Yasmin Razavi's Profile
Yasmin Razavi
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Definitely agree Lia — even for the mid ranged restaurants I still think its a big financial commitment to eating at home. A bill for two people could easily come to 50-60 GBP when ordered on Deliveroo.
I do think they are benefiting from two major trends: people are valuing at-home experiences, dining and hosting perhaps as much as going out to restaurants and secondly the health or ingredient conscious consumers will have a tough time picking food from Deliveroo’s main competitor which is Just-Eat.
I definitely do agree that the bulk of the business comes from fast casual (like Nandos, Busaba) as well as the mid priced options on the platform.
Yasmin
Really enjoyed reading about this — I must admit that when Blue Apron first came out I wasn’t very bullish on the idea and thought it appealed to a small portion of the market who wishes to have meal plans at home. However, with the growing interest of millennia’s in food, recipes and making their own dishes or entertaining others at home, the Blue Apron model seems to benefit from a very important trend.
Given the shipping costs involved, I do wonder about the margins in the business. Does Blue Apron have that much more bargaining power with farmers than restaurant chains to be able to offer you a meal at home that is shipped to you? You may argue that they save margin by not cooking the meals vs. restaurants, and I would think that even then there seems to be a lot of overhead that already goes into making these packages and recipes customer ready.
Would love to have a think/chat about the margins of the business and how it can become sustainable after its growth phase
Yasmin
Hi Sam
Great post — enjoyed learning about the operating decisions that Chipotle has made to truly fulfill its ambition of being a fast casual restaurant. While certainly these decisions have enabled the brand to grow over the past years, they are also very replicable decisions that any to-be fast casual entrepreneur can incorporate as part of launching a new brand. I am curious to see how Chipotle views the future and what it needs to do to remain competitive given most of the IP that is discussed in your piece is very replicable and not defensible. Perhaps their locations and access to prime real estate is a great barrier to entry and sustaining customers.
Thanks again
Yasmin
I agree — you could use some GPS technology to see if the cleaners are going to addresses that were once customers of the platform and create penalties around that. It is by no means an elegant solution — but I do see it as the biggest threat to their model.
I would love to understand how you can leverage “live” streaming services like Meerkat, Snapchat, or Periscope to create a more real-time experience with Loolia and perhaps also drive down production costs for these videos.
I would love to understand how Handy leverages technology and other tactics to block the issue of cleaners going offline and becoming recurring cleaners for the customer outside of the platform. In my opinion this is the biggest threat to these businesses as the habit of us using cleaners has mostly involved using the same person to build trust, know-how etc.,
Is there any views on how the business is actually doing? Any publicly shared figures around the size of customer base and the ability of the company to retain them?
I am wondering if the same concept would work with Nail Salons? What are learnings from Drybar that can be applied to the nail industry?