Aim of Project:
We aim to develop an application for “mom and pop” restaurants. Our idea is to encourage families to share their authentic signature dishes with the community. It has a two-way benefit of being a source of income for the restaurants, and providing foodies to experience the homestyle recipes from their own culture or try new awesome recipes from other cultures.
Market Size:
TAM – Our total available market can be estimated as all United States citizens with a smartphone or laptop. Since this will likely be an app and website, the user would need internet access and some device in order to use the application. Although we would like to target college students in our app via branding, we understand that this product would likely be accessible to everyone with access to the required technology. The number of US citizens with internet access is about 307 million, comprising 90% of the US population. Should we choose to only create a mobile app, our TAM would then reduce to the number of US adults with smartphones. This is approximately 85% of the US adult population, With 210 million US adults (18+), we would then have about 178.5 million users in our TAM.
SAM – Our serviceable market would be approximately all college affiliates within the United States with a cell phone/laptop. We estimate that the vast majority of college students in the US have access to this technology for simplicity. There are approximately 19 million college students in the United States. 63% of students have food delivered from off campus, leaving us with about 12 million students.
To get a stronger understanding of potential revenues, we see that the food delivery industry has been consistently increasing its revenues, with platform-to-consumer delivery earning 28.12 million in America. We know that the average American spends about $1,850 annually on food delivery. This would equate to $22.2 billion dollars in revenue annually.
SOM – Our Serviceable Obtainable Market can be estimated by the Stanford student population. We envision this to be a very valuable piece of our market because undergraduate students tend to have restricted food options based on the dining halls. Being in an area with some of the most expensive restaurants in the United States, the market for more financially accessible food options is fairly less competitive. Currently, there are approximately 17,000 students at Stanford. If we wanted to be more specific about our market, we could isolate the 7645 undergraduate students, as these are the ones that are typically without access to a kitchen and are forced to be on meal plans, making it impossible to create home-cooked meals themselves. Stanford is the university that uses Doordash the most, so we believe that this SOM is the perfect starting point for our company. The relative isolation and a limited number of nearby affordable options expand our market. If we continue with the understanding that the average American spends $1850 annually on delivery, then we would predict that we would earn about $14 million annually.
User Interviews and Attitude:
I spoke with two Master’s students here at Stanford. Let’s call them P1 and P2. Here’s how the interview went:
P1 – P1 likes to host themed parties and order food for himself and his friends. And he has a lot of friends too. P1 is interested in trying other cuisines and just found out he loves ramen. However, he likes his ramen with extra spice, just like all his other dishes. He does not understand why pork is so famous in the USA, but that does not stop him from trying out hamburgers at times. He likes to try new dishes but has some reservations: food should be spicy and exciting. Since he is fairly flexible about food choices, he orders from different restaurants for himself. When ordering for parties, he resorts to ‘safer’ choices like pita-hummus, pizza, or sandwiches. Also, he says that dining halls are boring.
P2 – P2 is a vegetarian who prefers to enjoy meals with his girlfriend. He craves homely Indian food. However, he has specific restrictions on cooking meat and vegetarian food with the same utensils. Due to this, he is particular about choosing vegetarian restaurants (oh, he does not like the taste of beyond meat – so many vegan restaurants are a no-go for him). So he finds comfort in Indian restaurants offering him more food options. His girlfriend forces him to try out other cuisines, and now he likes new recipes once in a while. When alone, he orders from the first Indian restaurant that pops up in his app. When in a group, he resorts to Thai cuisine or black-bean burgers.
From these interviews, we can gauge that students are interested in our app, but for different purposes. Both had positive feedback about the app but were worried about the trade-off between relevant food suggestions (comfort food) and suggested food suggestions (new recipes to try). Also, both students actively ordered from apps rather than dining in halls.
