Middle of the night ramblings

[demariana]

I am getting alittle bit tired of this being up almost every hour on the hour each night. At least I am not eating in the middle of the night. The other good thing is that I feel awake during the day so I think I am getting enough sleep even with it being so broken up. It is weird to me to be so awake at this time of the night. I will try to head back to bed in a bit of course. Snuggle with Phaeton and the cats.

I think some of my insomnia is worry. We are still in a wait and see mode at work. No answers to the millions of questions. The big one being will we still have a job come June? I am split 50/50 what I want the answer to that question to be. I enjoy my job, but it is dead end. There is no chance of advancement. It will get boring after awhile and I know I will get frustrated in a couple of years. If the center does get outsourced that would force me to do something else. It would also give me some money to start that process. I have been giving the idea of starting my own business serious thought again. I have even asked Jeshua to help me with a small marketing plan. I have been asking Caritas for support and ideas.

The general idea is to start a grocery shopping business for busy people. It would NOT be a small errand service. I want to concentrate on doing the big weekly, bi monthly, or monthly food shopping trips for people. My target market would mostly be single parents or families where both parents work. One of the selling points would be that I would save them money in the end because of using coupons and sales to save them more than what they will be spending on my fees. I would do the shopping trip and then deliver and put the groceries away. I think that it would take about 4 hours total a trip. I am thinking of charging $10-12/ hour. Each client would get a free hour consultation to determine shopping needs. I could handle about 10-20 clients I think each month. My goal would be to get eventually have a set of long term happy clients. There should be 10-20 people in Lexington who could benefit from this type of service. That is a very small percentage of the population. The big dream of this would be to go back to school and get a nutrition degree and then start meal planning for customers at a higher price. Finding recipes and then stocking their pantry and fridge with healthy meals for the week. Giving a menu each week and maybe even working in their kitchen at times to premake some of the healthy foods.

These ideas keep running through my head and waking me up in the middle of the night. The What Ifs and the scared thoughts of if the job does stay and I am stuck in a dead end job, or the scared thoughts that it does get outsourced and I have to do something else. I would have a good 6 months to find something else and/or to start my business. I think that is a good window. It helps that RAnDoM is being very supportive of my beginning thoughts of starting a business. They have been great at bouncing ideas off of, and fleshing out some of my thoughts.

My stomach is doing flip flops right now. I think it is because this is the first time I have written in depth about my idea for public reading.

In other news I finally got back into doing DDR yesterday. I did about a hour. Much fun on endless mode. I got the 2nd high score and had a streak of over 500 moves in a row that were great or perfect. Much fun. I have been playing cribbage again on Furry Muck. I am in 2 tourneys on the muck. Phaeton and I played some cribbage last night before bed and that was fun. We had a date night and went out to Brooklyn Pizza and then Graeter's ice cream. We also went and wandered around Barnes and Noble. Jeshua and I had fun Friday night watching Star Gate and then heading out to Denny's.

Guess that is about it at this time. I think I will try to head back to bed.

Comments

[pushmearound.livejournal.com]

I think that sounds like an awesome idea. Maybe if it grows enough you could actually start a business. Who knows where it could go. Good luck with it :)

[demariana.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I could branch out and train some employees to be able to take on more clients. That is also a thought.

[pushmearound.livejournal.com]

Of course. I mean, if you give some time, you could make it a really big business. It definitely has potential.

[sydb42.livejournal.com]

I think that's a good idea, but you may want to widen (or reconsider) your target market. DINKs (Double Income, No Kids) have the most disposable income and would be more likely to just pay someone else to do their shopping. I think getting parents (other than potentially ones who make 6 figure incomes) to buy into the idea, even if it would actually save them money, would be harder. I would be quite impressed if you managed to talk a single parent, especially a mom, into letting you do the grocery shopping. Not saying it wouldn't be possible, just I think single moms would be your hardest target audience. She probably already knows how to save money with coupons, maybe not as well as you (few do), but enough that she would consider it "extravagant" to hire someone else to do it.

Something else to think about, which you may have already, is that some grocery stores already do the shopping for you, for a low fee (one that I've used in town charges a mere $5 service fee). You order your groceries online and pick them up at a designated time. You don't even have to get out of your car as they load it up for you. And yes, they will take your coupons, just like if you came to the store and did the shopping yourself.

There are a couple of reasons why I don't use this service anymore (but I may pick it back up for a while after the baby is born), and this may help you sell yourself as being better than that kind of service. The big thing was that they didn't have the full selection of groceries that I needed online, so even when they filled my entire order, I would still have to make a separate trip. Something else was that they were often out of stock of something that was on my list, so even if I thought I would be getting something, sometimes I didn't. And finally, the times I ordered fresh produce and the ONE time I ordered lunchmeat from them from the deli, quite a bit of it looked inedible to me, so I started going to a separate grocery to get fresh produce and the things I couldn't get from that store.

A good thing they did is we always got a bag of freebies equal or greater than our $5 service fee, so it was fun to see what new stuff we'd get each week. So, you may consider including some freebies with your shopping trips.

Anyway, just a few thoughts, though I know I don't fit the target audiences you were thinking of (SAHM). FWIW, I heard about the grocery service above from someone in my MOMS Club who used it regularly, so parents (even SAHMs) aren't a BAD target audience, I just think they may be a harder sell. I don't know if anyone other than she or I ever used that service in our club, so maybe we were just the "lazy" moms. ;) Also, FWIW, the one time I had someone offer to pay me to do their grocery shopping for them was from a single man.

Take this or leave it, I'm not sure you were even looking for advice, but since this is sort of something I've considered in the past (no way would I do it right now, and when I was, I was going to do it for friends, not as a business), I wanted to offer some thoughts.

[demariana.livejournal.com]

I was not really looking for advice, but thanks. I do not know of a store in Lexington that has a shopping service. Might not be a big enough town. Mostly this was just a short description typed out early in the morning (or late at night) to finally put the idea to paper in and out in public.

[sydb42.livejournal.com]

ValuMarket is who does the grocery service for a fee here in town. I don't know if they have any in Lexington though.

http://www.valumarket.com/ if you wanted to see how they do it.

[pushmearound.livejournal.com]

Actually, Slones offers the shopping online and then you come and pick it up. But they don't deliver or anything like that. Delivery is definitely key in making your's work. It's an excellent idea.

[ainabarad.livejournal.com]

I hope the insomnia gets better/goes away... Sleep good, hon. *super big hugs*

[illandaria.livejournal.com]

I think your business is very cool. If I were in Lexington I would totally use that kind of service. It'd keep me honest and I could be assured of actuallly getting the things I needed.