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Comment by lhnn | Hacker News Reader

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'd downvote you if I could, not because I disagree with you, but because this is a strawman.

The author used a low margin, low sucess business example to make a point about what mindset someone should be in to successfully run a business. You took from that the message that anything enjoyable is not sustainable.

"Focus on creating something inherently good --> it will not be sustainable"

You also less directly imply that focusing on profit will necessitate producing an inferior product, again using a specific example to provide a generality.

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That something is enjoyable does not make it inherently good (unless you ascribe to Utilitarianism). There are of course other factors beyond pure enjoyment that contribute to the inherent goodness of a thing. You don't need to enjoy a medical device in order for it to be able to do its job well, for example.

Rather, the distinction I was aiming at was between "process" and "product". But I suppose that wasn't very clear. My intention was not to start a flame war on capitalism.

In my opinion a process can be sustainable (and thus very likely profitable), but a product can not. In this case a business model is a process and the thing you put in your mouth (the hamburger) is the product. For the hamburger to be perfect we would need an ever escalating process. Constantly adding more complexity or work to refine the product we can create thus creating an unsustainable process.

If you want to create a hamburger in a sustainable and profitable way. The McDonalds process is most likely one of the best ways to do that. But it will NEVER create a perfect hamburger. The same is of course true with the opposite. A tiny connoisseur coffee shop can conceivably create a perfect cup of coffee and push the boundaries of the state of the art. But it will NEVER be a sustainable process. You need to make compromises in order to achieve that.

Coffee is an insanely high margin product. You think it costs $4.00 for the 5 grams of coffee in your drink?

Coffee itself is high margin, but the coffee business is not a high margin business.

You have to employ people to make coffee manually, and quickly. You have to buy a machine to aid them in this, and keep it in good maintenance.

Additionally, you have to supply perishables like milk to go in the coffee.

You have to keep them in your shop buying coffee, or incite them to buy coffee here when they're hungry instead of going to go to dunkin dounuts.

You can do this with nice decor, or by placing yourself in an already attractive location, or taking a margin loss on selling bake goods in order to bring in coffee customers.

In any case, your high margins for coffee product have rapidly vanished.

Coffee prices in the US are odd. 'round here (Southern European country) we pay less than a dollar for a coffee. Well, except in Starbucks, but then again, that's my point.

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