Cooking business

Want to create a pizza business Veeky Forums. It has been a pretty interesting experience so far.

Have you ever wanted to make your business in the field of cooking? How did it go? What would it be about if you were to create one?

(here's a poll if you want to help out: goo gl/8Va68k - a dot between 'goo' and 'gl', appreciate ya)

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>pizza business

Markets over saturated, unless you are going to make a pizza that gives you a blow job your restraunt will fail m8

This. I live in upstate ny and there couldn't be more pizza places per capita anywhere else except NYC. Gotta come up with something better than that

We are in a pretty small town where the market is not dense at all so we are hoping to make use of that.

The blowjobs are a good idea ;^)

We rely on the addition of a few functionalities:
-the orders can be done via a chat bot like the ones of kik connected via messenger
-the clients can make the pizza themselves (the exact ingredients and the exact place of each ingredient on the pizza base)
-all products are rateable and feedback can be given on them
-the delivery can be monitored on an online map so the customer knows where we are at all times

>orders via kik
Everybody does online ordering now
>clients make pizza
Why order out?
>product rateable
Yelp already did that
>monitored delivery
Still won't make your food arrive sooner

quickest way to go broke is open a food or food related business.

Our long term goal is not what we are doing now.
We want to get results which we can show to the other pizza places in the town.
With the results we can hopefully persuade them to join us in one big community.

The idea is to combine all the pizza places into one big platform so that the customer can choose a product based on its quality instead of the brand which makes the pizza (because here the two do not go hand in hand here).

Domino's has literally all this functionality. Even the smallest town pizza places do online ordering and shit.

I have the feeling that it is a risk as well, but still think we can succeed.
Are you saying this based on experience?

Yeah, there are quite a few similar platforms, foodpanda is also similar.

The thing is that neither of them operate in our town and most pizza places here don't even have sites (we are from Vratsa, Bulgaria - under 50k people).

Honestly if you're serious about this then you need to go for quality or value. Make a damn good pizza (or wings or dinners) that few can compete with, or make your shit cheaper than most. All night delivery in a college town or larger city might help, but there's still a high probability of failure in this. You need to find a niche and pizza places are as common as assholes

Yeah that's what I just said

Thanks!
The long term plan (where we combine all the pizza places under our platform which takes all orders in the town) is that the price for our customers remains unchanged (we will make revenue from the pizza places which will pay a small monthly tax in order to be on our platform) while they can find the product best suited for their taste easily thus increasing quality.

Basically we want to increase quality while maintaining the same price for the customers.

Would anyone go to a restaurant that has an indoor bar but outside has like 5-7 firepits and you could pay for things like hotdogs and marshmallows? I've always had this idea for a restaurant but I don't know if other people would like it

So you want to make an online ordering platform like justeat, but only for one type of takeout in one town? That doesn't make any sense as a business.

>while they can find the product best suited for their taste easily thus increasing quality.

Literally nothing stops anyone from doing that now. People buy the pizza they want.

You know there's platforms like this already in place (grubhub). I don't know your country or the services they have there but everything you're saying is pretty common practice where I'm from.

Sounds cool, but I don't know how you would promote it (maybe the fact that it is unique will give it enough publicity).
Also I feel like you could focus only on the fire pits since it is quite a unique idea and doing something parallel to it would only take away from its charm (That is if the indoor restaurant is just a normal one. What do you plan to sell in it?).

It's clear from the responses so far that there are some potential pitfalls and a lot of risk involved. Better play it safe and just stay home in your basement jerking off to pillows with cartoons on them

You have the start of an idea there. Keeping those fires lit and burning all night could get expensive in terms of wood and manpower keeping those fires going all night. And also hotdogs and marshmallows? Who would be willing to pay enough for those to keep the lights on? Why not do something like a weekly pig roast/bonfire type deal on Friday and Saturday nights and run a standard bbq place the rest of the week?

We don't have justeat in our country but from what I saw about it - you are right.

We are looking to specialize in one type of takeout only for now so we can get really good at it so we can make a name for ourselves and then spread to other food items.

We feel like our choices when it comes to products are limited and the people here are more likely to bet on the things they have already tasted and are less willing to experiment. So we want to give them an incentive and a way to stimulate experimentation (so they can truly get what they want).

I like this idea thanks

Maybe it could be like a pool table or ping pong table or hookah bar where you basically buy a table and pay to play. Basically buy a fire place and dude comes out and makes the fire. This way you only use wood product when it's paid for so there's no waste.

Yeah, in the other countries there are many services similar to ours.
In our country this whole thing is relatively niche so we want to use it while it still is (for example almost none of the big platforms previously mentioned operate in any of the towns in our country except Domino's which operated in the 2 biggest cities only).

>hookah bar
I wish this meme would die. No one in America with money is interested in sharing a public suck pipe. And if they want a hookah they can just buy one to try it

Yeah but people regularly do this in their own backyards you want them to get an experience they wouldn't otherwise get. I mean I could see this in a city type environment where they couldn't normally do this, but where would you find the space to do this as well

Well, there are many risky things in life - doesn't mean we shouldn't try them :)
Also the whole pizza thing and the basement part aren't mutually exclusive :^)

so in other words, it's literally Domino's except minus the multi-million-dollar ad campaigns and plus ten minutes to cook a goddamn pizza during dinner rush because some autist demanded a realistic picture of Master Chief rendered in pepperoni

i've got a Bic right here in my pocket, why don't you give me that $250k you want to set fire to and I'll take care of it for you

Hookah bars are popular

They also function as normal bars and restaurants during the day

Nice try flyover state

Well if you're starting small then I wouldn't even worry about the online stuff too much for now. Running a restaurant =/= running a successful online ordering hub. Once you get a profitable business going first, then maybe the other businesses will be willing to sign on to your online ordering platform. You're going in two different directions to start and your business needs a focus

So normal bars and restaurants that were already doing good business set up a hookah bar because plaid shirt mcbeard-oil the marketing guy convinced them. Doesn't prove they are popular

Hookah bars, attract quite a bit of attention here as well.
But if I had the money to buy one I would definitely just invite friends over instead of going to a public place same goes for the pit fires.

That would be more pragmatic. But most people aren't pragmatic and there is a customer base who are willing to pay for certain things. Girls like hookah bars, and many people enjoy the exclusivity of what it brings to the table. Being able to smoke indoors and feeling as though you're at a premium table. It's a fun thing to do once in a very long while. Usually more popular among younger people. But that's a draw you know? Which brings in more people.

Are you dense? Can you figure out why a place would become a hookah bar?

Makes sense, they just gotta find if they have an audience and if yes what exactly it is.
We are trying to do the same with the online surveys.
Asking people face to face on the streets is also a good option.

>it's an individual thinks they have a genius idea for a restaurant and ends up ruining their life through it eoisode

Have you ever even worked in a restaurant? Your ideas sound stupid and your business will almost certainly fail. If you're coming onto a Tuvan throat singing image board to ask autists for advice, you have already failed. Save your money and go into multi-level marketing, dumbfuck.

>girls like hookah bars
???

I mean maybe it's just my neighborhood but when I walk past them it's always a bunch of dudes in muscle shirts and not a single female in sight except maybe working at the hookah bar

It seems borderline gay, not that there's anything wrong with that

It can be worthwhile if you have some money to launder. Your competition is doing that and doesn't need to be profitable.

Thanks for all the recommendations and honest comments! Appreciate ya!

keep baking papa
youtube.com/watch?v=SKH8HUKVYn8

Work in a dominos, then open your own, or buy a franchise.

this idea defies any logic, by increasing cost for the actors in a market that is reacting harshly to change in cost for the producer, you will not increase quality and keep the price the same.
also it is very naive, wanting to do both, a restaurant and the onlineshop, you seem completely inexperienced in both areas and you will fail, because a platform like this costs big money to program and not a single other pizzashop will agree to be on your platform if you are a competitor with your own pizzaplace.
also you are all over the place, try formulating what it really is that you are planning and ill give you solid business advice, but from what i hear now you got nothing.
t: business advisor for gastronomy

dude, just make dank fucking pizza and the people will buy it

then figure out a way to beat Jimmy John's delivery speed without sacrificing the quality of the Za

Thanks! You are right - I didn't explain clearly.

Our plan is not to maintain a pizza place while trying to persuade other pizza places to join us. We plan to do 'our pizza place' just to test the assumptions of our business.

If we end up collecting enough data on the matter with online surveys only it will be great and we won't need to make a pizza place :)

So after collecting the data comes the real plan - we want to make an online platform which will include all the pizza places which pay a low monthly tax. The incentive for the pizza places enter the platform will be more business since we will be giving them more publicity (to the small ones - if the pizza places was already popular it will still have to keep up due to the arrival of a new advertisement medium and thus work with us). Also since putting all the pizza places and their products in one place will definitely promote the quality of the pizza instead of its reputation or the one of the brand it stays behind. The platform also gives the pizza places without an Internet medium a chance to have one and makes the finding of deliverers for said pizza places a lot easier

For the customer the incentive will be that they can see all the available products in the whole city and see what is liked and why it is liked, they can also avoid the awkwardness of talking to a nervous or apathetic employee (our bot will take their orders instead and will be able to answer all their questions on the pizza, the delivery and many different topics). Also the ability to create an absolutely custom pizza is pretty niche in our opinion (to the scale of making Master Chief out of salami - which opens the market to a whole different batch of customers, ones looking for the quirkiness of our pizzas). The GPS tracking of the deliveries is also a way of assuring the customer of the safety of the whole operation and giving him the sense of control - both will help us to create a trusty relationship with the customers.

So you just want to le disrupt the pizza market with a shitty aggregation app

Our goal is to make the customer experience much better even if that means disrupting the pizza businesses which make money solely on the name of their brand and not the quality of their product.

We agree that it sounds quite aggregated. As a solution to that we want to implement an all-in-one chat bot which contains all the functionalities and can be contacted via messenger as you would a normal user.

okay, ill formulate some questions which you should think about and answer.
also realize that in most parts of the world there are lots of these shops (in germany alone i can think of at least 7 middlemen for ordering food online)
>what advantage is there in opening a pizza place and a middleman-shop, opposing to just a shop (i think its 2 completely seperate businesses and should be treated as such)
>do you have the knowledge or the money for programing it (actual offers already?)
>do you have the knowledge of leading a restaurant, or are you spectacular at making pizza (businessplan/rough calculation?)
>why will the quality increase if the profitmargin reduces for the restaurants (just empirically speaking, the opposite is almost always true for middlemen onlineshops)
>do you think the restaurants will be willing to make your "customdesign" pizzas? (sounds like a ton of effort for no value)
>do you have the technology to automate the customdesign
>do you have a lawperson in your team(gpstracking, taxes,employees,...)
>do you think other restaurants would be willing to operate on the platform of an actual competitor (i definitely dont think so, one reason why you should drop the idea of doing both things)
>do you have the money for either one

in germany:
the shop: programming, legal counsel,design, support,frontend/backend, infrastructure incl bikes,gps,employees...
itll be about 150k€ to get a basic,buggy version online and youd spend at least 20k a month to have a working infrastructure
the restaurant would be a minimum of 60k setup for a streetsale 10qm store without seating

>Figure out how to make a pizza and cook it in under 30 seconds
>Don't sacrifice its quality

Thanks a lot!
Appreciate you taking the time out of you day to help us!

>what advantage is there in opening a pizza place and a middleman-shop, opposing to just a shop (i think its 2 completely separate businesses and should be treated as such)
We plan to open a makeshift pizza place just to test our assumption if we aren't satisfied with the feedback received. Ideally it won't happen. It isn't long term

>do you have the knowledge or the money for programing it (actual offers already?)
We have the knowledge to make most of the functionalities but not all (a professional will be hired).
We have spoken to a few existing businesses willing to integrate the platform into their business

>do you have the knowledge of leading a restaurant, or are you spectacular at making pizza (businessplan/rough calculation?)
Neither but have an acquaintance who leads a restaurant.

>why will the quality increase if the profitmargin reduces for the restaurants (just empirically speaking, the opposite is almost always true for middlemen onlineshops)
Since the service is rateable the good products will surface on top thus making the pizza places offer better quality.

>do you think the restaurants will be willing to make your "customdesign" pizzas? (sounds like a ton of effort for no value)
Most do but not to the extent that we described, meaning that the ones that do will be rewarded for undertaking the endeavour.

>do you have the technology to automate the customdesign
>do you have a lawperson in your team(gpstracking, taxes,employees,...)
Currently no, working on it.

>do you think other restaurants would be willing to operate on the platform of an actual competitor (i definitely dont think so, one reason why you should drop the idea of doing both things)
Since we will only be a platform promoting their businesses we won't be competing (our pizza place is only to test assumptions and will disappear after that).

>do you have the money for either one
We will rely on investors. We have an arranged date for presentation of the business.

1+7:i get what you are trying to do, but neither me nor your investors will think sinking multiples of 10k into a testrun, since the functionality of the onlineshop is not linked to a physical location at all. My suggestion: focus on the shop and approach local businesses straight away, with a fair transaction-fee based model there is nothing to loose for the existing pizzerias, thus theyll happily be part of it. You will definitely find a small restaurant that is willing to be the flagship for your "new" technologies, if you offer to maintain and install it free of charge.
2. get actual offers, programmers are a rare species and prices are high in the startup segment, dont forget design, sql, implementation of payment methods,...
3. as i said, drop the idea, but if you insist get him to commit, nothing else counts in the end
4. well let me just say you are wrong there, with rating bots, friends rating etc, ratings are not what they used to be, general rule of thumb is, profit margin gets smaller-->quality decrease/price increase
5.if youd have restaurant experience youd know that this is much to ask, and if you cant guarantee it for the customer it might not be smart offering it. here again, you have to get contractual agreements and should prolly try it out with a flagship store. in a bus rush, no cook will fiddle with pretty pictures on a pizza
6.get a lawyer involved,what you want to do requires a lot, and i mean a lot of legal work.
8.As someone with experience with investors, i can tell you, focus focus focus.
Your idea is all over the place. drop the physical location, get agreements with local business+surveydata, do the entire calculation, check branding and get a lawyer to check doability, ideally do the design+naming out of your own pocket.
Thats the only way i might be interested, and thatll hold true for most investors (which im not).
If they get the feeling you are all over the place its an immediate no.

how much of an investment is this thing going to take do you think?

We honestly have close to no idea since most of the services we will require are questionable (additional coders, designers etc.) - optimistically speaking 2000 - 5000 in order to not be the top dog on the market but to still have some loyal customers.

You don't have a few thousand bucks laying around?

Thank you yet again, you gave us invaluable feedback!

Focus will be our main priority.

By the way I am interested, what do you work on exactly?
And are you in a company or are you a freelancer?

We have some saved up and are willing to invest them in the idea but only when we have got the support of a few people who know the field really well.

What's with this guy wearing a suit all the time...

>nice trips

worked in fine dining for some time, then studied business and opened a consultancy for gastro

and one last advice, the minimum requirement for getting money from anybody is doing exact calculations, it will also help you a lot to understand the extent of what you are planning, and optimism has no place in this calculation, be realistic.
>estimated programming hours x hourly pay
>estimated lawyer hours x hourly pay
>hardware cost
>your own time invested x hourly pay
...
you will probably be shocked about how much money you will be asking for in the end.
but you have to own this number in the presentation, back it by calculations, and present a business opportunity instead of asking for money.
nobody gives money to airheads, you wouldnt either. you give money to someone because you feel he thought it through and because it seems like a legit opportunity. so status quo, cost, and chances are necessary parts of a presentation.
maybe start doing a businessplan first, im sure youll find examples on google. im out now, gl