I understand your point, but IĀ'm not convinced.
The restaurant needs to know the persons who does the deliveries and does this person pay in advance for the other persons he/she doesn't know?
BTW in my town almost all deliveries are for free.
Tommy

Based on our discussion with a few restaurants, they care more if their meal reached the customer in time and properly taken care off. Moreover they understand that the delivery person is a regular customer who earns cash and feedback points for delivering in time.

The website manages all money transactions, the delivery person does not pay to the restaurant directly or collect money from customers. He simply picks and delivers. Restaurants and the delivery person are paid by the website. Customers are charged by the website upon successful delivery.

Free delivery from a restaurant always have a minimum order limit which is not suitable for lunch, where on an average people spend $9. Moreover restaurant delivery has a range and limitation of driver availability and time constraints.

There are some existing businesses like this already - http://www.waitersen...ute.ca/web/index.php for example. However, if you're looking to open in a particular market where this is not yet available, you may find some sucess

Hit submit too soon.

Having customers deliver the foods is definitly a new idea, but I'm not sure I'd trust it as a consumer: what is their incentive to be polite and on time? How do they deal with mistakes, people who come to the door without the proper amount of money and prank calls?

We have a couple existing business in my town but they use dispatchers and contracted delivery people, which adds to the bottom line. Our plan is to start from a town and then expand nationwide gradually.

The USP of this idea is delivery fee is much less than what it would cost you to go and pick up the food.

The website will manage the logistics so the consumer never have to interact directly with the delivery person. Their incentive is to get feedback points and 100% of the delivery fee if on time. The system will use Google Maps data to compute distance and travel time + audit mechanism to harvest actual delivery time based on several notification from restaurant, delivery person and consumer itself.

Using an online system to manage reduces much of the error but the platform will provide error reporting by the consumer directly. No money transaction will be done between the consumer and the delivery person. Even tips are collected by the website. Only profile names will be exchanged. Consumer doesn't know the real name of the delivery person and vice-versa. Delivery person doesn't get the phone number. They call the system and notify delivery is made and the system notifies one or more customers to collect the delivery.

Nitros,
You thought it over quite well. Thank you for your answers. I might give you five starsv this round.
Cheers
Tommy

the idea was based on a market research I did in Feb, 2008 to get a feel if the problem I am facing is applicable to the mass. the survey link is available at http://www.eswaad.com

I have to say it's an interesting idea. I'm not quite sold on a few potential issues but maybe they can be address.

1) French fries last about 7 minutes. My biggest concern (at my store) is customer satisfaction. Fast food isn't engineered to last long. Most people that get food in the D/T eat it in their car and don't wait until they get home. I would be afraid that the food wouldn't be good enough for my stamp of approval after the extra delivery time. Now, if the customer accepts this as part of the deal, then it's on them.

2) Cost. I don't quite understand who employes the delivery person. That's also to say, who pays them, who pays their payroll tax, who insures them and who makes sure they're not going to pick up the food then eat it.

3) Potential for trouble. For some reason, (it's just a gut feeling) I imagine way too many phone calls from angry customers who are still waiting for the food. Or got the wrong thing and want me to bring the the correct item they paid for.

Now on the other hand, if some of these issues can be addressed then maybe you have something. I would think more along the lines of creating a franchise that only did what you're proposing. That way, they could design food items that would allow for the extra time, contol the delivery system and keep a good reign on customer satisfaction.

Interesting idea nitros. Keep working on it.

Answering your question chronologically

1) Our model supports fast food restaurant. However one thing I learned is to start small and have a good profit margin. My initial focus is to get IBO restaurants first and then go and talk to corporate chains. IBO restaurants provides better packaging and eventually we plan to introduce our own packaging.

2) The delivery person are contracted or legaly binded per order, just like bidders on eBay are bound. We will pay them weekly and W-4 will be requested whoever makes $600 per year (estimated). Since it is per contract, insurance is not our responsibility. The logistics are set in such a way that once the delivery person picks up the order, he is responsible to deliver and also for the loss of the order. Historically every business writes off 1% of revenue as bad debt and we are prepared for it.

3) Customers are given multiple interfaces, phone, IM, SMS, Email, Website for order status check and delivery notification. There is no manual process in the workflow, which has a very less chances of error but the contract with the restaurant defines their responsibility. Delivery timing is the key. One delivery person is going to make at most 2 deliveries per trip. Remember the delivery person never have to see the customer or interact with the customer directly. Please read my previous post.

The main drawback I see in this idea is customers has to order as early as possible to allow time to form a group and hopefully people get the idea that it is a good money earning source. This is marketing I guess

There are a number of services in a number of areas that offer resturant delivery to the door, hot and cold items. In Calgary there is a service called 'Waiters on Route', I believe the service is offered in a number of cities. Basically resturants team up with them as a delivery service. You pay a fee for delivery, based on distance from the place you are ordering. It's solid resturant fare, rather than fast food and junk.

I've used it a number of times, it is lovely.

You may want to check it out: http://www.waitersen...ute.ca/web/index.php

This idea comes with a twist. The delivery person is not employed or contracted for a period. Any person, even the person who orders can also deliver, think eBay (buyer, seller), think eSwaad (order, deliver). You want to deliver, you check the website for any open order, you pick up an open order from a restaurant near you and you cause the delivery, the website makes sure you follow the protocol.

The USP here is: 50 cents per mile delivery (cheapest you can find anywhere) and No minimum order. Distance calculation and time are as accurate as Google Maps provide.

So far I didn't find any other business in US doing it. Had no choice but to get this business model patented.

"Any person, even the person who orders can also deliver."

Trying to use efficiencies like that's pretty interesting. I'm not great with directions so while it might be a temping way to shave a few bucks off a meal, I'd probably get lost and be liable for the meal instead.

OR if I was hungry maybe I could pick up and order for someone and then drive off to Mexico with it.

Tangent: Google Android app, where participants location is constantly monitored. If you entered in your destination (you'd have a few pre-programmed ones) then opportunities for deliveries could be presented to you while you were on your way. That's a meta-problem, as it would also serve pirate taxi as well.

Overall this concept is good, but it seems fragile. I can imagine the very thing you're trying to achieve (efficiencies by bundling meals together and taking advantage of anyone willing to participate) can be ruined by any one mistake along the chain. There's so many opportunities for irate customers, the more randomness you bring into the delivery process.

Since the consumer is volunteering to deliver and not enforcing on them, they decide to choose which orders they want to deliver and of course the system will route a map for them using Google Maps.

There could be extreme cases as you mentioned but while initially designing a system I tend to perfect the normal workflow and then work on a Fraud management system.

I have not studied about Google Android and I should. Could you please pm me some reference?

Mistakes happen in any workflow - eBay, NetFlix but perfecting the system should be the priority initially rather than designing for 1% anomalies.

Well, we've already talked so you know my ideas. I think it's workable. Since writing to you, I have wondered about the status of your delivery people. Not employees. Independent contractors, I guess. Another thought: is the whole concept too complex for the customer to understand and trust? I would suggest you start the business as just a knock-off of your competitors, and slowly add your sophistications. I really do think you've put enough thought and, god knows, research, into this idea; keep pursuing this.

And your logo is really professional, very marketable.

Gordon, only you would steal food, probably Mexican food, and take off for Mexico.

The idea has been thrown around for 6 months now and the restaurant people understand how it works and initially we plan to launch with 150 restaurants within a 1 city only.

Making the customer (consumer and deliverer role) understand depends upon how marketing goes. We are looking for a dedicated full service marketing team both offline and online plus get it beta-tested with Gen Y crowd thoroughly.

The site will be bilingual (english & spanish) from day 1 for our mexican brethen to take full use of it.

One more thing I realized that if this idea wins, then we could promote it in facebook, mySpace etc. where we could get our beta testers also.

BTW if anybody is wondering what eSwaad means? "swaad" means "Taste" in hindi and 'e' is just a flare on swaad.

Interesting idea...from going through the majority of the comments and replys it sounds like you have done your research and came up with some logical ideas for negative setbacks!

I really want to follow your company and see how this turns out.

Marketing is going to be a very large part of this to make sure that you always have a delivery person for that area...also take into consideration that possibly during certain times you may lose key delivery drivers during holidays.

I'm totally with Gordon, I'd steal the food and road trip it to Mexico.

That being said, services that get you food that isn't fast-food to your door in a fast manner is cool.

"I go to a drive-thru fast food restaurant to get my lunch as quickly as possible but I don't like the hassle of driving, waiting in the queue. At one point, I realized many people come from my office follow the same routine. I thought of why not group orders together and let one person get it for all of us."

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I don't really see such a service taking off with busy professionals. I've worked in management for two years now, and when people want a fast meal that is also inexpensive - they bring lunch from home. Especially as more people are concerned about allergies and dietary restrictions some thing like that is going to be even less feasible.

Having to go online and hope some total stranger a) gets my order right b) can find my office and c) arrives in a reasonable time isn't as easy or appealing as brown-bagging it.

I get it! I like it! I tell you what. If you start this in the Triangle area (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, NC, USA), you would do very well with just college kids, (we have 3 major Universities in this area).

I also like the idea that I can make a few bucks in my own spare time. I also think restaurants who don't offer delivery will definitely do it now, this will make it very easy for them.

I think that you should be sure to contract people from different areas so that logistically-wise, someone is always available in the area of a certain restaurant.

As far as a need...there are approximately 50 people in my office building and on any given day there are at least 20 lunches delivered from different restaurants. AND...if I could get a BigMac delivered instead of fighting lunch traffic I would definitely log on.

Replying to Interviewables: On our plan, we are expanding to RTP in our second phase. Thank you for your comments.

Replying to Myllz: We are not limited only for lunch, we are open 24 hours as long as 1 restaurant is open all day. Moreover our consumer target are business professionals and residentials also.

We are already collecting nutritional and allergic info for every menu item. So, it is a matter of time to add a filter functionality to show only what you want to see.

Having to go online and hope some total stranger
a) gets my order right - The person who delivers is not checking your order, it is the system who does it.

b) can find my office: Try using Google Maps and you will never lost again. We will provide routing info to the person who delivers.

c) arrives in a reasonable time isn't as easy or appealing as brown-bagging it - Timing is controlled by the system and you will know way before time whether your lunch order is on time or not coming at all.

Most restraints around all ready offer delivery or express to go.
For example:
http://orders.deliverybyquiznos.com/

This service might be good for local company's. But, most all ready just send someone over or if they are like big company's have the budget and bulk order to get it delivered regardless if they actually offer it at the restraint.

But, even then look at your competition I think they have it covered:
http://www.delivery.com/

I looked at my competition quite well and none of them till date offer delivery at an inexpensive rate or they always have a minimum order limit.

Delivery.com is not our direct competitor. They rely on the restaurant's delivery system.

What would the screening process be on those who deliver? My main concern would be if a registered sex offender or an ex con were to check out the site to deliver and then possibly do the worst. This of course being the worst case scenario, there is always that possibility. The last thing I would want would be for my stalker to show up with my food...

Good question: We know we cannot be 100% perfect on our initial launch but I will breakdown what will be implemented in our initial launch and then later.

Initial Launch: 1) A consumer can log in and start delivering immediately but to get their payment, they have to fax in their driver ID.
2) Consumers who order end up giving feedback to the person who delivers. The more the feedback, the more you get to make the choice/frequency to deliver, effectively making more money.

Later Phases:
1) Driver ID is validated by 3rd party service provider to ensure a clean identity of the person.

2) Sex offender is of course a no-no in our system but I am not sure about an ex-convict, if he has the freedom to roam around, he has the freedom to order online and service the community.

3) Few other protocols will be implemented but I will defer this question to an attorney.

Cheaper solution is not necessary always the better choice for a company. Just like why few big organization will be willing to rely on open source software because there's no accountability when crisis arises.

Similarly, you hire a few drivers, it is easy to make sure they delivery in time, because if they failed, you can visually or verbally scold them, or even fire them. But using the crowd as delivery team, you cant do anything.

Replying to Magickaito: Open source is a reliable source and most business depends on it more now. 80% of the software on my project is based on open source software. Remember the competition in today's world is not between the big and the small companies, it is between fast and slow.

If you look at the GenX and GenY population who are just going to work, they don't think like you do. We believe that we can help if everyone takes a bit of the responsibility. Verbally scolding or firing is a big sign of failure for any business. This idea works on saving rising fuel cost by providing an alternative way to deliver food. The price/fee to deliver food should be more than enough to cover the cost + time of the person who delivers. We are not selling a cheap solution, we are selling an alternative solution for rising fuel cost and motivating healthier lifestyle by providing a complete source of nutritional information for every product in the system.

I guess if it is developed as an online system it could work. However, I am sceptical. You need to shoot three birds in one go. First, you need to sign up a large number of restaurants to get the scale of menu items. Second, you need to get a large number of clients in order to generate the economies of scale you will need to compete. Third, the logistics is a bit daunting. Not only you need the online system, but also the offline capability (people, transport, etc). How will you do it?

Good questions. This idea is based on minimal human intervention and is totally online. I agree about the 3 birds and this is how I am addressing them.
Restaurants: Besides a website, which is live now (http://www.eswaad.com), we need a sales approach. A full marketing team is needed to market eSwaad to restaurants and there is a one time setup fee for the restaurants to make their menu available online + value added services.

Customers (Order/Deliver): Customers get to know from our marketing campaign deal with restaurants who distribute promotions to customers at their restaurant to use eSwaad, thus bringing offline customers to online. Besides this, there is referral program and customer retention program. Moreover the grouping logic makes certain that maximum group is formed instead of multiple single orders. Customers also has the flexibility to not join an existing group and form their own group, in which case, they are requested to deliver and earn money towards their meal or face the possibility of not having their items delivered at all. Two birds killed with one stone.

Delivery Person: Through a marketing firm, we will also promote eSwaad before launch to universities and hold events and show the possibility of making easy money. Beta-test, free run drive are some possible promotions.

We definitely want to limit our initial launch to one city and then expand gradually. Since it is a consumer to consumer model, transport is provided by the person who delivers. Payments, communication and other logistics are all taken care of, I just am not allowed to disclose more than needed here.

Nitros, I think that you are onto something, but donĀ't understimate the logistics.

If you really want to enjoy the economies of scale you should develop a pooling system for delivery transport, even if itĀ's supplied by the "consumer". Orders could be collected from a number of suppliers and then distributed to one (?) or a number of groups.

I also like your focus on large distribution centres, such as universities. This would help you to reduce the costs related to the final distribution leg (e.g. higher concentration of groups/ formation of larger groups).

Crowdsourcing the home page:

Folks, I need help in selecting the right home page. Please let me know which one you like the best

http://www.eswaad.com/home4.jpg
http://www.eswaad.com/home3.jpg
http://www.eswaad.com/home1.jpg

just reply back home4, home3 or home1

Agree with landsky, the idea is workable but it should be started small (as you've planned) to work out the kinks.

Best of luck!

Our first press release is out:

http://www.openpr.co...d-Food-Delivery.html
http://www.pr.com/press-release/83866
http://www.1888press...on-pr-21ik656kh.html

From the looks of the site I would say you are using Joomla. That and you suck at both coding and SEO since your source is full of errors and mistakes.

Plus, take a look at the template people it screams copyright infringement. You clearly took a template from JoomlaShack and broke the Creative Commons license agreement by hiding the copyright notice.

<Scornful Glance>

to Kevin_Cox: I didn't develop the site. I outsourced it. Now if you be nice and let me know what to fix in there. I don't know how to develop in Joomla but I know what to modify in there. the template was provided by the person who developed

I have to agree you need to get over the trust issues.
There is potential here its just hard to put my finger on it... Like I see the vision of the idea but I am not 100% sold.

What do you need from CH?

Brenden,

As I understand, CH (the crowd) is going to build it and I don't know how to get this thing rolling besides having an assurance that people are voting on it.

You have a high glory, so you tell me how to move forward with the crowd, instead of doing it traditionally.

What you need to do is identify a few key people that are actually willing to help you develop this idea.
Review the comments here and use them to help you break down your idea and find any holes before you start.
At this point I would think it would be hard to get this community to build your idea, we just do not have that kind of community (yet). Do you have money to invest in this idea?
if so I would head over to a outsourcing website and pay someone to build you a prototype, then use that to find investors so you can move forward will a full product.
good luck!

"Now if you be nice and let me know what to fix in there."
I would take down the entire site if I was you. Then have a talk with said person about a refund then never do business with them again. Since you don't have the right to use those images or the template. You are infringing on other peoples copyrights.

There are a lot of errors that I can see right off the bat. Far to many to go over.

DonĀ't give up. You are on the right track. The site is only one part of your model (probably not the most important one).

http://www.eswaad.com/home4.jpg
...would be my favorite. I do like the pac-man like image and vaguely disturbing sandwich in Home3, but overall the other pages are too busy. And the "restaurant partners" will get ugly fast as you find every restaurant's logo has a different width/height aspect ratio.

My earlier mention of Google Android (its just a future mobile platform) is because the notion of having customers run deliveries for other customers is a broad coordination of people issue. Actually finding opportunities of piggybacking a meal delivery on a driver that was already headed past the destination is a generic hard problem. Like building a better taxi service.

To me the most interesting challenge is how to best coordinate meals and drivers and potential drivers.

Thank you for your comments, Gordon. Answering your questions about delivery coordination:

We are dividing the website into 2 portals. So, you want to order?, you use the "Order portal" and you check out, we let you know when the delivery is confirmed.

The other portal is "Delivery Portal" where anyone logs in, enters his current location and we retrieve all "open" orders from nearby restaurants displayed chronologically. These orders could be single or grouped and the delivery fees he will earn is displayed beside the order. He is allowed to make the first selection and based on that, we allow him to make another 1-2 selection (delivery from the same restaurant only). He agrees to the legal T&C and he prints out the orders, which says he has to be at the restaurant by XX:XX time and delivery by YY:YY time. The restaurant is notified (transactional facsimile) to prepare the meal and "bobGreen" is coming to pick it up.

Once "bobGreen" is en-route, the system kicks off an EJB Timer Service process that uses business rules and auditing data to estimate his arrivalTime. bobGreen, after delivery notifies the system of success and the timer EJB ends.

If we had a whiteboard in CH, it would be interesting to explain there

Have you called your local health department and asked them about food handling regulations and the legality of allowing non-employees to handle food?

Join up with the clip Bord guy put both into one, Nothing worse then carrying 100 Pound's of equipment to get one job done!!--- Batteries -- chargers, Antennas--- sat dish. Emergency locator and two way's. Try find were your at in the swamp carrying all the hi Tc stuff--- hard to dig a GPS out of pack sack in a bug infested marsh. { Remember not all your customers are at some summer camp sitting around the camp fire listing to u-tube. Even if it's been built nothing Say's it can't be made better.

Yes, we have confirmed with the County Health Department and they confirmed that as long as the source of the food is under our records and the food is packaged at the source and reaches the destination in the same package. It is not regulated by their department and there is no other department that regulates that specific case. We went further and confirmed the same from Dept. of Agriculture.

What if some crazy guy decides to poison the meals? Who would be responsible and how do you stop that?

Chrischen: Poisoning a meal would be a felony and we do have records of the person who did that. So, it is our responsibility to coordinate with the local authorities but our legal terms clearly defines that we are not responsible for any misconduct by any parties involved and consumers are requested to verify the integrity of the delivered package which has a seal over it. If the seal is tampered, consumers are advised to report the issue immediately.

The thing is to be honest I wouldn't really trust a service where anyone off the street can deliver my food. But that seal idea has to be something really fool proof.

what about the pizza delivery guy? Do you trust him? Why? Just because he is an employee of some pizza company?

It is all in the mind...

I think there is a line of trust. Pizza shop pays delivery person trusts him/her to deliver the order, when you get the pizza you pay on delivery and he relays it back or else pizza shop charges him and gives him the sack.

Your model is or is preceded to run on giving random person with no apparent affiliation with anyone and is not under that much obligation to for fill any of his duty's as a deliver. It kind of under cuts all of the trust system in place of the pizza shop model of delivery.

Now, I am not sure if this is your actual model or not but, that appears to be what is preceded as it currently.

The delivery person definitely is obligated to deliver through legal binding, similar to eBay bidding.

We also plan to build a Fraud Management system to flag people using feedback ratings and other criterias, but this system is not in my priority list.

How you explained the process (Pizza shop) above is exactly how we will manage the account of the person who delivers. The only difference is in our system, the contract applies per order and the person who delivers is not our employee, so no sacking. If he gets negative feedback, he may not be able to deliver again.

This sounds more like a High School exam project than a serious business idea? if so I hope that you get an A.

Good Luck.

"The only difference is in our system, the contract applies per order and the person who delivers is not our employee, so no sacking."
But, you also take away the whole trust measures put in place. Since there is not exactly that high of a standard that obligates him to for fill his duty.

The ebay model would be a poor model to follow. Since, the whole pay on delivery thing is key to the food delivery industry.