“We previously owned a Nigerian restaurant in Chicago, if a convenient service was available, we would have definitely paid to have a company provide us with customized takeout bags that included popular Nigerian games like Ludo, Snake & Ladder and fun facts about Nigeria”
According to Door Dash, even before the start of the COVID crisis, 25% of adults say that they are eating out less often than they were the previous year. For nearly the past decade, there has been a steady decline in the number of meals consumed in restaurants. Customers, specifically millennials, simply don’t have the time to sit down at restaurants anymore; 90% of this generation order delivery at least once a week because they are active and constantly busy picking up their kids, finishing a business report, or staying late at work.
When you factor in the COVID pandemic, the dine-in experience has reduced drastically while delivery/takeout orders have sky rocketed. Currently there are approximately 2.5 million daily online orders between GrubHub, Door Dash, and UberEats. This figure does not include millions of walk-in takeout orders or deliveries managed independently by restaurants.
If we average 2.5 million daily orders across these three delivery platforms and using a conservative estimate of another 1.5 million walk-in and independent delivery orders, that means there are ~4 million takeout/deliveries orders a day. Now imagine the number of takeout bags used on an annual basis to support these orders. Let’s attempt to do the math:
- Assumption: To be conservative, we will assume that 1 takeout bag is used per order
- 4,000,000 daily x 365 days = 1,460,000,000 (1.46 billion takeout bags)
Today these takeout bags are in plastic or paper bags, which are usually disposed off or recycled immediately by the customer. Given that the COVID pandemic inclines us to stay home more, families and couples are looking for additional activities to take part in at home. One way a restaurant can provide more value to customers is by turning the paper bags into a form of entertainment for the consumers.
Think about it……. what if after eating takeout food, the delivery bag had games, puzzles, and pictures for coloring that the family can play together after dinner. Consumers will not only look forward to the food, but also look forward to getting together as a family to play the fun games on the bag. Given that I have no Photoshop skills, below is my bad attempt at a visual of what this product could look like:
Providing this type of takeout bags will further differentiate the restaurant from others because the consumer spends more time utilizing the bag, the restaurant’s brand and logo is permanently ingrained in the minds of the consumer and the consumer is more likely to re-order from the restaurant not just because of the food but because of the post meal entertainment.
Take us for example; we previously owned a Nigerian restaurant in Chicago, if a convenient service was available, we would have definitely paid to have a company provide us with customized takeout bags that included popular Nigerian games like Ludo, Snake & Ladder and fun facts about Nigeria. This white space provides a business opportunity for a new company, let’s call it “After Dinner Inc.”
What it is
- After Dinner Inc. is a company that designs customized restaurant takeout paper bags that includes games such as customized cross word puzzles, riddles and fun activities for customers to engage in after eating their takeout meals. The bags will include common games such as Tic-Tac-Toe, Sudoku, Snake & Ladder or games customized specifically for the restaurant.
How it works
- Restaurant owner logs into After Dinner’s website, selects their game of choice, uploads their logo and selects the quantity and size of takeout bags
- Restaurant makes a payment
- After Dinner sends the order to its 3rd party vendor in China to design and produce the customized bags. Here is an example of a Chinese company that provides this service for as low 3 cents per bag.
- Third Party company then ships the finished bags directly to the restaurant for use
Price
- Currently, takeout bags are sold on popular American site, webstaurantstore.com for 17 cents a bag. This provides perspective on how much one can sell each customized bag
Execution
- Spend some time on Google researching puzzles, games and activities that can be easily applied on a takeout bag
- Go to Alibaba.com to identify reputable paper bag manufacturers
- Work with the vendor on a few designs, some vendors provide samples for about $100
- Once a few samples are developed, create a picture of a professional looking mock up of the finished product
- Run ads on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn targeting restaurant owners and managers asking them to sign up for upcoming promotions
- Visit 20 local restaurants as well as franchises such as TGI Fridays and Chili’s, meet with the Restaurant Owner or Manager to get their feedback
- The level of engagement from the social media ads (likes, comments and shares) and feedback from restaurant owners will provide insight on the viability of the product
- Develop a website allowing users to view and select different games, bag sizes etc
- Embark on a marketing campaign that targets restaurant owners and managers, leverage the list of individuals who already signed up for promotions
Below is an excerpt from Facebook Ad Manager illustrating that one can run a Facebook Ad that targets Restaurant Owners and Supervisors, Owners of Facebook restaurant pages and followers of the National Restaurant Association. You can potentially reach 480,000 people in the US that fall into the aforementioned target audience.
