Movebutter
Movebutter
Background
Movebutter was co-founded by Chai Mishra and Sebastian Werz.
Chai Mishra was part of Bonaverde's business development team in Germany. He negotiated with retailers about their products' markups and realized that he didn't like the idea of customers paying too much for middlemen and markups. Instead, he wanted more money invested in good-quality food coming directly from food manufacturers.
As a result, he quit his job and went to Berkeley, California, the same place he earned his Bachelor's degree. On his way back, he contacted his old friend Sebastian Werz to see if he was interested in putting his idea of Movebuter into practice. Werz agreed, and the started the company together in September 2015. [13]
How Movebutter Works
Movebutter's concept is based on the 'Founder's Box,' which is their attempt at making the food value chain more affordable and ethical.
Their idea is to distil an entire week of groceries into one box.
This box contains an entire week's worth of food retailed at $125.
Overall, these groceries are mean to make a total of 21 meals.
Once a customer creates an account, you can edit details about your dietary restrictions.
They created the Founder's Box this after personal researching how people buy food at the grocery store.
They offered an entire city's population the opportunity to have their groceries delivered for free.
They completed at least 2,000 orders over a couple of months.
After collecting data on what they bought for the customers, they found three things: [5]
People tend to buy the same things and don't really have much variety in their orders compared to the person next to them. Chai Mishra stated that roughly 85% to 90% of most customers' items overlapped.
They bought the same things over time and there wasn't much change in what someone bought in their first order compared to their order two weeks later.
People tend to either care about a very specific item to which they believe is the best product for them, or they don't care at all. In other words, there is no market for the third best peanut butter.
In addition, enclosed in each box are instructions on how to mail back insulation packs and ice cubes inside the box that keep the food from spoiling.
They encourage people to send them back so that Movebutter can reuse them for a subsequent order.
Busines Development
As of March 2017, Movebutter's margins are extremely low.
However, the co-founders say it can make 40% margins due to the fact that they sell fewer items that one typically buys.
They generate $32,000 of weekly revenue.
It ships to 40 states and claims to be the biggest grocery store in the country now.
Accomplishments
Movebutter is part of Y Combinator's 2017 Winter batch. [12]