Thursday, February 6, 2020

Solving the Problem


The opportunity that I am exploiting is as follows:

The restaurant industry currently lacks a good solution to its bags for customers, whether it be takeout or delivery. The ideal bag would be light, reusable, waterproof (to prevent spills or leaks), and insulated enough to keep food hot and fresh in transit. The current solution of paper/plastic bags and cardboard boxes does a measly job at all of them.

How I will set about solving this problem with a product/service:

My first line of business would be to develop a low-cost model that fits the criteria of being light, reusable, waterproof and providing good insulation. This could potentially require some prototyping and development or collaboration with a producer of bags for commercial use. 

Additionally, I could even try to find or source some myself from places online and distribute them as such, but such an option would be hard since not much exists out there that fits my criteria yet.

                In regards to the bags, I could produce these bags in a variety of sizes: small, medium, large, extra large so as to give users maximum flexibility and utility. This would also help to deepen my product mix. The bags would also ideally have some form of a low cost zipper/seal on top to further insulate the food.

                In time, I would then expand into other avenues like better boxes for pizza, better boxes for catering, and things of the such so as to broaden my product mix. However, these would be more specialized products for later on down the road.

                I would start to assess interest that restaurants would have in this product once I had an idea on pricing so that I could pitch it to them. In addition, I could also sell directly to the restaurant-goers if I devised some form of an ecommerce system down the road. However, this would be for later.

                In addition, I could eventually target my products to delivery services like Uber Eats and Bitesquad to help garner additional business.

2 comments:

  1. Hi John!
    Great work again, you very clearly showed how you would go about solving the problem your previously analyzed by producing high quality, reusable takeout bags. I honestly think your idea could work, but I think you might want to consider shifting your markets to more artisanal restaurants, as the reusable "green" aspect would probably appeal to them more, and their business model could probably more easily shift to account for this additional distribution cost than could a more well known fast food chain. Other than that, maybe offering restaurants the ability to logo their bags would be a good idea, but I don't know how that would affect overall cost. Great work as always!

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  2. Hi John. Again, you did a great job on this post. You were once again very thorough in your explanation of your idea. I think pitching your idea to food delivery services like Doordash and Bitesquad would be an excellent idea and definitely open up your customer base. However, you would also have to being able to personalize your takeout bags for restaurants and such. For example, Cheesecake Factory to-go bags have their logo on the outside. Nonetheless, great post!

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