Posts filed under 'Establishments' : Where do you want to be in the future? At one of these revolutionary establishments.
Recently I have been thinking about consumer to consumer lending. There are a few sites out there that specialize in this, like Zopa, but it is all kind of geared toward the generalist eBay type crowd. Basically what we will do is create a business model where consumers lend to consumers for good causes. Like building up the community, doing good for the environment, etc.. I would feel a lot better about lending my money if I knew where it was going and how it is going to be used. Also, this creates a selling point, you can charge better rates if people are more emotionally attached.
February 25th, 2006
Think about it for a moment… Reflect on your past… Try to believe once again that buying music could be a blast…
That is exactly what the Music Thunderdome is going to be. Remember the store Tomorrow is Yesterday? . Think about a store layout much like that. The idea is that we would make the experience of purchasing music an experience again. What I mean by that is we are going to make a music store in which people go there to have a better buying experience.
We would stock it with plenty of music, all different types of media. Including vinyl, CD, 8 track, reel to reel, and even.. Get ready for this.. iTunes kiosks. The iTunes kiosks would be a place for people that hear something in the store that they like and they can download it right there in the store. Not everyone owns a computer and has access to high speed, so as a service we would allow them to log on to their account and start downloading.
In addition to all of the forms of media, we would also sell items to play your music: iPods, turntables, reel to reels, etc. We would also sell memorabilia for bands etc.
Now, the kicker…. A room in the back where people can go and eat food, drink coffee, talk music and even listen to music. A lounge type area for our customers to hang out. Every Friday night we would have live bands play just to complete the experience.
Welcome to the revolution….
February 4th, 2006
Last night Steph brought light to a lovely idea she had. Basically what you do is go online and pick out your pizza, then you pick out which movie you want to rent. The deliveryman brings em both!! Of course, you can extend this to Chinese food, etc… Its a great way of getting exactly what you want, when you want it.
January 29th, 2006
This is an idea for a restaurant for kids and adults alike. I was driving around thinking about baseball card stores and how they never make enough money to stay open. The reason for this, as we well know, is lack of diversification. Unless you are dealing extremely high-end baseball cards from the 20’s-50’s and selling them at auctions like Sotheby’s, it is nearly impossible to stay afloat.
I can always remember as a kid how much I loved baseball card stores, and being a kid, I did not have any money to buy anything. Therein lies part of the problem for such specialty stores. The idea is for a restaurant that also contains a baseball card shop. I know this sounds strange, but think about a “FunLand” area sort of like McDonald’s. The difference being that the entire restaurant is a “FunLand”. There would be good food there, a great atmosphere and of course baseball/sports cards and trinkets. There would be a section of the restaurant devoted to those “impulse buys”, instead of having random items, these would revolve around sports cards. So, after you are done with your bacon cheeseburger etc. the kids go over to the card area and dive right in.
This would also work for adults, as hard as it is to find a card shop anymore. This is just an idea on how to make a baseball card store work without having to go all Dungeons and Dragons on it. There are alot of details to be worked out, but I think it is a workable idea.
January 10th, 2006
I was reading one of my favorite business newsletters, Springwise, when I stumbled upon O’garage. Now, this is great if I had any fuckin idea what the happens under the hood of a car, but for me, I wouldnt get much use out of it. Now, however, I pine, want and need a business like “Fresh Sawdust.” The same concept as O’garage, basically a rentable woodshop where you can even buy the wood. Not every guy (besides Wally) can afford a router, planer, drum sander, band saw, table saw, and drill press and have the room to store it. So why not open up woodshop stations to rent out. I like the idea of offering sandwhiches like Ogarage. Of course I also like the idea of a bar too, but I think it might be hard to insure a place that combines alcohol and industrial machinery to amateurs, but then again who knows.
January 7th, 2006
A clothing store for every man. When I go out and want to buy a PLAIN T-Shirt, nothing fancy, no adverts on it, with or without a pocket made out of cotton it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to find it. I end up going to Wal-Mart and buying a three pack of Hanes - which pisses me off. The idea for the store is for it to carry normal clothes, shoes, hats, etc. for normal guys. A couple of weeks ago I was on a mission to get long johns, plain colored T-shirts and a pair of canvas slip-on shoes. I must have travelled to 5 different stores and was on the verge of committing a homicide on all those happy holiday shoppers.
Everyman USA Clothing is going to have simple, well-made clothing that is not too flashy but also not cheap Wal-Mart garbage. Everything from T-shirts to shoes to belts to jackets to socks and underwear. Nothing flashy, not trendy, just there. So the next time I need a sweatshirt that does not have the logo of some Euro-trash hippy designer and a black leather belt with a silver buckle I can go to ONE store, avoid the idiotic crowds and get on with my life: watching tv, playing video games and generally making the world a better place.
December 20th, 2005
This is an idea I had a few months back. I will start off by saying that this is not an establishment that I would be interested in, but I am sure that it would make us mad dough.
It is exactly what the title says: a Nascar bar. The kicker is that the waitresses are dressed sexily like pit crew workers and refill your beer with pitchers that look like the gas cans that Nascar uses in the pits. Just try to imagine making the bar look exactly like the pit on race day. The only differences would be scantily clad women, tons of alcohol and plasma tv’s everywhere showing clips and/or races 24/7. The possibilities are endless, we would not want it to be too gaudy though, you know a classy Nascar joint.
Addendum: Another idea: even if we did not want to do the whole bar thing we could simply promote the gas can pitchers. We could sell the number 8 can, or even pitch the idea to a beer company and they could sell specialy cases much like the “keg can” that Heineken had years back. Now that idea is definitely patent pending..
December 10th, 2005
Okay, so it is not the greatest business, kind of smarmy, but those seem to be making money. And I felt like messing with this blog. I got this idea when I was on this all day interview for a shitty job, a door to door salesman type position. One of our stops to make sure that, “their phone lines are up to date,” was a county animal shelter. Here is what we do, these animal shelters have Cute little dogs and cats, but have you ever walked in to one of these shit holes? Not exactly, sales conducive. What we do is we wholesale these animals. We become a reseller of these animals. We buy them from the animal shelters for like $40. Then we hard sell them to homes, either over the phone, door to door, or through “adoption parties.” (see tupperware parties) So we then sell these kitties or puppies for like $100. Then we make a “spread.” Who the hell can turn down kittens or puppies? I mean, and we would make this full service, cold calls, follow-ups, etc… Anyway, just an idea, it seems like people are making a lot of money selling crappy services, and ad space using the same format. Why not make the product kitties?
July 18th, 2005
This restaurant would consist of a “wall of fame” very similar to many other restaurants that contain pictures of famous people that have eaten there before. The main difference is that the pictures on our walls are from everyday people, who for at least a moment in their lives, are now famous.
I came up with this idea on the way to Lake Geneva, I passed a small diner and thought about all of the people that travel from all over the Midwest that come to Lake Geneva and perhaps look forward to eating at a particular restaurant. I am sure that most of the businesses in a town like Geneva are based and rely heavily on tourism. So, these no name tourists come from all around to vacation and eat a good burger. What do the restaurants give back?? Nothing. Besides good food and perhaps a good story.
With all of this in mind we would construct a wall of fame for people that attend our restaurant. This can be done either with paper pictures or even digital monitors that scroll through visitors. The main key to this is that the size of your picture or “level of your fame” would be determined by how many miles you have traveled. Example: if our restaurant was located in Rockford, IL and someone ate there from London they would get the “supreme picture” say an 11″x7″, and a person from Chicago would get a 2″x3″.
This idea hits on many levels: great food, excellent atmosphere and the main key - fame for some poor schmuck who has been suckered into dragging his nagging wife and ungrateful kids across the country for what they call a “vacation”.
July 7th, 2005
This is a rather simple idea. Essentially we need to buy an old movie theatre and gut out the inside of each individual “theatre”. Rather than having the stadium style seatomg we would set it up like restaurant containing tables and chairs and perhaps even sofas. We would of course offer food and drink (alcoholica and non) and the type of food served would be “fun food”. An idea within this idea is to bring back Stan’s old idea of a store that specializes in selling french fries. This is one example of the type of food we could serve.
Back to the theatre - we would show old movies and have theme nights/weeks. One night would be Tarantino night and the next week could be boat movies, or something to that effect. Instead of people going to two separate places for dinner and a movie they could get it done all in one shot. The dine-in movie theatre is your one stop shop for date night.
May 21st, 2005
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