Ask HN: What do you think about this idea? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you think about this idea?

3 pointsmfalcon6 comments

Reading an essay from PG, the phrase "Make things that save money" made me think about what a startup could do in order to save people money. I made a list of common things in which people spends money: food, transport, technology...

About food and groceries, how I could save money?. If I buy food with a lot of other people in a wholesale supermarket(I don't know if it's the correct name) I could save some money.

So, my idea is to become an intermediate between clients and the store. Through a web the clients buy what they need(with a minimun of $X), and when it reaches a certain quantity I contact the store and buy the groceries.

What do you think about it?, I'm into something or the idea sucks because x?.

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Usually when I need or want some food item, I want it in relatively short order. If I'm out of Cheerios, I don't want to wait for 30 other people to also run out before I can replenish.

Groceries are one of those areas of commerce that run on extremely slim margins. I think that by the time you covered all the overhead of aggregating, managing, and distributing the bulk buys you'd end up with nothing left over. Plus, you are dealing with perishable goods for a good part of the product base. This makes proper handling and the dependence on functioning coolers even more critical.

Most business models these days are trending towards cutting out "middlemen" that don't provide a significant value-add. I don't think saving $50/mo. (taking a theoretical stab at an estimated savings) would be worth all the hassle to most people, there is too much potential for frustration.

I agree with all these points.

I think that perhaps acting as an agent for a select clientele (restaurants, hotel chains, etc.) to get the best quality/quantity/price available at auction, you may be able to find some footing.

Also (could be totally incorrect, I don't focus on commodities), I don't know how much commodity futures and exchange traded commodities prices reflect on physically traded prices, but maybe this could be another avenue to pursue?

If you really want to make big savings, look towards the wholesale food markets (different to supermarket) or auctions.

However, buying foods in large quantities would require you to have a physical location to sort the items into individual drops for either delivery or pickup.

You're right, sorting the items into individual drops is an important issue. I thought about hiring a service for taking care of this and for the transport.

Sounds like a http://groupon.com kind of model. Am I getting this right? You want to sell groceries this way? How long does it take to get the groceries? How are they distributed?

Thanks for the link!, I'm from Argentina and here there's nothing similar to it as far as I'm concerned.

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