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Comment by sharemywin | Hacker News Reader

I had an idea for a coffee business. it was a drive up coffee vending machine with good but not over the top coffee. kind of like a drive up ATM. I was thinking like at the edge of a lowes or home depot parking lot.

maybe if you were feeling ambitious add a krsipy cream knock off donut.

like the redbox of coffee except won't get disrupted by digital anytime soon

put the cost you would spend on labor into the product.

if you made a deal with one of those companies you could have a 1000 locations out in no time.

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> a drive up coffee vending machine with good but not over the top coffee.

Nice idea. I have seen a novel (to me at least) system when visiting Boston, a city of traffic jams:

People wearing a metal contraption on their backs that makes them look like ghostbusters. In one hand is a hose from which they can fill your cup; on the other side is a tube of paper cups if you don’t have one. They just walk through the traffic jam (I saw this at the end of the tunnel leading to East Boston) and driver would wind down their windows.

On one hand your scheme has much less labor, but this approach can serve many more, and captive, customers at a high density time of day.

I hate starbucks and most coffee places, it's so expensive, usually tastes bad, and making coffee at home is quick and painless.

But I would definitely buy coffee from a vendor like this. What other captive markets could you sell coffee to ? Where do people wait in line a lot ... Texas DPS would be a gold mine.

> What other captive markets could you sell coffee to ?

Train stations and airports. Onboard trains. Amusement parks. Maybe not a lineup, but anywhere people gather, such as city parks and tourist attractions.

The first time I saw this setup was actually in the 80s. I was skiing and one of the hot chocolate companies was sampling a new product. There was a guy, on skis, at the entrance to the lift line handing out samples using one of these thermos backpacks. It was styrofoam cups in the cup dispenser back then of course too.

Either way, there is something really compelling about having a hot beverage brought to you right when you need something. I can see the appeal of having this service in a traffic jam, now only if they could figure out something similar for bathrooms.

> now only if they could figure out something similar for bathrooms.

Someone handing you individual sheets of paper on demand?

I can’t think of a place less congenial to anything edible/drinkable than a bathroom. Yuck!

Sounds like an Indian chaiwallah, tea and coffee sellers at every train station and on the train

> They just walk through the traffic jam (I saw this at the end of the tunnel leading to East Boston) and driver would wind down their windows.

Either someone would get hit by a car and the resulting lawsuit would end it, or the city/police would end it. While "it is done" as far as traffic vendors, it isn't done for very long for the forementioned reasons.

This sounds exactly like the kind of idea mentioned in the article. It's extremely obvious and sounds really good, so the conclusion that should be drawn is "there is some confounding factor that would only be obvious to domain experts", but because interests rates have been kept low by our wack government instead of telling people to do more research I bet you could actually get several thousand dollars of VC money to burn before figuring out what the issues in the space are.

I think this could work, but the problem is that your industrial-size Keurig/Nespresso machine is competing against the Starbucks/Dunkin/McCafes drive thrus. IMO they're not acquiring customers with price or convenience but variety and customization.

There might be a bit of a convenience angle since these other competitors are often extremely busy, which can reduce their convenience. If you had one machine where 3 sides could be used simultaneously by different customers, that would improve throughput. You could also have a dedicated side for just plain old coffee (no steamed milk drinks).

Because labor costs would be far lower than these competitors, prices could be very competitive and you could offer monthly passes and other loyalty programs.

I would consider office buildings where there is no onsite cafe. They would be relatively secure there and you could make them look really high end, for example having visible copper components like those high end Starbucks percolators that some cafes have. This might be important in selling the "quality" benefit over what people can get for free (or cheaper) in their office kitchen upstairs.

My point is that people don't go to these places because they're convenient - if you're trying to compete on convenience then you're going against the Keurig on someone's countertop.

My guess is the market of people who want better coffee than a kcup/nespresso pod, are willing to drive to get it, and don't want to wait in line is quite small with low margins.

Briggo kind of did this. They started with convention centers and airports. Costa bought them reasonably quickly.

It was the perfect middle ground: it didn’t claim to be top of the line but it beat most chain coffee for espresso drinks.

Check out Costa's BaristaBot (formerly Briggo) https://thespoon.tech/briggos-coffee-haus-becomes-costa-coff...

Coffee vending machines are everywhere in Japan (and have been for a long time).

> I had an idea... coffee vending machine with good but not over the top coffee

They have these in big tech company kitchenettes. They're great. I'm sure whoever made them made a killing from all that big tech b2b money.

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