Nov 12 2008
What About An Open-Source Café Restaurant?
I missed the just concluded FOSS.my event which was about movement for free and open source software. Heard it’s been AWESOME! Of course it is. Who in the world will want to devote so much time in helping to develop and promote a software free of charge? It must be for their belief and passion in the idea, product and community of people. Long live FOSS!
Daniel Cerventus of Entrepreneurs.my led a session in FOSS.my and shared what businesses can learn from the open source. An open source movement, or any movement for that matter, is all in and about its community of people believing in its cause and collaborating together to move it forward.
It makes me think that an open source movement is like a religion, or even a cult with its own sub-culture. The people are crazy for the idea, work tirelessly to build up something for the good of all, and become “evangelists” to promote the software. In fact, the term “evangelist” is a religious term, isn’t it?
Daniel likens the community to the supporters of a restaurant who strongly believe the food and beverages it provides. I have a real story to tell here.
A customer recently asked me to join a cafe restaurant business as “member”, having joined herself. The idea is that, the café owner offers “shares” (not real shares) of profit to all members of the public who invest into the business. In return, the owner shares the monthly profit back to the members, with minimum fixed returns guaranteed.
In effect, these members will naturally want to help the restaurant do well and become “evangelists” for the restaurant. It’s a “community café restaurant”. Isn’t it a good idea? What a different business model for an F & B business!
By the way, are you interested in investing in the café? Let me know and I’ll gladly connect you with my customer.
Now what if the members also help to develop every part of the café, from the decoration to the menu, just like the software developers help in open source software development? Will it not become a real “open source café restaurant” then?
Is this achievable? So what can we learn from open source movement for business?
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Evangelist is no longer just a religious term. Guy Kawasaki’s Job was a Mac Evangelist. Okay. Mac is sometimes a religion to some people that we all know.
Yeah Daniel
I should have said the word “evangelist” was originally a religious term.
It seems that some people really believe it could work to have an open-source restaurant or cafe. I have been in the F n B industry for years and it sounds like a lofty ideal with a lot of disagreements involved to me! I just cant imagine how it could work. “Um, chef, could you make this and this and this today?” and how about decor, marketing efforts, etc – can a cafe really handle basically having a HUGE board of people to try and make decisions together? Sounds like a mess to me!
I dont think it will work for the F&B industry. It will lead to all kind of disagreemnts like Lisa mentioned. To me the concept “open” can only work in IT industry where the talent and effort counts.
Hi Lisa and Poh, thanks for comments
I’m not in F & B industry and don’t know as much as you do. But I guess it is showing some trend of involving customers. Lately I have heard another case where customers can buy “membership” and earn commission upon spending certain amount of money in the restaurant. Whether it works or not, I don’t know. You should know better.
Hi Ricky, I think the idea of running the restaurant as a community business is quite interesting. Together with Arne Hendriks we’ve set up an “Instructables Restaurant”. Instructables Restaurant (http://instructablesrestaurant.com) is an open source restaurant. Everything you see, use and eat is downloaded from instructables.com. It’s an experiment in internet digestion, combining free culture with food concepts. The Instructables Restaurant comes with full instructions for everything. In most restaurants you get to buy and enjoy the food. In some restaurants, if you like the furniture you can buy it. But in the Instructables Restaurant you go home knowing how to make the food as well as the furniture.
The connection with makers is important to us, as well as the potential for peer-to-peer innovation by creating a sort of touchbase for online developments. If the food and furniture needs improvements or creates opportunities for innovation, the guest are invited to immediately give their feedback in the restaurant itself through the regular reply system of instructables.com. This way the restaurant might develop into more then a collection of food and furniture, but actually become a platform for innovation on various levels (and still be a regular restaurant at the same time).
At this moment the restaurant is still in the pilot phase, but we’d like to experiment with business models for the restaurant. Involving the community as investors and thereby making them owners of the restaurant sound like a logical model. I know a restaurant in AMsterdam using this model. I’m wondering what your customer’s experience is with her investment in the bar. Can you give me some more information about their business model end experiences?
Thanks.