with customers, and ask for a manager. Often times, they announce themselves as such.
Whoever it is, I introduce myself, and tell them that I'm doing some research about restaurant delivery for a class. Its amazing how willing people are to give away information to students. Most say they've got a free ten minutes, and gladly answer my questions while continuing to serve customers. I'm as polite as a good southern boy might be, realizing they're doing me a huge favor. I let them talk much more than I do- you won't get any useful stuff by constantly asking questions. Just prod and poke and nudge them along, smiling, allowing pauses, and let them say all that they might want to say. Immediately after leaving each restaurant, I write down the manager's name and description, and all of the information I can remember about them. And I try to eat at their places often enough so that they begin to recognize me, and even know me by name. The better the relationship is, and the more they like you, the happier they will be to give you information and, ideally, become a customer. Now back to my first restaurant stop.
I walked into my first stop, Krispy Kreme...got a doughnut, and went home to take a nap. Just kidding. I walked in ready to pitch my brilliant idea- what if ANYBODY can order either a dozen chocolate doughnuts or a dozen glazed doughnuts with the click of a button! I'm a genius!! What would it take? What would you want? What would we have to provide you with? Ready with a list of a dozen more operational questions, I'm excited for his response.
Right away, I get a "I don't think we'd be very interested in that. Delivery sounds like it could be pretty great, if we didn't need to run it ourselves, but I think we would want all of our options." Well, okay. At least he talked to me. I walk out, take a few notes, and move on to my next victim: Time Out.
An establishment as old as Chapel Hill itself (again, dramatic, but they're undoubtedly a Chapel Hill institution), Time Out is the 24 hours biscuit and southern cooking fast food joint that's been serving drunk students for decades. I walk in with the same questions, but the conversation switches almost immediately away from my easy ordering idea, to delivery. He didn't seem at all excited about the idea, but very willingly told me about their current delivery system.
A company called ChowNow built out an app for them, for a monthly fee, that allows mobile ordering. I check it out, and the app looks great! Clearly its done by professionals with an eye for design and expertise in restaurant ordering. The only problem is, it doesn't provide delivery drivers. The owner Eddie explains to me that when an order gets placed, he calls an Uber or a taxi, and asks them to come pick up the food, and deliver it to the customer.
It seems like a complicated, annoying, and potentially expensive process to me, one that can definitely be simplified. A few more stops to Franklin Street restaurants, and it dawns on me- the problem isn't ordering...its delivery!
All of these restaurants understand the value of delivery, but so many of them are fed up with the current available options. Each restaurant manager I speak to, though I intended the conversation to take a very different route, tells me all about how much doing delivery sucks, though it continues to support up to 50% of the business.
Over time, I divide up restaurants into three fields: those that run their own delivery, those that use a third party, and those that do not have any delivery at all. Each type of restaurant, it appears, has an issue. Managing drivers is annoying and expensive. Third parties are expensive, and often do not have the customer service expected of them. And if you don't run delivery at all, you're losing out some some enormous potential profits.
And so, our first pivot. Perhaps fun, easy ordering isn't the right way to go. Perhaps, that is the world's tiniest bar stool. Customers have spoken- the problem isn't ordering, its delivery. In the next post, I'll talk about all of the writing I did about the idea, and how much that helped me.
Much love,
A
It makes sense. If you build something incredible- like the world's smallest bar stool, and are super excited about it, if you don't ask the sitters of the world if they would enjoy being closer to the ground, then you've really got nothing worth selling.
So, armed with my brilliant idea of easy, one push food ordering, I marched down to Franklin Street, the epicenter of Chapel Hill restaurants (epicenter being a dramatic, though accurate word, as Chapel Hill is essentially one small street with a dozen restaurants.)
Before I get to my first visit- just a quick note on what its like to "cold call" in person. Walking into an establishment and asking questions, often personal questions, is weird. And its annoying for all parties. The manager could be cleaning, or working, or taking a much deserved break. All of my friends are day drinking in the back yard, why can't I just join them? Doing this takes some initiative, but mostly it takes a big smile. Be excited to talk to your customers! People are fun, and these people in particular might be paying you a lot of money pretty soon. Do it with a smile, I tell myself, and anything is fun.
And here's how I do it. I walk into the restaurant, dressed casually, but cleanly, in jeans and a t-shirt. I've heard the term "first impression" so often that I have nightmares about giving off the wrong one. So I walk in, head held high and fancy Kenan-Flagler padfolio in hand. I try to give off a friendly but professional vibe. Not intimidating in a suit, not slobbish in athletic shorts. A healthy medium. I respectfully stand to the side until the cashier is finished speaking with customers, and ask for a manager. Often times, they announce themselves as such.
Whoever it is, I introduce myself, and tell them that I'm doing some research about restaurant delivery for a class. Its amazing how willing people are to give away information to students. Most say they've got a free ten minutes, and gladly answer my questions while continuing to serve customers. I'm as polite as a good southern boy might be, realizing they're doing me a huge favor. I let them talk much more than I do- you won't get any useful stuff by constantly asking questions. Just prod and poke and nudge them along, smiling, allowing pauses, and let them say all that they might want to say. Immediately after leaving each restaurant, I write down the manager's name and description, and all of the information I can remember about them. And I try to eat at their places often enough so that they begin to recognize me, and even know me by name. The better the relationship is, and the more they like you, the happier they will be to give you information and, ideally, become a customer. Now back to my first restaurant stop.
I walked into my first stop, Krispy Kreme...got a doughnut, and went home to take a nap. Just kidding. I walked in ready to pitch my brilliant idea- what if ANYBODY can order either a dozen chocolate doughnuts or a dozen glazed doughnuts with the click of a button! I'm a genius!! What would it take? What would you want? What would we have to provide you with? Ready with a list of a dozen more operational questions, I'm excited for his response.
Right away, I get a "I don't think we'd be very interested in that. Delivery sounds like it could be pretty great, if we didn't need to run it ourselves, but I think we would want all of our options." Well, okay. At least he talked to me. I walk out, take a few notes, and move on to my next victim: Time Out.
An establishment as old as Chapel Hill itself (again, dramatic, but they're undoubtedly a Chapel Hill institution), Time Out is the 24 hours biscuit and southern cooking fast food joint that's been serving drunk students for decades. I walk in with the same questions, but the conversation switches almost immediately away from my easy ordering idea, to delivery. He didn't seem at all excited about the idea, but very willingly told me about their current delivery system.
A company called ChowNow built out an app for them, for a monthly fee, that allows mobile ordering. I check it out, and the app looks great! Clearly its done by professionals with an eye for design and expertise in restaurant ordering. The only problem is, it doesn't provide delivery drivers. The owner Eddie explains to me that when an order gets placed, he calls an Uber or a taxi, and asks them to come pick up the food, and deliver it to the customer.
It seems like a complicated, annoying, and potentially expensive process to me, one that can definitely be simplified. A few more stops to Franklin Street restaurants, and it dawns on me- the problem isn't ordering...its delivery!
All of these restaurants understand the value of delivery, but so many of them are fed up with the current available options. Each restaurant manager I speak to, though I intended the conversation to take a very different route, tells me all about how much doing delivery sucks, though it continues to support up to 50% of the business.
Over time, I divide up restaurants into three fields: those that run their own delivery, those that use a third party, and those that do not have any delivery at all. Each type of restaurant, it appears, has an issue. Managing drivers is annoying and expensive. Third parties are expensive, and often do not have the customer service expected of them. And if you don't run delivery at all, you're losing out some some enormous potential profits.
And so, our first pivot. Perhaps fun, easy ordering isn't the right way to go. Perhaps, that is the world's tiniest bar stool. Customers have spoken- the problem isn't ordering, its delivery. In the next post, I'll talk about all of the writing I did about the idea, and how much that helped me.
Much love,
A
Sunday, April 12, 2015
The First Idea
Scrolling through Facebook one day over the summer, I saw an advertisement for an app called "Push for Pizza." A funny video following the thought process of a group of lazy, stoner friends who wanted an easy way to order pizza got me excited. Wouldn't it be fun to press a button- just one button- and order food? Avoid the annoying phone call to a restaurant, or dilemmas of scrolling through a website with 60 restaurant options, each with dozens of items on the menu? Sure it would.
So we wanted to do the same. Lets make delivery fun, and lets make it easy. The same "one click ordering" that Push for Pizza promoted, combined with vibrant colors, cool prizes redeemable by loyalty points, and surprise free gifts would make our app the most popular tool for ordering, ever. We can even expand! After connecting to your favorite local pizza places, we can have a tab for the best sandwich spots (with just two options for your ordering convenience, of course), your favorite coffee shop (choose between black or two sugars only), and a dozen other establishments. We were thrilled!
We spent a few weeks talking about it, excited. How do we make ordering fun? What would it look like? I'd stay up late, drawing preliminary wire-frames, designing the future of our app. What would be the process, what page would the pizzas be on. How do we make this the easier process EVER.
And then we pitched our idea for the first time. The first person to hear it was Jim Kitchen, founder of 1789 Venture Lab, and one of the heavy hitters of UNC entrepreneurship. And, though I'm confident our excitement for the idea was palpable, Jim frowned. "I don't know if delivery needs to be any more fun than it already is. I don't know if I'm annoyed by the ordering process. I honestly don't think this sounds like something that would be solving any of my problems."
Well, a little disappointing. But what does this guy know? Nothing! We don't need him to tell us its a good idea, we know it is! "Go talk to customers," Jim said. A big promoter of Lean Start up methodology, that was Jim's answer to everything. Talk to customers, and everything will become clear.
So I went out there, and started talking to restaurants. But we'll save that for the next post. I'll tell you about what its like to talk to a customer, how I prepared, what I learned, and how the idea changed. Until next time!
Much love,
A
So we wanted to do the same. Lets make delivery fun, and lets make it easy. The same "one click ordering" that Push for Pizza promoted, combined with vibrant colors, cool prizes redeemable by loyalty points, and surprise free gifts would make our app the most popular tool for ordering, ever. We can even expand! After connecting to your favorite local pizza places, we can have a tab for the best sandwich spots (with just two options for your ordering convenience, of course), your favorite coffee shop (choose between black or two sugars only), and a dozen other establishments. We were thrilled!
We spent a few weeks talking about it, excited. How do we make ordering fun? What would it look like? I'd stay up late, drawing preliminary wire-frames, designing the future of our app. What would be the process, what page would the pizzas be on. How do we make this the easier process EVER.
And then we pitched our idea for the first time. The first person to hear it was Jim Kitchen, founder of 1789 Venture Lab, and one of the heavy hitters of UNC entrepreneurship. And, though I'm confident our excitement for the idea was palpable, Jim frowned. "I don't know if delivery needs to be any more fun than it already is. I don't know if I'm annoyed by the ordering process. I honestly don't think this sounds like something that would be solving any of my problems."
Well, a little disappointing. But what does this guy know? Nothing! We don't need him to tell us its a good idea, we know it is! "Go talk to customers," Jim said. A big promoter of Lean Start up methodology, that was Jim's answer to everything. Talk to customers, and everything will become clear.
So I went out there, and started talking to restaurants. But we'll save that for the next post. I'll tell you about what its like to talk to a customer, how I prepared, what I learned, and how the idea changed. Until next time!
Much love,
A
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Lets start at the beginning
Okay, we're going to give this another shot. I am starting a company, and have been working hard on it for over eight months. We've hit some bumps, had some revelations, made a few pivots, and are driving towards an impending product launch. And throughout, though I promised myself I would, I have done a terrible job in documenting it.
This is about to change.
I will use this blog to document what has been happening, my thought process around decisions, and my struggles and successes in entrepreneurship. I hope to be able to read over all of this in a years time, and see how far we've come. I will be as honest as I can, to allow anyone reading (and my future self) transparent insight into what it takes to start a company.
Like I mentioned, I've been working on this for a while. So the first few posts are going to be about catching up. A lot will be from memory, but I will draw on the two notebooks full of notes that I have made over this time, and will relate it all as best I can. Hopefully, it won't take long to catch up.
Here it goes.
In August 2014, GLOBE sat down for our first class with Ted Zoller and Chris Mumford: Global Entrepreneurship. GLOBE, a program I will be sure to dedicate a few future posts to, is a tri-continental exchange program, uniting students from three of the world's top business schools: Kenan-Flagler, Copenhagen Business School, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong. These are some of the most interesting, passionate, brilliant individuals I have ever had the pleasure of working with, and I am honored to call them my best friends.
That said, as most driven driven business students head in the direction of financial, consulting, and corporate powerhouses, entrepreneurship is not really on anyone's mind as a viable, or even a relevant, career option. That makes for a very interesting dynamic in a six credit course dedicated to the subject.
Our big project of the semester was to identify a problem, devise a solution, and do all the work involved to "start the company." I put that in quotations because in the context of a class, as any college student would tell you, the potential for real-world tangible results usually ends up quenched by the disappointing emphasis on a grade-centered educational experience and the unfortunate schism between class and the real world.
We were divided into teams, and put to work. I have to take a moment and say very honestly that if it wasn't for the engaged and awesome team I was lucky enough to be put with, I may never have gone further than the standard toe-dip into the entrepreneurship pool. Our team of five was so dedicated, so excited to work together, that we really turned this from a class-project into a reality, and I am so grateful to my four team members.
From CBS, the ever-smiley Victoria Berg and the brilliantly objective Oliver Soe. From CUHK, the utility player of the decade, Annie Ma. And from UNC, my partner for the last eight months, May Chang.
We'll stop here for now. In the next post, I'll talk about our first idea, where it came from, and our excitement around what may have been the worst business idea ever. See you soon!
Much love,
A
This is about to change.
I will use this blog to document what has been happening, my thought process around decisions, and my struggles and successes in entrepreneurship. I hope to be able to read over all of this in a years time, and see how far we've come. I will be as honest as I can, to allow anyone reading (and my future self) transparent insight into what it takes to start a company.
Like I mentioned, I've been working on this for a while. So the first few posts are going to be about catching up. A lot will be from memory, but I will draw on the two notebooks full of notes that I have made over this time, and will relate it all as best I can. Hopefully, it won't take long to catch up.
Here it goes.
In August 2014, GLOBE sat down for our first class with Ted Zoller and Chris Mumford: Global Entrepreneurship. GLOBE, a program I will be sure to dedicate a few future posts to, is a tri-continental exchange program, uniting students from three of the world's top business schools: Kenan-Flagler, Copenhagen Business School, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong. These are some of the most interesting, passionate, brilliant individuals I have ever had the pleasure of working with, and I am honored to call them my best friends.
That said, as most driven driven business students head in the direction of financial, consulting, and corporate powerhouses, entrepreneurship is not really on anyone's mind as a viable, or even a relevant, career option. That makes for a very interesting dynamic in a six credit course dedicated to the subject.
Our big project of the semester was to identify a problem, devise a solution, and do all the work involved to "start the company." I put that in quotations because in the context of a class, as any college student would tell you, the potential for real-world tangible results usually ends up quenched by the disappointing emphasis on a grade-centered educational experience and the unfortunate schism between class and the real world.
We were divided into teams, and put to work. I have to take a moment and say very honestly that if it wasn't for the engaged and awesome team I was lucky enough to be put with, I may never have gone further than the standard toe-dip into the entrepreneurship pool. Our team of five was so dedicated, so excited to work together, that we really turned this from a class-project into a reality, and I am so grateful to my four team members.
From CBS, the ever-smiley Victoria Berg and the brilliantly objective Oliver Soe. From CUHK, the utility player of the decade, Annie Ma. And from UNC, my partner for the last eight months, May Chang.
We'll stop here for now. In the next post, I'll talk about our first idea, where it came from, and our excitement around what may have been the worst business idea ever. See you soon!
Much love,
A
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