Business Idea: Nyc service, Grocery Line Hosts

[Pipdips]

Anybody ever been to Whole Foods in Manhattan?  I pretty much have grown to hate this store.  They basically abuse their customers and many of them are very loyal customers, but Whole Foods just continues downright abusing them all with greed. It's time we The People draw the line on their lousy customer service agendas, and take a stand together.

The lines at check out, especially during the lunch rush, are stupid long.  It's like 20 minutes wait and you stand there Waiting to Pay them, for overpriced goods too.  It really pisses me off.

So this is the service pitch:

We get a team of 5-6 individuals, our employees, their job is to stand in line for people.  They will wear T-shirts or hold signs letting our clients know we stood in line for them, and line hosting is our service.  So our team will expedite the process for a fee.

Honestly who the hell does Whole Foods think they are?  A mega grocery who forces you to stand in line next to a bunch of overpriced impulse buys like a $5 chocolate bar or a $6 bag of popcorn?  Then you have to stand there and Wait, just to pay them?  So Whole Foods exploits your time, AND your money? Forget that.

We will have a team member at the back of the line grabbing clients and begin working the process, and then a series of our "hosts" will have been standing in line waiting, in advance.  We already did the waiting for you!

The groceries will move, expedited, to the front of the line.  A lot of people will become our clients just seeing how fast others get checked out and on their way.  Basically expediting past Whole Foods' abusive check out lines.

We will pay in advance and then outside the person will pay us the reimbursement, outside the door, plus we charge a $5 service charge for our expedited hosting services.

People are so busy. Im on my lunch break and I make $80 per hour, so why not pay somebody to shave 20 minutes off my day?  Its as easy as that.

With 5-10 team members per store, working 5-7 stores in Manhattan, with 2 rush hour services every day.  Business will flourish.  Many people will have light bulbs go on in their heads about how WF is stealing time and money from their own clients.

Who wants to stand in line waiting to pay, with a bunch of grouchy sheep who don't want to talk with anybody in line with them. It's a total waste of your day.  Everybody in line is too sheepish to complain about how Whole Foods abuses their clients time -- time and time again, and outlandishly overcharges their time and money.

WF must have such a huge HR and Corporate structure behind the scenes, and the lawyers, they almost have to abuse your paychecks in order to pay for all those unnecessary HR workers.  Really it's just a grocery store.  So my business is the solution for The People.

Its only logical.  If you disrupt enough peoples days enough times and eventually you get a disruptive service (like my line hosting service) that counters your cruddy customer service agendas.

So my employees, the Line Hosts, will make more than $15 per hour, which is more than WF employees make.  $15 is minimum wage in NYC.  My employees can get tips too.

I'd even pay WF employees a $500 new hire Bonus if they quit their job with WF and work for me.  Its a win-win.  No need to worry about if WF wins or not because everything they do is geared towards exploiting their own customers. Since WF has the game rigged so that The People always lose, WF has literally pushed themselves out of their own equation! Amazing.

So who needs a job?

[rose9696]

This is really a good idea and in great demand in NYC. I used to go there and go for a walk in the city, the people were crowded and the demand for goods was also great. You can capture this market share with a cheaper price and faster service. a small but effective startup model without too many risks. I appreciate your ideas.

[Pipdips]

I read a joke the other day about NYC, goes like this: "Hey, I am going to buy a few things from Whole Foods, I'll be back in 5 minutes!"

Our company goal is to make that 5 minutes...a reality.

Now hiring Line Hosts!!!  $500 sign on bonuses for WF Team Members who quit their job and come work for me.

[Pipdips]

My other idea for this is to have another team in the prepared foods section.

You know how you go to grab a quick salad, and once you get to the weigh machine at the cash register... $24.32.  And I'm like Woah, 24 Dollars?!?!, for a salad?  It is because WF doesn't want you to weigh food at the hot bar and salad bar.  Screw that.

Our other service to get in there with Weight Saver Hosts, at the salad and hot bars, with a scale... measuring foods for people.  That is where we get a lot of our customers.  Why wait in line for 22 minutes, to pay for an overpriced $24 salad?!?! Forget that.

Think of the the time and costs Whole Foods is wasting for each and every customer.  It amazes me nobody complains about it.  With our company team, we merely host the weighing of items, protecting your precious time and money that WF is blatantly wasting of you and everybody else.  Then from the salad bar we expedite the process to the register with walkie talkies in communication with our Line Hosts at the lines, they are already near the front of the lines!!

[The Sceptical Chymist]

OP, is your other business plan still in effect or what?  You'd suggested some kind of block-long internet cafe type thing in Manhattan if I'm not mistaken.

As far as this proposal goes, check out the documentary E-Dreams.  There was a company about 20 years ago, right at the tail end of the internet stock boom.  They were called kozmo.com and they started in NYC offering delivery service for pretty much anything--Starbucks coffee, soda, and all sorts of grocery items, and they had bicycle messengers doing the deliveries.  The doc doesn't really go into how much of a demand there was for their service, but they ended up going bust because they expanded way too fast and burned up all of their investors' money (and never made a profit).

So I'm not sure how hot an idea it is for a line-waiting service, and I think there's another kozmo business operating in the city nowadays, though I could be wrong.  Anyway, I admire your big ideas.  If you ever get anything going like the first one, the internet cafe, I'd definitely make the trip to the city to check it out.

[Pipdips]

Oh, man. You have said my thoughts. Frankly speaking I don't understand the people, who don't think about their future. I mean, that there are persons, who in 30 years, haven't even idea about the earning of money. All they do is only spending of it. Maybe, I was thought in other way, because I knew from the youth, that if you wanted something, you should earn money for it. Group of people, who say, that there is no way to earn money for them, deserve special attention,because it's fake, you can look at the examples of the mobile business ideas and make sure.

Nah WFM read my post here and fixed their wait times somewhat in NYC. Also I noticed a new ad yesterday, for Amazon Go. It is "no wait times, no lines, no check out". They should pay me for the ideas but they just cheaply take them and run. It's cheap people who grab up others ideas and run with them without the originators.

Another thing that makes WFM lose me as a customer is how the lines have cameras and they spy on the customer, profiling them, then linking them to a cashier. Examples: a black customer goes to a black cashier, a white customer goes to a white cashier, so on and so forth. Like an eye in the sky. Just a really judgemental and slow minded HR Department pointlessly circulating in the sky..

Hahahaha. HR Departments are so costly it amazes me corporations have HR systems there sucking up all their profits. They should fire HR roles and not even repurpose them with new jobs. Just a full removal. I'd boycot the place if there were other markets around but for the most part, WFM monopolizes the groceries in Manhattan. I do not like WFM's style at all since Amazon purchased it.