There is a bar on 6th street in Austin that was genuine Irish beer and food. They even had humble pie. Some server who was from Ireland that insisted the food (and beer, obv) was pretty legit.

Now if you are going to go all traditional Chinese, then there's likely little market for the general population.

With that said, opening up a restaurant or bar without years of proper background is about the dumbest business idea ever, made worse because of how cliche it is.

In Utah there are a couple competing local chains for drive thru soda. They consider it "mixology" by soda+syrup pumps. Mormons drink a lot of soda, high margin, low labor costs, so it works. My idea is sweet tea drive thru in the south.

Question for anyone who buys coffee daily:

Does your local coffee shop also sell herbal tea?

From the UK - yes, huge range of herbal teas.

Is that normal for most coffee shops there?

Every non-corp coffee shop I've been in has a decent selection of herbal teas (USA).

A decentralized warehousing and distribution network that turns homeowners into shippers by utilizing their free time and empty space. Customers mail packages to someone within the intended recipients radius, who forwards the package for delivery or stores it for pickup.

Not necessarily, a good UK coffee shop will offer probably 2-3 traditional teas (Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Rooibos etc.) and maybe 3 or 4 fruit teas.

I've realized that there are lots of small businesses out there that are run and staffed by people that are, I guess I'll say, technology averse. This fact leads to them performing a bunch of necessary tasks (billing, payroll, tracking, proposals, dispatch, etc.) essentially by hand, each of these tasks is done individually and every day business involves a lot of printing forms out and walking them around the building.

My idea would be to write software that would do all of these tasks for them. I know that simple software (hell even some excel spreadsheets) would result in a few of the companies I've worked for literally saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I would try to start by selling this to people I know, and then hopefully branch out from there. Software like this already exists, for sure, but I've seen these companies buy software (spending thousands) and then never use it because it's too complicated for them. So the focus would be on making sure it's easy enough to use that anyone could use it.

That software exists, but like you said, those people are tech averse.


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Honestly, if those people can’t figure out quick books, you don’t stand a chance


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This is interesting, kindof a wikishipping.

Problem is inventor loss - theft, etc. Have to certify the wikishipping person. But that can be overcome in a similar way to how we have gotten used to uber, etc. We used to think we need the large cab company to be responsible and liable for verifying the cab driver isn't going to harm us. So, I guess this could work. Make your spare bedroom or garage into a warehouse.

This is just, be better at Salesforce's job than Salesforce.

Am I doing this right?

Edit: Or SAP or Oracle.

A high quality sexual lubricant that has glitter in it. Women would choose this over other brands for sheer shiny factor. They would enjoy covering their partner in glitter I'm sure. Make it exclusive to target or some such to make it even more desirable.

^ Let me guess the name, ?

Has there ever been a successful crowdsourced project to arise from bfi posters?

Where is the value in this, if customer already has to ship a package and pay regular shipping cost? Why bother shipping to 50 Broad St instead of directly to 100 Broad St?

Amazon flex delivery has something interesting, where their contractors go to their warehouse, pick up packages, and deliver them to ultimate destinations. If it works, I bet they will try to expand it to provide shipping services to non-Amazon sales.

There's a million big and small companies trying to modernize small businesses - including myself - and each and every one of them promises to be "so easy anyone can use it."

For starters you don't have to give out your address, wonder where your package is, or worry about your goods getting stolen after delivery. Privacy and security solved to a certain extent. Shipping cost would hypothetically be lowered since the local shipper is in your immediate area and gets bulk rates, so you'd live close enough not to have to ship to them. Pricing not an issue. It's amazon warehousing and distribution decentralized through the power of the neighborhood.

Actually it solves none of those things. But its blockchain shipping, so its worth $2billion

Ship things to your local associate or drop off things to be shipped. They hold for you to pickup or deliver on your schedule. Its like the post office or UPS store, but run out of the neighbors house. Would love for you to explain how it does not solve any of those things mentioned. If I could just drop packages off at my neighbors instead of scrambling to the post office or UPS every time I'd pay for that convenience.

Fyi USPS and UPS will both pick up from your home negating the need to ever scramble to the post office. Unless I'm totally misunderstanding what you're trying to accomplish, the only thing you're doing is adding an extra step in the shipping process which will increase cost.

The post office isn't exactly a model of innovation. Sure they or other carriers will pickup, but that's on their schedule. There's friction there too. Besides, who can get to you faster, them or a neighbor? And shipping cost would presumably go down since your packages would be bundled with the rest of the neighborhood for a reduction. You could get a po box for security, but they don't hold certain packages and again the convenience factor. There would be an added cost from making sure your packages are only delivered when you're there to receive them, but the retail price to ship would be lower so it should balance out.

The price to ship would not go down, it would go up. Your neighbor couldn't possibly ship enough to get a substantial discount on shipping cost. His discount wouldn't begin to cover his overhead let alone make the process cheaper.

What you're proposing already exists and it's not cheaper. There are already "Mailboxes+" or private pack and ship places in every neighborhood large enough to support them. They're usually run out of a strip mall because zoning, in any town large enough to create demand, specifically prohibits running this type of business out of your home because no one wants to live next door to a neighbor w/ a steady flow of cars coming and going 12 hrs per day.

Carriers will pickup on your schedule for a small fee. USPS will pickup next day, 6 days per week, for free. Anytime you add an additional middleman into the process the price is going to go up not down.

It's not just your neighbors volume, its the network of neighborhood associates that get a reduced rate directly with the carriers.

Package forwarding and po boxes exist, something I mentioned above. But there's friction that can be eliminated. The example you give about all the traffic is irrelevant because the neighborhood associate only serves the neighborhood so no extra traffic.

It doesn't add a new middleman, just reorganizes the process to be more convenient and efficient.

OK, let's work backwards.

Why would I want random people knocking on my door at all hours to pick up their packages they had delivered to my place? Do you really think that people will do that for the hypothetical pennies that bulk shipping will supposedly provide? (Which it won't, because it's not going to be bulk shipping if it's decentralized neighborhood small scale operators.)

I was thinking of starting an ICO thread, but I've yet to see an ICO that isn't living in the dream world.

dc, they're not rando's just showing up whenever, it's your neighbors. They wouldn't just show up, they'd get some kind of notification that the package was ready for pickup or dropoff and see the schedule of times available. Monetization would be more than pennies on the dollar. Where's the money going to go from replacing the expendable drivers, customer service and warehouse personnel? $ is there to be made from convenience and efficiency.