Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: New Business Model? (aka how to create a food monopoly)
as a chef/BE I think that the only problems with this plan is this:
1) finding good quality organics with the right stats can take months
2) people want the best as credits are often a non-issue...and it may be that established chefs can only make the best of product x because they hoarded a spawn of oh lets say fruit from 6 months ago.
3) a lot of people who may be interested in this kind of service don't really have the lot space for a factory...it only takes 1 lot...I know...but a lot of people are hoarders of loot, and every extra bit of storage helps.
4) it often takes burning through a crate or 2 of subcomponents just to get a good result (mostly amazing successes)...and you may want to inform your customers of that.
the other bad thing that could happen is that people could get the perception that the quality will come out the same as what they saw on another vendor...and may begin sending hate mails when the quality they get fails to live up to their somewhat unrealistic expectations.
other than that...might be an interesting experiment on Bria, or one of the other large servers (chilastra...or what was that other one...). the smaller servers will quite often have entrenched established chefs with dedicated followings...so might not be as successful there.
*edit*
forgot to add that without the extra 2 exp points...the difference in food quality will be quite noticeable...
Message Edited by Dsabre on 09-19-2004 11:59 AM
on the bigger servers I think that demand forces prices up...if the seller wants to maintain a stocked vendor...and I think everyone knows how annoying it is to find an empty vendor that someone has been advertising...and then if you go there 2 or 3 times, and its always empty...odds are you're not going to go there again.
as for how this may affect your service...you may want to get multiple chef alts (maybe persuade a few of your BE partners). If you think this may be attractive to a lot of people...then spending 10 minutes per person may wind up giving you one very long line (and a lot of annoyed people towards the back).
you probably also want to state some set hours so that you're not always glued to your shop (unless an alterior motive is to socialize more...). and perhaps set up some kind of "drop-off" system for orders so that your customers who can't make it during your "open" hours can still get stuff.
and if you can pool your creds together to purchase 15 points worth (+5 comes from the chef apron...which is cheap, and easy to get) of CA's for food exp...that'll really help as well. (although on bria I suspect you'd need about 50 mil worth of credits to do so). even getting to +10 total would really help...that extra point could mean an extra minute of duration, or an extra 10 points of buff power...
Well, I agree that this doesn't offer the client the "ultimate" quality stuff, and "double buff" vercupti for example is probably out of the question. But for everything else, I think this would be very viable, and that is because the ingredients needed for the most popular foods are very very easy to aquire relative to almost any profession. No planet specific stuff, or say specific types of vegetables or what not, just very generic stuff "berries, fruit, vegetables etc". So on any given shift, there is likely to be something "usable" and like I said, this business model works best if you are paired with a willing resource harvester who would stockpile such things and offer them in a vendor in the same shop. Even if the resource guy just sold everything he harvested at 5cpu that price would be extremely attractive to the customer (since when you buy chef food I think we came out with a number in the 25cpu-30cpu range for bivoli and brandy before) and he'd make a killing himself.
Dsabre wrote:
sounds interesting...
as a chef/BE I think that the only problems with this plan is this:
1) finding good quality organics with the right stats can take months
2) people want the best as credits are often a non-issue...and it may be that established chefs can only make the best of product x because they hoarded a spawn of oh lets say fruit from 6 months ago.
3) a lot of people who may be interested in this kind of service don't really have the lot space for a factory...it only takes 1 lot...I know...but a lot of people are hoarders of loot, and every extra bit of storage helps.
4) it often takes burning through a crate or 2 of subcomponents just to get a good result (mostly amazing successes)...and you may want to inform your customers of that.
the other bad thing that could happen is that people could get the perception that the quality will come out the same as what they saw on another vendor...and may begin sending hate mails when the quality they get fails to live up to their somewhat unrealistic expectations.
other than that...might be an interesting experiment on Bria, or one of the other large servers (chilastra...or what was that other one...). the smaller servers will quite often have entrenched established chefs with dedicated followings...so might not be as successful there.
Two differences, and they are big. First, you're selling directly to the gunbunnies, doctors, and so forth. No going through a chef. In fact, you're cuttingchefs out entirely. Second, you're selling finished BE products, so you're stimulating the economy there. In this model, a BE could probably get 40k/crate of BSN, sold directly to an appreciative customer (ever notice how BE's are the "bad guys" now for selling 30k crates, but chefs are "good guys" for selling 150k/crate brandy?). This would likely have the effect of pushing up the price of BE additives since demand would go up, and supply way way down.
GFoyle wrote:
Conceptually though, what's the difference between doing what you describe and running a full-blown consultancy providing all schematics (food and addatives) for resources on a given Bill of Materials?
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
Two differences, and they are big. First, you're selling directly to the gunbunnies, doctors, and so forth. No going through a chef. In fact, you're cuttingchefs out entirely. Second, you're selling finished BE products, so you're stimulating the economy there. In this model, a BE could probably get 40k/crate of BSN, sold directly to an appreciative customer (ever notice how BE's are the "bad guys" now for selling 30k crates, but chefs are "good guys" for selling 150k/crate brandy?). This would likely have the effect of pushing up the price of BE additives since demand would go up, and supply way way down.
This is going to depend a lot on your individual server economy. With the prices being paid for orgainic resources on my server (Chilastra) the breakeven price for (decent)BSN's is 50K/crate (if I sell below that I could sell the resources and get more money). This is the reason I no longer make addatives.
Selling at that price, even, to non-chefs just isn't viable when Vassarian can still be had for 150K/case if you know where to look (although the "going rate" for Vassarian these days is 250K/case).
TBH, on Chili at least, a "consultancy" could have a far better chance of making sales than the "traditional" craftsman model (effectively replacing the credit economy with barter in a hyper-inflationary system).