Should I give my idea another shot?
I recently received a domain reminder that https://streeteatz.app is up for renewal in the next 7 days.
The concept is an app for customers to order food from food trucks without waiting in line. The app would allow food truck owners to take and process orders as well.
A year ago I was developing this idea with the hopes that it would be embraced by the food truck industry. I entered a Square hackathon in the hopes to help validate the idea (https://devpost.com/software/test-xlnmoe) and talked with some food truck owners. Unfortunately, I didn't win the hackathon nor did I get much interest from food truck owners at the time. After those defeats, I stopped working on it since I thought this wasn't a problem for food trucks.
If I do work on this app again, I would plan to add some more features and spend more time talking with food truck owners to gain interest.
I'm wondering if I should give it another go or am I kidding myself thinking this will work a second time around?
"...nor did I get much interest from food truck owners at the time"
This should be the red flag you're looking for. What makes you think this has changed? I doubt that "adding more features" as you mention above will change the fact that customers are not excited about this idea.
A few more things to consider. First, market size. How many people are there out there willing to pay for this? Would they consider ordering online instead of going in person? What about logistics? And even if you handle those details, it's gonna require a lot of money to spread out the voice (based on similar products in the market).
Just my honest thoughts. Best of luck!
I think that there are reasons for truck owners to be interested, may be you could try saying/selling it in different ways? some reasons for them to be interested:
Makes sense. I only had talked with two food truck owners so I thought maybe I didn't get enough feedback at the time.
You may want to consider taking a different approach.
Did any food truck owners say they can't manage the long lines? What if your app made the lines shorter? Would it create a burden on the kitchen to perform faster?
Sounds moreso like you're not solving a problem for them, but a problem you personally experience as a customer of a food truck.
Instead of starting with a solution that the food truck owner may not feel is a problem for them, maybe you should interview 50 food truck owners and ask them what the biggest problems of operating their business is.
If you can find a common theme, then build what they need first, and then see if you can get many of them to use your app and provide feedback.
Keep in mind that getting consumers to install an app is extremely difficult.
Your existing app idea may be more well received if it were designed as self-serve ordering kiosk (via one or more tablets placed near the food truck ). There are several challenges with that idea too. Of course it's possible that some food trucks already use some POS (like square), so then you have to deal with different ordering systems.
A very simplified version of this idea -- instead of focusing on ordering, focus on location finding. Make a simple app that a food truck own could install, that just prompts them for a couple pieces of information, like their Truck Name, and a description of the food that they sell. That app would have GPS tracking capability.
See if you can get 50 trucks to run the app, and let you put up a sign with a QR code that people can use to download the app to make it easy to find the truck at any time.
Then on the diner/consumer side, they just pull up the app, look on a map and see what trucks are within 5-10 miles of them. Give them the ability to search for keywords (hamburger, fries, chicken, or category of food). Click on map to see what food trucks are where. Maybe a button to alert the food truck they're in route to the food truck with an option to let the diner let the food truck know where they are on a map.
TBH -- that may not be a problem either, so food truck owners may not like that idea either.
Just spit-balling ideas here. The idea is to make it simple on the food truck owner, with something that doesn't immediately affect their existing operations in a negative way.
But the core of my suggestions are start simple, solve an actual existing problem, and go from there.
Thanks for the thoughtful response! @iammike
I have heard that the food trucks like to "manage the line", long enough that people see it as popular and want to order from there, short enough to not deter people from waiting. The few trucks I spoke to did express concern with too many orders coming in. I thought a "virtual line" in the app that notifies the customer what number they are and potentially estimated time to fulfill the order could help manage expectations.
I have posted on Reddit to see what problems food trucks have (others have as well). Seemed to be a mix of navigating local laws, finding reliable employees, finding good events/locations worth their time to serve, seasonal fluctuations (winter months not profitable)
I'll give the problems food trucks face some more thought to see if I can think of a way that could help.
Good luck with it Tony! If I ever need an Android or iOS app written, I'll come to you first and see if you're interested :)
Before building anything further, I'd recommend speaking with atleast 100 food truck owners and getting feedback from them.
Learn what their pain points are before trying to pitch them your idea.
Have you tried to look more into creating/expand your app idea to have food truck alerts components in it? Food truck scene in Australia is starting to take-off and as a foodie myself, I follow some of food truck companies via their twitter to know where's their next location.
It would be nice if there's also an explore section in the app that let me know food truck nearby so I could check it out?
just a thought :)
Good thought! This is a feature I partially built out. Currently, the app pulls the food truck calendar (Google calendar) to know when it is open/closed. The app will geocode the locations from the calendar and store them.
The remaining piece would be to build out a feature to allow a customer to check which food trucks are 1, 5, or 10 miles within their location.