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KickoffLabs Blog:

Yo! Potato is one stop food ordering…


By Josh Ledgard

Dec 15th, 2011


It’s Groupon for… Oh wait, it’s not. (Sorry, I see a lot of those.)  It’s a business that might make money… food delivery. Here it is in their words!

1. Tell us about Yo! Potato

imageYo! Potato is a one stop shop for food ordering. With Yo! Potato you can enjoy the freedom and convenience of ordering from any or multiple restaurants, at the same time. Our own delivery squad picks them up and delivers the orders at the customers doorsteps.
 

2. Who or what inspires you and why?

My cofounder, Showkath’s been having trouble ordering food on home delivery. His wife, Madhu is a vegetarian, he is not. Worst, the restaurant she likes to order from is not really good with the dishes he likes. I distinctly remember him cribbing how complicated it is for him to have to order for both of them and one of them has to compromise every time. The alternative is to call 2 different restaurants. That’s complicated because he needs to find their contact numbers, call them both, pay twice, deal with delays separately. It is hugely inconvenient. Add to that, most restaurants in India have a minimum order norm below which they won’t deliver. So, even if he calls 2 restaurants, he ends up buying more than they could eat. That’s time and food wasted. 

So, he kept mentioning these issues every once in a while and one day when I casually sent him a mail after midnight about we doing something about it. He called me in the morning and said, “ dude wake up, lets do this!”. So, we decided we’ll setup a delivery team and have one really easy to remember number like 45 54 1111 and take orders for any restaurants. We learnt not all restaurants are best suited for handling their deliveries. Delivery is a serious business and someone needs to work on them exclusively to make it seamless.

What inspires us is how simple the solution really is. The “need” is real. Its staring at us. Sometimes, its amazing how some great ideas get invisible simply because they are too simple for us to recognize them. I mean, we all have been through the pain of ordering from multiple restaurants, especially in India. Web based models are not really cutting it as they don’t control the delivery process. Some one needs to get their hands dirty. We obliged.

3. What other advice do you have for other people just getting started?

A couple of things. One, if there is someplace to look for ideas, look at the things you do or use. Especially things you use regularly even if its not very convenient. I believe great opportunities often come from there. Secondly, when you bump into few great ideas, don’t just blindly pick one and kill the other without knowing its worth. We had a similar situation. We had two great ideas and almost chose the other one. By the stroke of luck, I found kickoff Labs. So, I posted 2 landing pages, one for each. Got less than expected response for one and got terrific response for Yo! Potato (http://www.yopotato.com).  We are going to spend the next few years building Yo! Potato and are realised that the time for the other idea has not come yet.

4. What do you like most about KickoffLabs?

For one, its damn simple. I would have never been able to test my ideas so rapidly if not for KickoffLabs. The solution is very intuitive and comes with all things needed to setup landing page, manage signups, send newsletters, social media integration – everything. Also, being a customer of KickoffLabs means to have 2 great entrepreneurs like Josh and Scott backing you up. Thats an unexpected big bonus for us.

Cheers,
Krishna

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