Wise Startup Blog

Gainesville has more restaurants per capita than any other city in North Florida. There are more than 10 different pizza restaurants, about 7 or more sushi restaurants, and countless Chinese food restaurants. Needless to say, there’s a big opportunity here.

Gainesville is the hub of North Central Florida. 110,000 residents live in Gainesville, and 50,000 of which are at the University of Florida. And these students get hungry. They like to eat out, and they like to get delivery to their dorm or apartment or house, because nobody likes cooking.

There are a number of current delivery options for Gators, and there are also a number of startups that have been spun out of this huge Gainesville delivery market.

Gainesville Delivery is Big Business

ChompMenus
This company was started by some college students going to Penn State. They were hungry late one night, and wanted to order food, but didn’t have any menus infront of them. Their solution? Create an online menu for their college town.

They’ve taken this model to the University of Florida, and now they have ChompMenus. It’s a directory of online menus for local restaurants, and they charge restaurants to be a featured restaurant on the website. Simple model, but easy to execute. The biggest challenge is selling the contracts to the restaurants, but it’s definitely something that can easily be duplicated or replicated in towns across the country.

Gator Food
So you know what you want to eat, but your favorite restaurant doesn’t deliver. What are you to do?

That’s where Gator Food comes in. They also have an online menu option like ChompMenus, but take the extra step of providing a great service for restaurants. You can call it “outsourced delivery,” they provide delivery services for restaurants.

So say you just opened a small pasta shop, Lucas Pasta in Gainesville, instead of having to hire a delivery driver, get insurance, and go through all of that hassle. You can work with Gator Foods, and they take care of all the delivery for you.

This is a great model and I think one of the areas that has the biggest opportunities for local businesses. Take an aspect of a business model, say delivery, which causes a lot of headaches for business owners, and create a business strictly out of delivery.

How To Start Your Own College Company

The best thing about being in college is everyone loves the city they’re in. All you have to do is shout “Go Gators,” and you’ll immediately receive a warm reception.

Apply this same methodology for working in your college town. We’re all Gators, so let’s see how we can work together. Small business owners like to work with fellow entrepreneurs and they LOVE to see kids in college trying to blaze their own trail.

So if you come up with an idea, start setting up meetings, talking to local business owners, and see what you can accomplish. The ideas mentioned above are simple, but what they did that you didn’t do is get off their ass and start the company.

So get going, if you have an idea, act on it, and let’s start building the next great set of college busineses, big or small.