I’m curious why would VC fund this. It will only be as scalable as restaurants are in terms of developing a special menu, instructions and packaging. What is the 100x business model here?
Well, we currently have the special menus because it's a high end product. But the demand for nice dinners should be way higher so we can launch our own 'model 3' as we scale.
Does that mean you would take food production in-house to be able to scale your “model 3”? My comment was from the perspective of partnering with existing restaurants as a service. If you do that, what will be your advantage and scalability over existing delivery kitchens?
We intend to stay a marketplace and partner with restaurants - right now the pool of restaurants is small because we are looking at high end 'tasting menu' type restaurants. But as we scale up, standard 1 app - 2 entrees - 1 dessert options will be added.
I said the same thing when Quibi started their ad blitz months and months before launching. Quibi had the problem that their business model was completely unproven (who TF actually has the stones to not just identify, but try to create a market between Netflix and YouTube?) This has a similar problem; they are launching just as the pandemic is starting to ratchet down, meaning their whole raison d'etre is in question.
Yeah - our core thesis is that the demand has always been there, this is why people travel into cities on weekends for food. And if we can make it way easier to access then people would have nice dinners more. There was a study that 40% of Americans would like to eat out more than they do now.
What is the limiting factor though? Do they not eat out more because they don't have time to travel to the restaurant, or because they can't/don't want to pay for it? Seems to me like the bigger chunk of that 40% would fall into the second category, especially when talking about higher end experiences.
Well - at a high level the farther out we go and the busier the people (parents for example) the stronger the thesis is and the more convenient we seem.