But, in this case, it sure seems, in hindsight, like it should have been predictable. My first thought when I heard about the company was, "How do they keep the toppings from flying all over the place if the truck hits a pothole or has to make as sudden stop or something, and the cheese hasn't softened enough to stick it in place? And how do they keep the cheese from sloshing all over the place after it melts?"
It would seem, based on what I'm reading now, that my error was assuming that they had thought of something clever and wondering what it was. Because the answers turn out to be (1) skimp on the toppings, and (2) you can't, it just plays out like a scene from Astérix chez les Helvètes† back there.
I can infer from this that I, a person who was just sitting on their armchair having a knee-jerk reaction, still managed to think more deeply about this business plan than any of the key figures or investors.
Starbucks, on the other hand, seems to have always had a basic grasp of how coffee behaves vis a vis Newton's First Law of Motion.
†(DDG image search seems to do a better job than Google at turning up the cheesiest panels.)
I didn’t expect such a literal interpretation: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/random-raves-xxvii-an...
> You could have written basically the same thing about Starbucks if it had failed.
Not really. Starbucks started as a coffee shop, and started expanding when they became successful. There's a limit to how ridiculous that can be.
Sidenote: epic thread
https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/starb...
What the author is alluding too is the fact that putting a bunch of robots into a pizza store isn't going to turn you into a technology company worth hundreds of millions, that is absurd right from the beginning.
Starbucks success imho was due to their having a sufficiently well controlled process to make a consistently decent (if not excellent) cup of coffee in _all_ their stores. Their competitors are all over the place in both the time and location axes.
That and the interior of the stores are typically more appealing than McDonalds.
You could have written basically the same thing about Starbucks if it had failed.
But it didn't.
It went on to become one of the great success stories of the modern era.