At first glance, it sounds like you may be overfitting an overly-comprehensive technical solution to an extremely cost-sensitive/archaic/offline-centered industry.
Explaining the stack you used to build this platform will likely come off as pure alien speak to the restaurant owners you try to sell to.
But that being said, I only understand restaurants in the US, and not Sicily.[0]
Research is a good place to start - first with your own product, then the larger market (how is it being used, how much value does it bring prestofood, how many orders do they process per day).
If the metrics give you conviction, start by talking to some restaurants.
There was a YC company (Trackin) that focused on this exact concept in the US that went through enough trouble that they've since pivoted to catering like Zesty, Zerocater, etc...
Oh, and effort != good product.
[0] Started/ran www.eatmise.com in SF, grossed 35K+, achieved ramen profit in 7 months solely on organic WOM.
I try to follow a low-carb diet and it's really easy to follow when you spend a Sunday cooking everything at once, then the rest of the week, reheating from that same menu.
Don't drink coffee, alcohol, or eat sweets/desserts except for fruit. Exclusively drink water, unsweetened almond/coconut milk.
I've asked some of my friends in college and for them, the notion of eating the same things every day is unfathomable. At least for someone who doesn't value food highly or today's culture around food, the benefits are immense.
The time you save that you'd usually spend casually browsing "where to eat" and "what to eat" is substantial. The time saved cooking along + just thinking about food in general.
It just takes one morning to cook it all together and prep for the week. Potatoes are a nice comfort and chicken is roasted whole.
Breakfast: 2-3 eggs, baked potatoes, 2 strips of bacon, with two corn tortillas.
Lunch (if needed, usually skip): Small bowl of homemade chia seed pudding with dark chocolate + strawberries and/or apple.
I walk on average 6-10 miles/day and run for 4 every other. Try to eat more fats/protein. Don't crash with this menu and can eat x2 volume if particularly hungry that day without worry.
Eek, went through the same thing except we did it for a whole year. Skillset or not, sharing core values/beliefs is most important. Because when shit goes south, if you have someone who is just as committed as you are (for the right reasons), there is nothing you can't overcome when the core values align.
Although this is really hard because people show their truest faces when shit goes south. So you won't know for sure unless this is someone who you've spent and enjoyed spending lots of time with for a while.
After spending time thinking critically about the past year, here are some rough open-ended questions I've come up with that I think would shed light into one's core values.
How do you approach solving a problem (any size, scope)? What locus of control do you believe in? Is there value in rolling up your sleeves?
If I ask him those questions, and he becomes offended at the fact, I think that will be a red flag. He seems to think that anything he says can't be questioned...going back to earlier, how he says he doesn't want to argue to get his point across when I asked him about what his role would be.
He said the way I asked it made him offended.
My view is that I touched on one of his weaknesses and it made him insecure about his position in the business.
Arguing is healthy. Just depends on how it comes & what it's over. Obviously, if your relationship deteriorates to the point that you are arguing for little value then that's bad - I do think arguing early is better than arguing late. It'll be insightful for you and him, to be honest. You'll learn a little more about yourself and a lot more about him in how the argument progresses and more importantly, how it ends.
All non-tech founders are insecure about their position in the business. I think any competent non-tech founder should be insecure about their position imo, if there is a component of technology to the business.
I was too, so I just kept working and supporting in as many ways as I could think of.
Thankfully, our product was online-to-offline, so there was plenty of work to be done.
> He seems to think that anything he says can't be questioned...going back to earlier, how he says he doesn't want to argue to get his point across when I asked him about what his role would be.
Such a red flag. Even if he is a great ... whatever this attitude is a big red flag. You won't be able to work this guy.
During the project I had to travel from San Francisco to Pennsylvania for family obligations. I managed to do a pretty good job of keeping my coding schedule up while flying and spending time with my family, but I ended up having to stay up pretty late to finish each day's website.
By the end of the trip I was really burnt out but I still needed to crank something out on the flight home. I had an idea for a site where you could enter a few hexadecimal color codes and the screen would transition between them. It seemed totally easy in my sleep deprived state but when I started working on it on the plane I totally floundered.
When I finally got back home to my apartment in SF, it was 9pm and I had virtually nothing to to show for my day's work. Also, I was now freaking out. I didn't know how I was going to be able to push up anything!
I took a look at what I originally wanted to do and what little I had done and realized if I reigned in my scope a bit, I could get a website out before I completely lost my mind. I pared it down to just two colors and cut out all the bells and whistles and just barely managed to get it out the door. And then I had a very, very nice sleep.
Cool, thanks Jennifer! That was some serious dedication, super admirable. :)
One more question, although I've already asked a lot of you. How did you make sure you conceptually understood what you were learning at every stage, not just simply taking code and just replacing bits of it here and there?
I had tried picking up textbooks and online courses before I started the 180 project and none of them stuck for me. While I could do the exercises, but I never felt like I was understanding how to actually use the skills I was learning.
With the 180 Websites project I was forced to figure out how to apply code to make something function. I didn't always know exactly how things worked, but by starting with small manageable tasks I was able to have a pretty good understanding of what I was doing. Pushing forward, day by day, the things that were a bit hazy started falling into place.
Delivery is not as heavy as a cost as running the kitchen itself. I think food production is so overlooked in these discussions. The operating cost for a kitchen is insane, labor, ingredients, storage, inventory, etc...
Peter Thiel always uses restaurants as a good example of a business model that is so costly that there's no margin left, combined with the impossibility of a monopoly. So you take something that's already tight on margins and you make that even tighter with delivery.
Isn't one of Gobble's selling point is that it's super cheap? like $10/person? I remember seeing that as their main homepage jumbotron, which seemed to successfully target and reassure their audience of parents who wanted to know how much it'd cost to feed a family of X.
Explaining the stack you used to build this platform will likely come off as pure alien speak to the restaurant owners you try to sell to.
But that being said, I only understand restaurants in the US, and not Sicily.[0]
Research is a good place to start - first with your own product, then the larger market (how is it being used, how much value does it bring prestofood, how many orders do they process per day).
If the metrics give you conviction, start by talking to some restaurants.
There was a YC company (Trackin) that focused on this exact concept in the US that went through enough trouble that they've since pivoted to catering like Zesty, Zerocater, etc...
Oh, and effort != good product.
[0] Started/ran www.eatmise.com in SF, grossed 35K+, achieved ramen profit in 7 months solely on organic WOM.