Well, starting that way Glac! Basel has no BBQ food, it's not really made it here yet, and the food offering isn't too great outside Swiss/ French/ German cuisine.
That said, do we know outside our expat+ group that there is a demand, or want for such foods?
Not really, no.
So the plan is to start small anyway, and I'd probably aim to kickstarter it. So I have a logo being made up, I'm looking at sourcing my chilies in big amounts from abroad (if anyone knows anyone) wholesale.
We want to conduct some market research so I am going to make up some ribs, pulled pork buns, chili and associated sauces and through the wife's old work (selling cakes) we know how to get a temp place in the market. We will go down there armed with free food, nice amount of branding and get some free business cards made up with our website on (which will contain kickstarter info & survey too)
www.BBQninja.ch or
www.theBBQninja.com
Our logo is being made as we speak by someone from people per hour site. I'll get a select number of t shirts made, hoodies (I'll give them to mates as well), as well as a limited run of sauces to start.
The aim would be to establish the demand as much as we can and get the name out there to drive interest in our kickstarter, without having to invest thousands ourselves.
The aim would be to hit 20k CHF or 14k I think it's about that GBP. Why? Well in Basel you need 20k initial capital to launch a business. Not in the bank, you can use it, but you need to come along with 20k.
The 20k would be used for that, but then to buy a trailer that you normally see, but kit it fully out and make it fully functional as well as the rest being used to set up the eshop and certain stock.
How are we going to get 20k? Well I haven't ironed out all of the offerings at the moment as this snowballed a little, but I'm thinking of doing certain levels with mix and match of things;
- 20CHF = Bottle of BBQ sauce & Bottle of Chili Sauce
- 30CHF = Tshirt & BBQ Sauce or Chili Sauce
- 50CHF = Chili sauce, BBQ Sauce AND chili sauce
That would be for produce, so that backers didn't NEED to be swiss / basel based.
The other offerings would be food based. So like a loyalty card, you get x number of meals for your backing.
I really want to do some "black" ninja cards, which are like credit cards with our logo embossed on it and the membership number, nothing else. These would be like a nandos black card giving you unlimited meals. They could only be got (for example) with the 1000CHF pack, which gives you all sauces and clothing as well as lifetime black card.
These are all initial thoughts mind, I need to get the calculator out and work out the costs once I've found suppliers for all the pieces in my spreadsheet. So it would start fairly small, if there is demand and we will see where it goes.
The beauty of the kickstarter is that if we don't reach funding there is only a small amount lost by me.
I'm starting another kickstarter as well soon, but that's a product design lol I've had a busy week... good job work has been quiet!
but I wouldn't mind making up a giant batch of hot sauce for myself to be honest.