Business idea

[briansue2002]

Business idea: An amazon dot com type of website, for local coffeehouses to sell their coffee. Consumers can browse and rate coffee from local shops around the country, and buy bags, kcups, etc. from them. Great idea, so so idea, sucky idea? Honesty, please.

 

[John P]

Short answer: It was a bad idea for the first ten websites that have already done something like that.

The question for you to answer is: What do YOU bring to the table that these roasters would need or want?

Professionally designed, properly optimized website? Doubtful.
An understanding of current market dynamics within the overall coffee industry as well as each localized market? Probably not.
A lot of dollars to sink into a full-blown online marketing campaign to drive awareness and business to targeted consumers for the website? Nah, doubt you can do that either.




Longer answer: (and I'm just hitting the basics)

There is no need for a middle man, better for customers to buy from the coffee shop. The inventory management would be a nightmare. Not for you, for the roasters.

Either you would be a glorified order taker, which (see above) or you would be selling less than fresh coffee to your customers which is bad for the customers and completely undermines every roaster working with you. Also, selling whole bean and K-cups on the same site are two completely different markets. The only way it can work is you have to pick one or the other, have contracts with every coffee shop with a guaranteed order every 2 weeks (to assure freshness) and you would need to pre-pay...

Bad idea.

 

[kboom1]

You would have to drop ship orders same day beans were roasted just to compete with the other established sites out there that are already doing this

 

[peterjschmidt]

Unless you're saying you'd promote a website that would expand exposure for roasters, take orders, and the roasters would then roast and ship.... I'd be game for something like that, depending on how much profit that website would skim off.

But like John said, it's already been done.

 

[CoffeeJunky]

I can always come up with reason why you shouldn't open the new business but I don't think he is here for that.
I think we all know what has failed and what worked.
If someone told me 20 years ago, there will be company like Amazon will make billions, I would have said what have you been smoking.

So here is my take on this.
This is going to be long shot.

You should try to be the hub for the local roasters.
Do not carry inventory but have the roasters be in your network. If there is order comes in, that should be directly notify the roaster. The roaster will be responsible for shipping.
You should come up with the service charge. (maybe 1-5 dollars processing charge)

Your job should be marketing and sales.

The local roaster will be benefited by nation wide marketing at reasonable fee.
You will benefit by having artisan roasters every states or region.

If you do it right, this can be great but it will take tons of money and time to market your website.(this is part where I have no idea how to do effectively)

Once your website is proven, you will have much easier time getting other artisan roaster to join your website.

Good Luck.

 

[briansue2002]

Thank you all for the replies. We're actually on the same page. My idea is to be a conduit into the local cafes, so consumers can buy directly from them. I have no interest in buying and reselling inventory. For the roaster, I'd have to really incentivize them to join my site, at least in the beginning. Like no cost to them for a year. If the site gets more popular, then I'd take a few dollars per order. If the site becomes super popular, then i can charge a monthly fee.

This has been done before. Its not a totally new idea. I would be willing to put marketing dollars and time into the website if i can get a quorum of roasters willing to sign up.

 

[CoffeeJunky]

The people would not join in for monthly fee even there will be exposure to the national audiences. I would charge by each sales or charge to post their beans. (give limits) Like for free you can post up 5 products. something like that. You can make money on tagging your service charge on each sales. That way your roasters or local business can maximize their profit and you can make enough money along the way.

I saw this company called "park and party" they just sell the parking spots on football Saturday and they charge 5 dollars service charge on each spots. And they sell now around 10,000-15,000 parking spots.

 

[tazzadiluna]

I would personally do research, surveys, and interviews (both on the business and consumer side) before I put money into it.

 

[ensoluna]

why do you ever want to buy coffee (roasted or green) from amazon.com or any other local roasters when you can buy directly from the source? the source means the farm / coffee process factory in Guatemala, Costa Rica? I guess those two countries are the only ones that have the capability to ship directly from the roasting farm/factory to the door of your house. it only takes 4 to 5 working days and they roast coffee EVERY SINGLE DAY for local sales and international sales. and pricing? for SOC or Micro Lot, if you buy few 16 oz bags, it could be 30 to 40% cheaper than buying from any other over-priced, over-advertised, over-marketed famous roasters in USA.

 

[CoffeeJunky]

because most of the people will buy national brand coffee over any private labor coffee. Do search on Ebay and how many bids on Starbucks coffee verses private labored coffee. There are huge differences. Not saying starbucks coffee is any good.

 

[ensoluna]

starbucks coffees are truly the bottom of the bottom level among real coffee. The company I work for employees Hector Gonzalez who is also director / catador for approving all the starbucks coffee going out of Guatemala. He told me that Starbucks never buys any real good coffees for their own use. Real good coffee means SOC (single origin coffee) Micro lots and Single variety coffee. Starbucks mix several different coffees to lower the cost of coffee (mixed with SHB and prime coffee) and to create their own flavors. Basically, it is one of the worst coffee to have. Rather go to small specialty coffee shops that carry SOC from each countries. By the way, Barista makes huge difference in making any type of coffee drinks. I have hardly seen any good Baristas in Starbucks. Seriously.

 

[doddcoffee]

The type of site that you are looking to do can be done, I just do not see how it could be very successful, at least from a profit standpoint. Yes you would be giving the companies exposure, but many of them are already getting that on Facebook, Yelp, and Google. It would be a fun side project and I could easily see you building a site that would generate traffic. You would have to come up with some other things that would bring in the money. The one thing that you could do is set it up as a shop and work deals with the owners of the companies to sell to you at a different price. This way they could order from you, you pass on the order and keep the difference. This would help increase their sales, and depending on volume of sales you can negotiate your prices.