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Samsung has a huge presence at IFA. Its booth takes up an entire floor in City Cube, the newest and shiniest exhibition hall at the Messe Berlin. The company’s show area is so big, it’s in its own separate building. Samsung also held not one but two…
The market these days is full of food related startups, especially those that are trying to deliver meals to the home. Nuances vary. Some bring in all the ingredients and a recipe to be cooked at home. Some bring ready-to-eat food.
Most are focused on scaling with gobs of venture capital.
I have a different thought.
Forget scaling.
Focus on the food.
Do you have a passion for cooking?
That’s really where the focus needs to be. On creating good food.
Not simple, boring, scalable food.
Good food. Sophisticated food.
Choose a cuisine in which you can excel. Go deep into its vocabulary. The recipes. The traditions. What did the mothers and grandmothers cook? How? What are the subtleties and deeper nuances of technique?
Come up with a menu that is yours. Your signature. Something a great cook like you will proudly stand behind.
Then, figure out the logistics of how to bring it to a broader set of families who appreciate good, home-cooked food.
Not scalable food.
Forget venture capital. You are doing a bootstrapped business. Your goal is to scale to $1 million, not $1 billion.
Yes, you will use technology to manage your business. Take orders. Manage logistics. Manage inventory. But all those are incidental. The heart and soul of your business is the quality of your cuisine.
Of course, the players around you who are trying to scale are also figuring out many growth hacks. Study those. Learn from them.
How do they structure their pricing? Their logistics? Their customer acquisition strategy?
Some numbers:
If you price at $50 per meal for two, and assume that each family will order four times a month from you, you need 400 families to do ~$1M a year. Of course, there will be families of four, and single households in the mix that will introduce complexities, but your average is probably in that 400-family ballpark.
If the food is good, they will stay with you, so over time, once you’ve acquired 400 customers, you don’t have to put in any further work into customer acquisition. You don’t have to grow if you don’t want to either.
In fact, if you can get into specific communities where the word-of-mouth travels really fast – a school, for example, where all the parents talk and share notes constantly – you may be able to acquire your target number of customers really quickly and easily.
After that, you can relax and focus on the food and the cuisine.
I wish I knew a few such entrepreneurs right here in the Bay Area who specialize in specific types of cuisine … Italian, French, Bengali, Chinese, Vietnamese, Belgian … I would probably order from several of them for change of taste. I would probably also order for parties, larger orders, larger menus, 6-8 people, may be 3-4 times a month … we entertain all the time!
And very quickly, just through my network, you could acquire 20 families who would do the same.
This opportunity can be tailored to different parts of the world, focused on different cuisines, with different customer acquisition strategies.
I think it’s a very cool one!
Photo credit: ? Nick/Flickr.com.
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Hard to believe that soon it will be a decade since Johnny Apple of The New York Times died of complications from thoracic cancer.
The Times has always had great writers – like A. M. Rosenthal, Joseph Lelyveld, Maureen Dowd, Max Frankel, Gail Collins, Bob Herbert, among others.
But Raymond Walter Apple Jr. (November 20, 1934 – October 4, 2006), known to all as “Johnny,” and bylined as R.W. Apple Jr., was an authentic larger-than-life figure. A massive man with a voracious appetite for food and politics and gossip and fine wines, there was no topic he couldn’t tackle with acuity and knowledge on deadline.
Critics said he had very high self-regard, perhaps justifiably so. Johnny reported from some 120 countries. His last article for the paper while he was still alive was on Singapore cuisine, published on September 30, 2006.
What many journalists didn’t realize was that Johnny poured a lot of study and research into his work. In that sense, one could be forgiven if one termed him a scholar-scribe.
The last New York Times article he wrote, entitled “The Global Gourmet,” was published posthumously on October 5, 2006. The Times’ travel section had planned to run that valedictory piece several weeks later but it was brought forward due to his death. Johnny was a difficult and temperamental man to deal with, as numerous editors and colleagues will attest.
But what a writer! Hard to imagine that we will see such brilliance and productivity any time soon. Unless, of course, you believe in instant reincarnation. Come back, Johnny, you’d have a roaring time with The Donald and The Hillary!
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Sept 2 (Reuters) – Two bombs killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens outside a court complex in northwest Pakistan on Friday, a rescue official said, hours after militants killed two people in a Christian neighbourhood in the same region.
Both attacks were claimed by Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, a breakaway Pakistani Taliban faction believed to be behind some of the past year’s deadliest attacks, including last month’s bombing of lawyers in the city of Quetta that killed 74 people.
The bodies of policemen, lawyers and other civilians were recovered, said Haris Habib, chief rescue officer in the city of Mardan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“First there was a small blast followed by a big blast,” Habib told Reuters.
The twin attacks in the northwest came one day after Pakistan’s army touted the successes of its fight against myriad armed jihadist groups, though a spokesman acknowledged there was still a long way to go.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Friday’s latest bombing would “not shatter our unflinching resolve in our war against terrorism”.
“These receding elements are showing frustration by attacking our soft targets. They shall not get space to hide in Pakistan,” Sharif said in a statement.
Jamaat-ur-Ahrar’s spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, vowed to stage more attacks in a statement sent to Reuters.
“We appeal to civilians to remain away from law enforcement installations and these un-Islamic courts. We will target them more,” he said.
More than 20 people were killed in an attack in December on a government office in Mardan, which was also claimed by Jamaat-ur-Ahrar.
Earlier in the day, four gunmen wearing suicide-bomb vests attacked a Christian neighbourhood in the Khyber tribal region, killing at least one security guard and a civilian resident, military officials said.
Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, which has targeted Christians in the past, claimed responsibility within hours of the attack.
The Islamist group, which briefly declared allegiance to Middle East-based Islamic State in 2014 but recently said it was no longer affiliated with them, also staged the Easter Day attack on Christians in a park in Lahore that killed 72 people including at least 29 children.
The attackers exchanged fire with security forces and were killed, the military said.
The area is near Warsak Dam, 20 km (12 miles) northwest of Peshawar.
The official said the attackers might have been attempting to enter an adjacent security installation by exploiting weaker security arrangements in the residential area.
Christians, who number around 2 million in a nation of 190 million people, have been the target of a series of attacks in recent years.
Just a day before Friday’s attacks, the chief army spokesman briefed the media on the progress of the military’s two-year-old offensive against jihadists in the rugged areas bordering Afghanistan.
Lt. General Asim Bajwa released figures showing that terrorist attacks had fallen from a total of 128 in 2013, with 46 of those suicide attacks, to 74 last year, including 17 suicide attacks.
He also said authorities had arrested more than 300 people attempting to set up an Islamic State operation in Pakistan. He added that the armed forces had killed 3,500 militants since 2014.
“There used to be multiple attacks in a day across the country. And we came into (attacks every few) days. And we came into months (between major attacks),” Bajwa said.
However, he acknowledged Pakistan still faced a tough fight.
“I have said our objective is zero tolerance for any terrorist incidents,” he said. “We want to get there.”
Militants operating in Pakistan – including the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban groups, al Qaeda and the Haqqani network – seek to establish strict Islamic rule.
Some target the government in Afghanistan and remaining U.S. troops supporting it there, while others are bent on overthrowing Pakistan’s civilian government. Still others target Pakistan’s regional rival India to the east.
The U.S. and others have accused Pakistan of selectively cracking down on militants that attack its own government, while sparing groups that attack in Afghanistan. Pakistan has denied that charge.
(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan. Writing by Kay Johnson and Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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A burkini
In late July, the Mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, banned the burkini on public beaches, calling them “the uniform of extremist Islamism.” Since then more than 30 other French municipalities, many of them along the French Riviera, have followed suit.
A few weeks later, on August 26, the French Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, overturned the ban and ruled that mayors do not have the right to ban burkinis. The ruling was in response to a challenge that had been filed against the ban imposed by the mayor of Villeneuve-Loubet. Many of the mayors involved vowed to ignore the court ruling.
The ban joins an already existing French ban on the burqa, a full body covering that covers the lower face and has a meshed cloth over the eyes, and a niqab, which is identical except that a veil covers the lower face and the eyes are uncovered. The ban went into effect in April 2011, and mandates fines of 150 euros (165 dollars). Burqas, niqabs, headscarves and other “conspicuous religious symbols” were banned in French schools in 2004.
The issue has sparked a worldwide media frenzy. In France, Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared that he supported banning burkinis. Pouring fuel on the fire, Vallis, on August 29, pointed out that France’s national symbol, Marianne, had her “breasts exposed and … that she wasn’t wearing a veil.” Just to be clear, the statue of Liberty at the Marianne Monument in Paris has one breast exposed while in Delacroix’s iconic painting, Liberty Leading the People, Liberty, which is often used as a depiction of Marianne, has both breasts exposed. Whether Vallis is proposing to ban the burkini in favor of the monokini is unclear. His comment was widely dismissed as moronic.
Not to be outdone, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is widely expected to challenge Françoise Hollande for the presidency next year, declared that if elected, he would immediately ban the burkini. Predictably, Marine Le Pen, the president of France’s anti-immigration National Right party urged that the ban be immediately adopted nationally. According to a BBC report, recent polls indicate that 64 percent of the French public supported the ban and that another 30 percent had no opinion.
Delacroix’s painting, Liberty Leading the People
The ban generated broad international criticism. A widely cited New York Times editorial on August 18, described the ban as paternalistic, bigoted and hypocritical. Scores of protests from “burkini rallies” to a “wear what you want beach party,” organized on a makeshift beach in front of France’s embassy in London, were held in the weeks following the ban.
What exactly is a burkini? Basically it is a swimsuit that covers everything except the hands, feet and face. It was designed by Australian fashion designer Aheda Zanetti. She owns the trademark to the words burqini and burkini, although the terms are now in generic use. A similar style of bathing suit, which consists of pants and a hooded shirt, called a veilkini, although it doesn’t actually have a veil, has also been introduced.
Stylistically, the burkini is not all that different from the wet suit used by scuba divers and often used by surfers and long distance swimmers. While it is associated with Muslim dress, and in particular with the Koran’s pronouncement that “women should dress modestly,” it is not traditional attire – having been invented only in 2004.
According to Zanetti, about 40 percent of her customers are not Muslims. The outfits have been popular in Israel among the Jewish Haredi. They are also becoming increasingly popular in certain Asian countries where pale skin is considered desirable. The product is already available at North America retailers, including Amazon.
The larger question is whether a society should ban articles of clothing that impede accurate identification in the interest of public safety? Courts have long held that public security trumps personal privacy, especially in those instances where it would impede proper identification. That’s why you are asked to remove your hat or sunglasses when you cross the border or are pulled over for a traffic violation. Ditto when you go to vote or are giving testimony in a court of law. That’s why police can operate CCTV cameras and film you without your consent.
You can rail all you want that it is a violation of personal privacy. In an environment where every crowd is a potential terrorist target, anonymity in a public setting is simply not compatible with public safety. That holds true regardless of whether you are wearing a burqa, a hockey mask or a Donald Trump Halloween mask (rumored to be this Halloween’s best seller although Hillary Clinton is not far behind).
Afghan women wearing burqas
A specific ban on burqas or niqabs will invariably be seen as being anti-Muslim in inspiration. A ban on any article of clothing that prevents proper identification in the interest of public safety, however, is not prejudicial or targeting any specific group. So, yes, that means that you should not be able to wear Halloween masks, surgical masks, hockey masks, balaclavas or ski masks or anything else that impedes identification, outside of their specific work related uses, in a public setting. In private you can wear anything you want, in public it’s an altogether different matter.
The ban on burkinis is silly and misguided. We have no business criminalizing fashion, even if we think that it makes a statement that is considered offensive. While it may offend the fashion sensibilities of some of France’s mayors, the burkini does not pose a threat to public safety. The burqa, however, along with Halloween masks and any other article of clothing that impedes identification, does pose such a threat. For that reason, leave the burkini alone, but yes ban the burqa, Halloween masks and anything else that prevents the proper identification of its wearer.
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The impacts of climate change are becoming an ever starker reality around the world, with 2016 on pace to be the hottest year in human history – topping the previous record set just last year. While the Paris Agreement represents significant progress toward addressing this global challenge, international leaders need to further accelerate emissions reductions to keep global temperature rise “well below 2°C above-pre-industrial levels and aiming for 1.5 degrees Celsius,” as called for in the landmark agreement.
A landscape of forests and mountains in Myanmar. Photo Credit: © Minzayar Oo / WWF-US
And that need is more urgent than ever. With current greenhouse gas emissions levels, we are tracking toward a much more severe scenario: a planet that is 3 to 5°C degrees warmer by the end of the century and potentially much sooner. As we have already experienced with increasingly extreme and variable weather around the world–from unprecedented heat waves to increasingly frequent and intense “1,000 year” floods occurring year after year — even just 1 degree Celsius of warming yields devastating impacts on humans and wildlife.
Building resilience to these increasing extremes and many more unavoidable effects of warming is imperative. It is especially important in developing countries like Myanmar, where millions of subsistence farmers with limited access to services and poor infrastructure are disproportionately vulnerable. By some metrics, Myanmar is the second most vulnerable country to extreme hazards like floods and extreme storms. I have seen this first hand through our engagement with local communities in the dry zone town of Pakkoku, where changing rainfall patterns have already made farming in an arid region even more difficult, forcing people to move to the capital as climate refugees.
As we are increasingly seeing around the world, one of the best ways to help communities like these adapt to such changes by working with nature to increase resilience, from providing coastal defenses against storms to reducing flood risk for millions of people downstream. Today, Myanmar is in a unique position to do exactly this: it is transitioning to democracy and rapidly growing its economy after decades of military rule – which effectively limited economic growth and exploitation of its natural resources for the past 50 years. As a result, the country now has an opportunity in its development trajectory to increase prosperity for millions while also “baking in” climate resilience from the start, in part through protecting its abundant natural wealth. That’s wonderful news for conservationists worldwide as Myanmar is home to some of the last truly pristine, healthy ecosystems and rich biodiversity on our planet.
When other nations faced critical decision points like these in the past, a deficit of information about the value in preserving nature often contributed to unsustainable development outcomes that also contributed to increased vulnerability to climate change. The economic benefits of natural resource exploitation through carbon intensive and extractive industries like timber, mining, and oil and gas have always been well understood. Yet, those associated with protecting and conserving ecosystems and biodiversity and enhancing climate resilience — clean air, water, carbon sequestration, local climate control, flood retention, or coastal defenses against extreme storms — have been more obscure.
But now we have the power (and the data) to change that dynamic. Now common technological tools, like geospatial information systems (GIS), which make use of high-quality satellite imagery, are being used in ever more innovative ways to help us put prices on these benefits. As a result, today conservation scientists can produce comparable, “apples to apples” assessments of the economic values provided by intact, healthy ecosystems. And every year, we are learning new ways to conserve nature as new research and studies add to our understanding of how benefits from on-the-ground preservation can outweigh those from extraction and exploitation.
We have much more to learn, especially from a largely understudied element of this growing field: how exactly can intact ecosystems help us adapt to our changing climate? That’s why I’m here at the IUCN World Conservation Congress this week. I’m here to talk with conservation practitioners and leaders from around the world about our efforts to develop this kind of new information for decision-makers in Myanmar.
WWF is working with diverse partners and the national government to create nationwide maps of Myanmar’s ecosystem services and explain how these natural systems – mangroves, forests, watersheds — buffer against both immediate and longer term climate change impacts. Our analysis shows how Myanmar’s intact inland forests provide clean water by reducing soil runoff into rivers and streams, reduce flooding by retaining and slowing down water flows, and how its coastal mangroves and reefs provide key protection against increasingly extreme storms.
With this improved understanding of the services these natural systems provide, Myanmar can make progress toward its goal of developing a green, resilient economy. And, it can become a model for how to leapfrog over standard brown development and manage the ever increasing impacts of climate change in the 21st century.
WWF will continue working with our partners in Myanmar and around the world to provide information on the enormous benefits nature provides to local livelihoods and national economies. In this way, we can help governments around the world make similar investment and planning decisions that reduce the difficult trade-offs between economic growth and ecosystem conservation, all while building resilience to the effects of our changing climate.
This post is part of a series on the World Conservation Congress taking place this week. Held every four years, it brings together about 6,000 people, including heads of state, government officials, business leaders, representatives from indigenous groups, scientists, academics, influencers, educators, artists and NGOs, from all over the world to discuss and decide on solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. To read all the posts in this series click here.
A Burmese fisherman paddles with his foot while setting a new net at Inle Lake, where local villages on stilts have perfectly adapted livelihoods to living and relying on the numerous benefits provided by the surrounding ecosystem, from fish to weaving materials and ever-increasing tourism dollars. These livelihoods are increasingly vulnerable to climate change, as higher temperatures increase droughts and lower water levels to new lows. Photo Credit: © Ryan Bartlett
Taking the local transportation through villages adapted to living, and relying on, the biodiversity of Inle Lake. Photo Credit: © Ryan Bartlett.
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Sept 3 (Reuters) – Tropical Storm Hermine plowed across North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Saturday, threatening the U.S. East Coast with a mix of high winds and heavy rain after leaving a path of destruction in Florida, Georgia and in the Carolinas.
The storm was projected to creep north along the Carolina coast, then gather strength after moving offshore into the Atlantic, possibly reaching near-hurricane intensity by late Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said.
Labor Day weekend plans for thousands of vacationers who were headed to popular beach spots along the Atlantic seaboard were dampened after the storm battered Florida’s $89 billion tourism industry.
“We’ll probably stay inside watching movies or going to the movie theater,” Joan Whalen told an ABC affiliate in Virginia after canceling weekend beach plans.
The threat of severe weather caused officials in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to cancel concerts over the weekend, and beaches were closed in several coastal communities.
At 5 a.m. EDT, the center of the fourth named storm of the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season was near the northern Outer Banks of North Carolina, with top winds near 60 miles per hour (95 kilometers per hour), the hurricane center said.
After heading east-northeast into the open ocean, the storm is expected to head north and be off the Middle Atlantic’s Delmarva Peninsula late on Saturday and on Sunday, it said.
North Carolina’s Emergency Management office warned of strong rip currents, high seas and beach erosion during the holiday weekend as Hermine moved through the area.
Hermine, the first hurricane to make landfall in Florida in 11 years, swept ashore early on Friday near the Gulf shore town of St. Marks, packing winds of 80 mph (130 kph) and churning up a devastating storm surge in coastal areas.
Authorities reported one storm-related death in the northern Florida town of Ocala, where a falling tree killed a homeless man sleeping in his tent.
Early on Saturday, crews in Wilmington, North Carolina, rescued several people who were sitting on top of their vehicle after a flood engulfed their street, photos from local media showed. At least one tornado was reported touching down in North Carolina on Saturday, causing at least one injury, local media reported.
A total of about 150,000 households were without power in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, utility companies reported on Saturday.
Emergency declarations remained in effect for all or parts of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland.
Overnight, crews in Pasco County, Florida, rescued more than a dozen people after their homes were flooded.
Richard Jewett, 68, was rescued from his home in New Port Richey, just north of Tampa, as emergency teams carried out a mandatory evacuation.
“The canal started creeping up toward the house, and even though it wasn’t high tide it looked like it was coming inside,” Jewett said.
In addition to powerful winds extending up to 185 miles (295 km) from its center, Hermine was expected to unleash a dangerous storm surge in the Hampton Roads area of tidewater Virginia, the NHC warned.
The storm also could douse several southeastern and Middle Atlantic states with up to 15 inches (38 cm) of rain through Sunday, the agency said.
New Jersey was on high alert as emergency officials advised residents to prepare for flooding, high winds and a surge of seawater.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday activated his state’s emergency operations center and ordered officials to stockpile resources, including sandbags and generators.
New York Mayor Bill De Blasio said residents should avoid beach waters for fear of life-threatening riptides.
In Florida, concerns over the standing water in which mosquitoes breed intensified as the state battled an outbreak of the Zika virus.
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Andrew Bolton)
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A camera aboard the Landsat 8 satellite has been tracking the progress of oil fires in Iraq that have been burning since June. The dark plumes of smoke, which are wreaking havoc on local communities, are a stark reminder of the ongoing war in the region.
The best price ever on the Roomba 770, TP-Link’s popular Smart Plug, and Labor Day apparel sales lead off Saturday’s best deals.
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