[Question] How to do Business?

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LittleSin

LittleSin

So, about a month or so ago I went to the Christmas Parade. On the way back I took a side street to avoid the large crowd and came across Belbins grocery.

Everyone talks about what a fantastic store Belbins is so I decided to go in to pick up a bottle of water and was pleased to find that the hype was deserved. It was small store, packed with the essentials and fresh baked goods. The staff was friendly and eager to help. I paid for my water and snatched up their flyer on the way out the door.

It was flipping through this flyer that i discovered two things: One, You could order your groceries by phone or on line for pick up. Two, For an additional charge they would deliver groceries.

I had heard of other places doing this before but I hadn't been aware of any place in the city doing it! I asked my townie friends and they said its the best service ever. Apparently its very popular with the old folks as well.

Here's where my thinking started kicking in. I live outside the Belbins service area. I live amongst the middle class to the super-redonkulously rich. Most of home are young mothers, busy business folk or retirees.

I think this would be an excellent business model to adopt in my area...I just have no idea where to start with it.

So, any ideas?
 
strawman

strawman

Find a customer.
Start delivering their groceries.
Lather, rinse, repeat.

The one thing I'll caution you against first is do NOT set your price too low. You can always lower your price, offer coupons, "regular customer deals", etc, but you can't easily raise it, and you might be surprised at how little you make if you price it at what you think is a "reasonable" price point. Chances are good you look for good deals and don't spend much for extra services - you are not your target customer. You'll be helping customers who will find value in your service, and they will pay a lot more than you or your friends would.

Don't worry too much about forming an LLC, or corporation yet. Get a few regular customers, let it spread through word of mouth, see if the store will post your business flyers/cards, and when you start making more than a few hundred a month then look into what your state requires for businesses. You can start reading up on it now if you want to stay ahead of the curve, but honestly you can sort most of that out after a few months (don't wait years, of course) if things really do take off. If things don't take off, you won't be out the money and time it would have taken to do it officially. There are generally no legal repercussions to starting and running a business without a license as long as the business is making less than $600/year and has no employees other than yourself or your family.

Just do it.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
If you get a customer that starts asking for you to deliver dozens of boxes of sudafed each week you probably shouldn't do it.

It might be a good idea to talk to the local grocery chains you are planning on servicing as well. I doubt they will mind your service because it's not a form of profit for them, it simply gives them better access to customers, and having a relationship with them could be helpful.

Beyond that talk with some of the meals on wheels charities. Explain your business and ask if their clients would be interested.

Then maybe talk to local churches or knights of columbus etc for the same purpose. Explain your service and say that if they have any members of their congregation that could use a care-package home delivery from time to time you can help them sort that out.

In both cases your price needs to be low, I would suggest negotiating them on a case by case basis. You do not want to come across like you are exploiting charitable institutions. In fact you probably will only be making a hair above operating costs. The real profit to you is that this will give you a very large word of mouth advertising start that can then be used to access the non-charitable "lazy" clientelle that you can charge more.

Trust me, getting your name at a handful of Sunday services is fantastic advertising.

Edit: One other point which is more for later on is that this kind of business is all about logistics. If you've ever waited tables you'll know that consolidating is a huge issue, same thing here. You need to be hitting multiple houses and multiple deliveries in each go to justify this. It's a basic travelling salesman problem. But that's more for later.
 
Emrys

Emrys

We're starting up something like this on the military base, set to go live in January. If you want, PM me and we can swap ideas.
 
RoboKomodo

RoboKomodo

LS, knowing the demographic in Paradise, I think it's a great idea. I'll be moving there after my wedding at the end of the month, and I know where all the grocery stores are in the area, and none of them (save one - and it's a discount grocery store) are really close. I think a lot of people in Paradise would go for home delivery instead of driving 20 minutes (out to CBS or Mt. Pearl) to the closest supermarket. There's a fair number of older people who might not be able to get out and lots of new executive homes being built all the time.

I'll second what Necronic says. Contact the community groups and churches. Then get private clientele and bleed them dry.
 
LittleSin

LittleSin

Thanks for all the advice so for guys!

I feel a bit odd contacting religious groups as I am not, well, very religious and it feels a tad exploitive but I guess that's business, right?

I'm still curious about many things. My end goal is to, in the future, open my own small shop. In the mean time I need to work out a few things. Like, do I choose one grocery store and go there faithfully? How much do I charge for this service? How wide would my service area be?

It's times like this that I wish I went to school in stead of being a hispter art person.
 
Gared

Gared

Don't think of it as exploitative, just think of it as being a place where you can advertise a service that at least some of their members could probably really use. Whether you're religious or not doesn't really enter in to the picture, because at the end of the day we're all people and that should (IMHO) come first. Churches and community centers are just a good way to find elderly, down on their luck, or supremely busy people who might need a little extra support and maybe they could really use a service like yours.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
It's really not exploitative if you aren't making much money off of it. It's just a service that they may have a need for. If they don't they don't.

Just make sure you are charging them very little.

Also with regards to your personal beliefs I think it's time to learn an important lesson in business. You're beliefs don't matter. If they did you would be running a church, not a business.
 
Officer_Charon

Officer_Charon

Hang on...

this is how the Old Ones take over? Via delivery groceries? :Leyla:

Seriously though, after sounding out how much possible business you might have, see if your grocers do any kind of deals for people buying in bulk.

I suppose it wouldn't be unheard of...
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
Actually I doubt you could get any discounts. Grocery stores operate on very slim margins (2-3%). Flat discounts wouldn't make any sense to them.

However, what you can do is have an easy way to figure out what their best overstock/sale deals are. If you have people that give you leeway on purchasing (like "hey put together a 200$ grocery care package) you can focus on their best sales and get more 'bang for the buck' as it were. A good relationship with a manager could help make that easier, like he tells you what the best deals in the store are on a given day.
 
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