12.1 No Menu restaurant

Description: “great food takes time” restaurant has to be very close to a large grocery store for food runners to get odd ingredients. There is no menu, you can pre-order before sitting in person, delivery or take-out. Servers take the order, an expo finds a good example of the recipe in the system (or had to find and add one). Next they determine if they have the ingredients and send an expo to get them if they don’t. They also estimate the time of the longest item to cook and relay it to the server. If this dish requires something not available, expo proposes a substitute or tells them it will take x amount of time to import this. Customer could pay a deposit for future dish or accept a substitute. Also take down allergy info ahead of time. Server gives an estimated cooking time and cost. Each chef cooks for 4 people. With the right software this could work.

The software itself could be proprietary and sold to other restaurants/chains as a service.

Pros: unique idea, no restaurant is like this anywhere. Tech is proprietary, can be sold for another revenue stream. You would attract better/more creative chefs with this model, improving the quality of dishes.

Cons: restaurant business, tight margins. Complexity may make this impossible. Technology has to be seamless. The wait times for some dishes could mean customers are sitting long periods at each table, this could mean lower sales per minute or higher drink sales beforehand. Customers could intentionally make it harder, obscure dishes etc. more skilled chefs needed for this, better employees

12.2 Northern Caffeine

Description: what plants have caffeine in them that can be grown in northern climates? Yaupon, tea trees, variations of these. Sell it as an alternative to imported coffee from overseas. Grow it on northern lands, alternative to drinking alcohol but still has stimulating effects.

The isolated, cold places of North America have high rates of alcoholism. An alternative, heathier substance is needed. This requires marketing a product heavily for it to become the local staple of choice.

This plant may have to be genetically created.

Pros: avoids the importing of coffee, creates a drink to become cultural. Creates a crop for the north to export south if effective and popular.

Cons: research and development could take a long time or never happen, cost too much to develop or never be cheaper than bulk imported coffee. Could someone else replicate this in a lab?

12.3 Multi Keyboard

Description: a keyboard for laptops where the labels on the keys could be changed quickly to let you type in different languages. Could be a plate of caps that clips and unclips onto the laptop. One for English, one for Russian, etc. Or each key is a small screen that can change symbol. Different plastic/rubber layers that have the keys labeled on them, switch the protective cover.

Pros: very useful to immigrants, people learning other languages. Simple design can attach to existing keyboards

Cons: easily copied, market may be very small.

12.4 Warranty & Free Stuff

Description: a web-based service that analyses warrantees given from major corporations and organizes your warranties. It scans the fine print and pulls out the needed data. Gives you calendar reminders of what to do and when. You can also use it for free contests, you give it a decoy email and it alerts you for an actual winning email and ignores the spam.

Marketed as an advocate for your purchases, holds the manufacturer/seller accountable for their products.

Pros: makes contests and warranties worth playing, finds money for consumers, saves people money, holds firms to account for their promises. Likely unique technology for consumers

Cons: small margins likely ad or subscription based, firms will fight against this making their warrantees harder to read/beat, contests harder to enter. This could become a cat and mouse game between manufacturers/sellers and this service, increasing costs.

12.5 Festival Wedding

Description: Festival wedding, costed out to pay for itself, 2 days for friends and family, 2 days for public. Wedding party has to provide x number of festival goers ticket sales to get a paid for wedding. How does the company benefit? Hiring the wedding guests? Could be a few (or one) artist they like, playing a night for the wedding, one night for paying customers. Need a good venue, rural private land likely.

If you want, the wedding guests (as a gift) could work the festival to offset costs.

Pros: offsetting cost of a wedding, unique, fun. The guests get a show and a wedding, experience they’ll never forget.

Cons: could be copied semi easily by bigger firms. Running a successful festival is hard enough (they use volunteers) and not all make it. All the work of wedding planning with all the work of planning a festival/concert.

12.6 Found Materials Furniture Shop

Description: Found materials furniture shop, possible only online or walk in shop. Can you complete with Ikea on price? Can you guarantee products? 5 year warranty?

Furniture store built of materials found in free section of Craigslist, Facebook, etc. Sell entirely online or in small store. Built to last, can they be done cheaply enough? Start online to judge demand. Offer custom painting/staining. Bed bug checks required. A “cooking” room would be required to heat the furniture to bed bug proof heat. Online may be the way for this. Approach developers and offer to take old fixtures (clawfoot tubs, doorknobs, copper sinks) before they demolish a house. Same for landlords who have tenants leave junk, offer to remove it if usable. Offer delivery service for a price.

Train every employee on repairs, delivery, cash sales

Pros people want cheap good stuff, everyone needs household items. Undercut Ikea, etc. recycling angle may get people more committed

Cons cost businesses are hard to run, competitors are : facebook marketplace, re-store. Low profit margins, tight margins compared to free or cheap stuff.

12.7 Industrial Park Drive Thru

Description: Drive thru in industrial areas for large trucks, multi height windows. Find out what they like and what their current eating habits are when travelling inside a city.

Pros they don’t have to get out of the truck, grab and go markups. Industrial parks and inner city trucking last to automated likely due to skill required.

Cons truckers want to get out and walk, use a toilet. Do they want to spend money on this? Self driven trucks on day make this obsolete. Truckers inside cities may not stop for breaks as the runs are short.

12.8 Dance Composer

Description: App and wearable device that makes music out of your dancing/daily movements. It would monitor your movements during the day and notify you when you’re moving in a rhythmic way. The app will give you a basic beat/selection of beats created by your movements. You may upload those to mixing software and create more complex music. It can also make sounds as you move in real time, allowing you to make music by movement as you move.

Pros can help athletes work on their rhythm/timing and creates a whole new way to use your body as a musical instrument.

Cons may exist already, data mining possibilities, using movements as data points. The costs to develop this technology may render it not profitable.

12.9 Toilet Fuel

Description: Methane capturing bathroom and bedroom. Puts it in a tank until full enough to burn. This could be part of an apartment building that captures all the unit’s methane to be burnt in an on-site generator, feeding heat/power back to the building or to be sold back to the grid.

Pros make money off bathroom gas, helps power you house feed back into grid power. If you already use generators (isolated people) helps using a power source you already use.

Cons methane explosion if done carelessly. The burning of this gas may smell and creates greenhouse gasses. The costs of capture may exceed to benefits of energy