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Comment by azhu | Hacker News Reader

I think you're going to hit difficulties getting most local coffeeshops onboard. Unless there is a brand of local coffeeshop I am not familiar with, and it's probable that this in-between brand exists in cities without much space and more of a focus on pumping out volume, most local coffeeshops identify with the opposite of this ethos. They are focused on the experience of being in the coffeeshop and standing as a clear contrast to everything that chains like Starbucks and Dunkin offer. Namely an emphasis on quality and "realness".

I know many a coffeeshop owner whose immediate response to being pitched this would be "Starbucks already exists".

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Completely agree with a lot of your points, we run into coffee shops every day that are hesitant to offer something like this. That said, resigning themselves to the fact that a chain exists is a surefire way to go out of business. Most of the shops we speak with are actively looking for ways to maintain the quality you've noted, while simultaneously attracting more customers.

In terms of scale, we're asked about fragmentation a lot. Chains like Starbucks and Dunkin' will never use Cloosiv, but there's no reason to believe that as our network grows, that we can't support large regional chains (Joe Muggs, Dollop) and even national chains (Caribou, La Colombe, etc.).

For now, we're hyper-focused on building out that network, by adding any interested shop as quickly as possible. That may appear fragmented across the country, but as we increase our speed we'll be able hit a critical mass quickly.

I think your points of targetting large regional chains and not-Starbucks national chains are great. I think you may achieve more impactful market acquisition there.

> resigning themselves to the fact that a chain exists is a surefire way to go out of business

Saying this to a local coffeeshop is a surefire way to get them to not only not listen to you, but to tell all their friends about how much you suck. This is absolutely wrong. This may work in selling to someone struggling, but the very fact that any other solidly-in-business coffeeshop exists proves your argument quite obviously incorrect.

Sorry about that, I didn't do a great job of clarifying. What I meant to say is that we haven't encountered that type of pushback nearly as much as we anticipated. Owners tend to understand the concept and most are interested in improving their competitive advantage. The primary concerns we face are around fulfillment and customer expectation, but we'll likely continue to run into more shops that are simply uninterested in this sales channel.

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