Self-Service Storage Facility Act - Self Storage Association: Fill & Download for Free

Telecom billing systems: An overview, benefits and future trendsDevelopment in the telecom industry in the late 1990s gave rise to the demand of efficient billing system. But it is during last few years that billing system have received importance equivalent to other facets of telecom sector. Complexity related to mobile device technology and pricing have also paved the way for a robust system to meet the needs of the present digital era.Billing solution providers from across the globe have constantly added multiple features in their solutions to make sure both consumers and telecom operators do not face any billing related issues.Billing process at a glance:Basic billing system consists of following steps in sequential order:Collection of call dataStorage of call data into customer databaseCalculation of call chargesAdditional charges are also includedProcessing of billsGeneration of invoiceMailing of invoices to respective customersConcepts related to telecom billing solution:Major concepts related to telecom billing systems comprises of:Call detail records (CDR) – CDR contains billing information related to specific call. Major constituents of CDR include call time, duration of call, destination and source number etc.Guiding – The guiding application has the role of matching call records with calling tariff of the customer.Rating engine – During billing, this system provides value to the call that is incurred on an account.Billing – Rated calls of last 30 days are gathered in this system. Also, taxes, discounts and promotions are calculated.Mediation – This process basically includes collection and validation of call data from network devices like switches.Bill cycle – Customers are divided into several batches by billing system with each group having a separate bill cycle. Through this system, only a batch of customers is billed at a time.Benefits of telecom billing solution:Several companies across the world offer telecom billing solutions which carries several advantages to telecom companies and customers. Some of the major benefits associated with telecom billing include:Availability of itemized bill:The telecom billing systems enables the companies to provide detailed bills to the consumers which contain all the details related to outgoing calls and other services.High accuracy in billing:The telecom companies with huge number of customers need to ensure that billing system is error free. This is where the telecom billing solution providers act as rescuer by generation 100 percent error free bills.Instant information available to call center agents:Through a robust billing system, the customer service executives can easily produce the details of the customer in case of any query. This helps in increasing the number of satisfied customers which ultimately helps in retention of customers.Duplicate records checking:An advanced billing system ensures that duplicate records are purged off from the system which ensures that there is no redundancy. Also, fake information like social security number is also detected by these systems.Tariff changes are easily implemented:Telecom companies change tariffs of their services on regular basis due to multiple reasons. A cutting-edge billing solution ensures that the changes in the tariff can be implemented easily in the billing process.Paperless bill generation:With the advent of smart devices in the market, telecom companies have adopted the use of e-bill statements which saves a lot of cost to the company. The costs related to paper, printing and bill distribution are saved by paperless bill generation through billing solutions.Telecom billing solutions in upcoming years:Cloud computing – Upcoming years will witness the implementation of cloud-based solutions in telecom billing solutions by almost every service provider. Cost control is one major perk associated with cloud technology in telecom billing process. Another benefit associated with cloud-based technology is effective security of data. Scalability using this technology is another factor which ensures that its demand in telecom market is going expand exponentially in future.Convergent billing – Convergent billing is also growing popularity on constant basis due to its multiple benefits. Convergent billing can be generally defined as type of billing system in which all the bills from the single operator like data charges, postpaid mobile bill and IPTV can be generated on a single invoice. Cost of implementing and marketing different services can be controlled with this process. Also, it helps the companies to attract customers by providing bundled service packages at discounted rates.Self-service – Various telecom companies are providing self-service facility to the users through which consumers are able to modify their plans and manage their accounts easily by themselves. This will reduce the requirement of customer care agents in the future.In present scenario, it is difficult to imagine the telecom industry without a good solution. So, telecom companies must reinforce their business by using top-notch telecom billing solution.

1 Background This Question and Answer is my response to a question originally embedded in the comment/question by Martin Andrews about George Tait Edwards's answer to Why is “made in China 2025” so concerning to Trump that he demanded China must abandon that plan in order to stop the trade war?2 The Origins of Both Policies2.1 In Germany - “Industrie4.0/Germany4.0”This policy was born in and is dedicated to the advance of Germany’s industry for the sake of not only maintaining its current dominant position in the EU but also improving its future competitiveness and product quality.Both Germany and China see the need to upgrade their manufacturing and service industries to meet the future needs of their nations. The most comprehensive and effective article by Peter Altmaier (see below) covers so much ground that it is almost impossible to summarise, and I have struggled to do that, as shown below. But also see Sigurt Vitol’s thoughtful and considered paper about GERMAN INDUSTRIAL POLICY: AN OVERVIEW which can be downloaded at https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ba5f/3fe74bf2104008be298a7b332a673706ad3a.pdf2.1.1 The Objective of the Policy: The Creation, Across All of The German Economy, Advanced Computerised “Smart Factories” with a major upgrading in the optimised computerised interconnection of factory operations from raw materials, subcomponent and energy inputs to specific, individual-customer-specified outputs.As Peter Altmaier, the German Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Germany has summarised it, in A modern industrial policy,“Germany has a strong and successful industrial base. We need to keep it that way, we need to expand that.”In his lengthy and utterly specific article, he describes a policy which is the “fourth industrial revolution” which he names and describes:“INDUSTRIE 4.0Digitally driven and smartly networked“Digitally controlled production processes, smart factories and a networking of sales, production and logistics: the term "Industrie 4.0" describes a fourth industrial revolution which is picking up speed in the wake of rapid digitalisation.” And the description of the technology is“Industrie 4.0 combines production methods with state-of-the-art information and communication technology. This smart approach makes it possible to deliver tailored products to meet individual customer requirements – at low cost and in high quality. Highly flexible production methods and logistics will make it possible to customise products. Customers and business partners will be directly involved in operational and production processes, and there will be production methods and products that are closely intertwined with state-of-the-art, knowledge-intensive services (hybrid production, hybrid products).”So the system involves the implied digitally-controlled minimal inputs of energy, water and raw materials, combined with the just-in-time delivery of highest quality SME subcomponents to be assembled into a low cost, high quality customer-specified customised product which can “talk” through the internet of things to its maker, its buyer and the network of things around it.(Presumably the first three industrial revolutions the Federal Minister may have in mind may be the previous IR stages of the ages of steam, of electricity production and consumption, and of computers/internet communications, and of all the associated developments in these eras.)2.1.2 The Major Industrial Sectors AffectedIndustrie4.0/Germany4.0 highlights the following industrial sectors where Germany at present has a considerable leadership (as shown by export values) as highlighted by the Federal Minister:“The objective here is to foster innovation across the board, so that it covers all the lead markets and key enabling technologies that are of relevance for Germany. These include for example [my identing]mechanical and plant engineering,microelectronics,production technology,materials technology,bio- and nano-technology,energy and environmental technology,mobility and logistics,healthcare and medical technology, and not leastinformation and communications technology.“The process of technological transformation and the trend towards sharing knowledge and information on an ever-growing scale are continuing at unabated speed. Similarly, new developments in information and communication technology are having a considerable impact on the production of complex goods and services requiring a great deal of research and expertise. It is now increasingly possible for such complex manufacturing processes to be digitally controllable.”So Germany 4.0 while theoretically applying to “innovation across the board” is focused on the nine key areas highlighted. And the paper goes on to enumerate the value and employment of the leading six manufacturing activities in Germany, like thisThe paper goes on to demonstrate that export performance, the growing importance of export-related services, and highlights more industries which have “Innovative technologies with potential for the future” which are listed as“Within the framework of the Federal Government’s High-tech Strategy, the fields of health, mobility, climate/energy, security and communication are particularly addressed as important markets with potential for the future in cooperation with business and science. The Economic Affairs Ministry has special programmes for aerospace, the maritime industry, and the fields of mobility and information and communication technology. Also, innovative SMEs in all sectors can access government funding via the Ministry’s technology-neutral programmes.”In addition to all of the above, Germany intends toSecure raw materials and use them efficientlyPromote raw materials transparency (so you can see what’s being used where and how it’s forming part of something else, and how it’s being safely disposed of or recovered at the end of product life)Focus on renewable energyDiscount energy as a cost factor to assist energy-intensive industriesProtect the German environment byperforming climate risk checkhelping mitigate climate change andintroducing Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Technology to place extra atmospheric CO2 production in deep geological storage - as the Minister’s Report points out “The technology is currently being tested in Germany.”2.2 The Made in China 2025 initiative: Similar but differentAs Made in China 2025 - Wikipedia states “Made in China 2025 (Chinese: 中国制造2025; pinyin: Zhōngguó zhìzào èrlíng'èrwǔ)[1] is a strategic plan of China issued by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and his cabinet in May 2015.[2] China is moving away from being the World's factory floor (cheap goods and low quality) to move to higher value products and services.[3] In essence a blueprint to upgrade the manufacturing capabilities of Chinese industries. [4] The goals of Made in China 2025 include increasing the Chinese-domestic content of core materials to 40 percent by 2020 and 70 percent by 2025.[5] The plan focuses on high-tech fields including the pharmaceutical industry, automotive industry, aerospace industry, and semiconductors, IT and robotics etc which are presently the purview of foreign companies.[6]”2.2.1 The Origin of the PolicyChinese Premier Li Keqiang has made it quite clear that the inspiration for his Made in China 2025 Strategy was the Germany 4.0 industrial policy.3 The Comparisons Between Germany and ChinaBoth Germany and China have a highly educated and skilled workforce with millions of SMEs, many of which are acting at the forefront of their technology.Both countries fund the Wernerian transfer of invention to innovation in millions of their SMEs through effective local banking systems which help finance that process.4 The Differences Between the Germany 4 Policy and Made In China 20254.1 German Support for SME invention and InnovationAlthough Germany has a highly effective Sparkassen local public banking system to fund the establishment, development and updating of SMEs in each locality, Germany has a partly rationalised Sparkassen Banking System which, although the most effective in the world for a nation of Germany’s size, has the following sub-optimal characteristicsthe number of independent Sparkassen Banks has been reduced from 2,834 in 1903 to about 431 today - see German public bank - Wikipedia.East Germany was under Communist rule for about half a century and the Sparkassen Bank SME-supporting role during that period was diminished although still major, and it is doubtful if the East German states of Germany have yet recovered (by 2018) to the SME stimulation level provided in the states of West Germany.The retention of 15,600 local SME branches in Germany does provide a good level of SME support but bank branches do not always provide the excellent services or positive decisions that a local independent bank HQ can.One of the few jokes told by the Economist in times past was a response to a 1960s Russian claim that “East Germany proves Communism works” to which that newspaper replied“No - East Germany proves that the Germans can make anything work.” The relatively high growth rates of Communist East Germany (from 1945 to the 1960s) were due to the continuation of Germany’s Sparkassen Banks with their century and half traditions, of supporting SMEs even under Communist rule.Let me be as precise as the numbers can indicate: Herbert Simon has provided in his essay and book about the Hidden Champions of Germany the following dataWhich data I have summarised in the following generated table:More recent figures indicate that Germany has raised its delivery of “Hidden Champions” to above 1,600 with the result that the German level of champions per million people is about 20. It seems to me that a sub-analysis of the data is likely to show that some West German states are achieving hidden champion rates of about 25 champions per million people.Germany does not have an adequate system for the growth of “Hidden Champions” to world-serving scale, because it does not understand or use Shimomuran macroeconomics. Germany succeeds through the excellence of SME family firms and the few but large bank-supported major industries without having a “capital abundance” in all of its its manufacturing industry. Germany’s growth rate has always been intermediate because of that reality. The focus of German industry and politicians is upon Germany, and the Industrie4.0/ Germany4.0 policy would be much more impressive if it were an EU4.0 initiative funded by investment credit creation by the ECB across all of the EU.The EU is unfortunately being run by Germany as if it were a German Empire. Such an outcome was never intended by its founders who established and intended a co-operating commonwealth of collaborating nations. German politicians should grow into European citizens and while a “Germany first” bias in Industrie 4.0 may be initially acceptable, all of the EU needs a similar industrial upgrading.In my view the level of invention and innovation is a constant capability of all peoples. When Scotland was the beneficiary of the slave-trading profits of the Tobacco Lords these funds (along with some Sugar Lord monies also based upon black slavery) founded the local Glasgow-centred banks of Scotland and invested in the 88 companies that were the foundation of the local industrial revolution. When England had at most 900 Provincial Banks these institutions funded the conversion of invention to innovation in England and that created the English part of the industrial revolution from about 1750 to 1880. All of that is well documented in sources too numerous and too voluminous to quote here.5 The Industrial Coverage of Made In China 2025The Chinese data in the above table is incomplete because many Chinese SMEs are larger than the Hermann Simon definition as “having a revenue below $4bn”I have calculated the number of SMEs China should have, if the German number of SMEs per million people, is applied to China. About a third of Chinese SMEs seem to be missing, particularly in the western and central provinces of China where local bank SME support seems less supportive than the excellent local bank facilities in the Eastern coastal provinces and around Beijing.I have emailed (with no response so far) various Chinese economists and authorities pointing out that China could be growing more rapidly (I estimate by up to an extra 5%pa for decades) if these SME-supporting bank facilities were extended in western and central China.6 The Centrality of 5G Communications to the AI/IoT economy[Note: In some of the following quoted texts about 5G development, the Made In China 2025 policy is sometimes referred to as MIC2025.]The upgrading in mobile phone and internet connections from the 4G system to 5G is a key component of the success of the new Germany4.0/Made in China2025 strategies. The move from 4G to 5G brings about very large improvements in the operation of the internet for mobile phones and all other “thing users” of the internet. See ‘Made in China 2025’: Beijing has big plans for 5G – if the world lets it which outlines the situation as:“China’s road to 5G has been well planned. In 2012, two years before China Mobile launched 4G services on the mainland, various Chinese entities joined an international initiative to research and develop 5G.“With peak data rates up to 20 times faster than 4G, 5G will serve as “the connective tissue” for new mobile applications, such as the internet of things, autonomous cars and smart cities – providing the backbone for the industrial internet, according to a Deloitte report.“On the consumer side, 5G smartphone users will be able to send high-resolution 4K video within a few seconds, and both video games and apps based on augmented and virtual reality technologies will be seamless. The 5G networks will also be able to support the growing number of connected devices globally, from fitness-tracking watches to internet-linked televisions and smart speakers at home.“The International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations agency overseeing development of the “IMT 2020” global standard for 5G, said the new technology would support 1 million connected devices per square kilometre; 1 millisecond latency (representing the nearly instant time a packet of data takes to get from one point to another); greater efficiency in terms of power and use of radio spectrum; and a peak data download rate of up to 20 gigabits per second.”Let’s list these again, for these upgraded characteristics are astonishing: 5G has the advantages thatIt’s up to about 20 times faster than 4GIt serves as the fast backbone of the “Internet of Things”(IoT)It has a huge service capability (a million connected devices/km2) withvery fast millisecond latency for message transmissiongreater effective use of power and use of radio frequencies withdownloads of up to 20 gigabits/secondenabling not only “smart factories” but “smart cities.”As the above report continues:“The agency works in tandem with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), an international collaboration of seven telecoms standard development organisations that draw up complete mobile system specifications.The 3GPP recently approved the much-anticipated global technology specifications for 5G, which is expected to kick off initial deployments by some of the world’s largest telecoms network operators either later this year or early in 2019.There are two sets of specifications completed under the 3GPP: one is called “5G stand-alone”, which was approved in June, while the other one passed in December 2017 is known as “5G non-stand-alone”.”China has been steeped in the proposed 5G trials, testing and upgrading of mobile phone and IoT Communications from 4G to 5G, as this chart illustrates:And where is the USA in all this? US phone producer companies are involved but Trump seems to imagine that the USA has the power to call a halt on the essential development of this massive upgrading to 5G mobile/IoT services in which America has not been centrally involved.As ‘Made in China 2025’: Beijing has big plans for 5G – if the world lets it reports:“Gear based on the 5G stand-alone specifications is designed to run independently of 4G networks – and this is the standard China is pushing. Operators will need to rebuild their core network and buy new 5G base stations to provide higher data speeds and greater capacity, as well as ultra-reliable, low-latency services to support machine-to-machine connection and autonomous driving.“The Chinese government wants every industry to use the most advanced infrastructure to upgrade productivity. This is a strategic agenda, and they think that 5G will help,” said Jefferies equity analyst Edison Lee, who covers Hong Kong-listed ZTE, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. He goes on to say“China has very ambitious plans to promote the industrial internet of things, cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI), the capabilities of which require the support of brand-new 5G networks.”“For example, self-driving cars require sensors, AI and roadside base stations for fast and reliable connectivity to allow vehicles to “talk” to each other to avoid collisions and avoid pedestrians. Today’s 4G networks cannot meet those quick response times.“China’s plan for an aggressive 5G roll-out is in line with the MIC2025 road map. Initially, this focused on the domestic telecoms sector’s ability to increase broadband penetration nationwide to 82 per cent by 2025 as part of a push for industrial modernisation. Another objective was to see local suppliers making 40 per cent of all mobile phone chips used in the domestic market.“Under an updated version published in January, Beijing now wants China to become the world’s leading maker of telecoms equipment. Two of the world’s biggest telecoms gear suppliers, Shenzhen-based Huawei and ZTE, have helped lead China’s 5G research and development efforts.”7 Discussion Most observers do not seem to see the fuller picture of the computer-integrated AI/IoT “new world”. Both German and Chinese factories will become smart factories producing intercommunicating goods and transforming every sector of their economies. The inputs and the use of scarce resources will be AI-optimised, the whole industrial process will be a less costly just-in-time highly efficient production process providing goods and services to consumers in a transformed “5G-implemented Economy4.” The products made outside that system are likely to be literally “dumb” and unable to communicate with other things but may transmit usage and other data back to Germany and China.7.1 The Implications Of Both Industrial ProgrammesBoth Germany and China are going to have the most advanced industrial manufacturing economies and best consumer life experiences in the world.7.2 The Trump Effect In Accelerating China’s DevelopmentWhen Trump banned the export of Intel microchips to China, the Chinese developed their own microchips within 14 months. Donald Trump’s forced march has brought the title of the “World’s fastest computer” back to the USA by June 12 2018 but China has 82 more supercomputers than the USA does. See The world’s fastest supercomputer is back in AmericaAnd also see This is how dramatically China’s beating the US in its share of supercomputers where it says“According to the latest Top 500 list, published Monday (June 25), China has 206 supercomputers and is leading the US by a record margin—82. The US has just 124 machines on the list, “a new low,” according to the statement accompanying the ranking. Just six months ago, China, with 202 of the top computers, was only ahead of the US by 59. Top 500 has been releasing the supercomputer ranking, compiled by prominent computer scientists, every six months since 1993.”7.3 The USA Is the Likely Loser, Whatever OccursPresident Trump appears to be trying to persuade the entire Anglosphere - the USA, Canada, The UK, Australia and the EU- to remain as a group of backward economies, staying with the slower 4G based communications while China and Asia adopt the much higher 5G standard. Of course Trump the Luddite does not know what he is doing nor understand the implications of what he does. The development of smart factories and cities requires smart politicians and Trump is not that.I do not wish to compare the likely results of an integrated 5G-based military technology operating at up to 20 times the speed of a 4G-based technology. But even the most approximate initial comparison indicates that the USA, as has happened since the manufacturing-industry-exporting Ronald Reagan, has failed to invest or participate not only in the development of 5G but also has failed to keep its key once-major industries within its borders and continually updated, and these events inevitably have significant military implications.The American Republican/Conservative preference for “Rule by, for and of the rich” produces a profound disdain for manufacturing, a neglect of the living standards of workers through Austerity, a rot of US roads and public services through “small government”, and a pathological culture in domestic and foreign relations. FDR was much better than that. Trump isn’t.8 Conclusions8.1 The Recent New Initiatives of Industrie4.0/Germany4.0 and Made In China 2025 are the inevitable next stage of factory and services production, based upon on-board Artificial Intelligence and Microchips/Internet of Things/5G Rapid Communications, involvIngthe integration of entire factory production processes through minimal inputs, much higher productivity, just-in-time subcomponent and delivery, to produce excellent mass produced but individually ordered products as specified and much elseThe creation of a fast intercommunicating 5G-based “human-thing” environment of driverless cars, pilotless aircraft, goods-serving personal-delivered education, health and other government services and entertainment services based upon superb quality VRLeading to a new highly advanced integrated goods-and-services providing economy in which the network of things provides an advanced living experienceTrump’s opposition to Made In China 2025 is very unlikely to slow down or stop its implementation8.2 The development of smart factories, smart cities and smart economies within a smarter environment is the inevitable next stage in the economic history of the world. It is unstoppable and inevitable and very helpful to the futures of Germany and China and perhaps in future in Europe and very probably in Asia.8.3 The USA needs to “get on board” and adopt these fresh industrial renewal processes and these policies and not to try to prevent progress in Germany and China. Or the USA could just politically accept the continuation of its trajectory of relative economic decline, which under current leadership seems inevitable. Alternatively, as a first step, the USA needs to study how rapid economic growth is financed in today’s world and adopt more people-serving policies. In my view there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of very capable American politicians, perhaps a majority of them women, who could reverse US economic decline. But that is unlikely to be a quick process.

WELCOME TO THE HUNGRY GAMES (or how to keep me away from the grocery store and happy at home in my jammies)Note: This answer is probably going to be too exhaustively detailed for casual readers, but I hope it will be meaningful to people seeking to transform this industry. Ultimately, if it brings us all one step closer to a truly viable business model for home meal delivery kits, that would be worth way more to me than a $250 USD cash prize.Hi, I’m Annika. I think I want to subscribe to your service. Problem is, your service doesn’t exist.I am exactly the sort of person who would subscribe quite eagerly to a meal kit delivery system, and I believe very strongly that meal delivery kits could disrupt and fully supplant supermarkets on the near side of a decade if done well. That said, I’ve never purchased or tasted a kit meal, and have no plans to do so until the “right” one comes along.This is so gonna happen. It’s just a matter of time. And I’m getting impatient.Remember compact discs? Remember CD players? Remember music coming in albums? Remember paperback books? Remember bookshelves?Subscription meals are gonna be like that, mark my word, but for Harris Teeter and Albertson’s instead of Tower Records and Crown Books. Say goodbye to buying milk by the gallon, bread by the loaf, and bananas by the bunch, say goodbye to automatic self-scanning checkout that doesn’t really work. It’s all going away. It’s going to be supplanted by something that we all want much more than that, and lives will be meaningfully improved.The reason why the big supermarkets haven’t gone away yet is because nobody has figured out how to get the market what it actually wants better than they have. Which really isn’t saying a lot. Margins at supermarkets (I used to work at a supermarket) are super low. It’s tough to make ends meet because the systems in place are so extremely inefficient. All this could change, but it’s going to take some heavy lifting at first.First and foremost, this is a marketing problem. But it’s not a soft, bite-size “you just need to work on your social media personality” marketing problem like the kind that the parody Prof. Jeff Jarviss account on Twitter likes to joke about. This is a big, chewy, stringy marketing problem that has to be solved all at once. It’s at least a three-part problem, and as such is not easily detangled. Whoever does solve it will dominate the market—and it’s a big market, and worth doing.The bad news: it’s going to take a huge amount of upfront capital and logistical muscle like you have never seen before. But, mark my words, it’ll happen. And likely sooner, rather than later. The technology already exists. We know (sorta) how to get from point A to point B. If we solve the basic marketing problem, we can also figure out what sort of company might be able to pull all those levers. I have a few ideas on that, too.Three (or more) parts to the problem of getting the market (customer) what it wants:Who is the customer?(bonus) How do you get more customers?What does the customer want?(bonus) Can you get them to want something more than the basic “deal” and thus pay more money (i.e. can you upsell them)?How do you get it to them?(bonus) How do you get it to them without losing money hand-over-fist.(double bonus) How do you get it to them AND make money?Part 1: Who is the customer? — Hint: it’s me!Figure out how to get my dollars and loyalty, and your problems are solved.There are probably many other kinds of customers out there, but the pleasures and struggles I face in the kitchen are far from unique, and knowing a lot about me and how I shop for food and spend my time in the kitchen will help you to understand some big problems your industry could solve.Here’s a rough pie chart of my spending:As you can see, a huge amount of my planned monthly budget goes to online purchasing. I am very (very, very) frugal when it comes to cash purchases at points-of-sale, and I have concluded years ago that buying things online is the best use of my time and money when all is said and done. In making this calculation, I consider things like savings on gas used for comparison shopping, savings in opportunity cost driving from store to store looking for the best deal, competitive pricing between brick-and-mortar and online purchases, availability and variety of goods (branded vs. non-branded). If I could find out how to shift my food purchases to a digital platform and not have to supplement with brick-and-mortar shopping, I’d do it in an instant.I am one of Amazon Prime’s first customers, and I have spent, easily, 100k USD on Amazon purchases since 2007. I made the shift from shopping at Target and Walmart to Amazon on the day I went to Prime, and I never looked back.Despite my dogged loyalty to Prime, I have only rarely purchased groceries from Amazon in the past. Some reasons for this:Amazon does not (yet) have a competitive means to deliver loaves of bread, or milk by the gallon (more on this later)Amazon Pantry requires me to buy a whole boxful of dry goods and pay a (small) shipping fee. My box never gets filled so I never push the “buy” button.Amazon Prime is only cost-effective for buying a whole bunch of things at once. (Who needs 8 bottles of ketchup?)Food storage is an issue when buying in bulk. My kitchen is not that big.I don’t always know 2–7 days in advance what I want to eat. I could be watching The Great British Baking Show and decide that if I don’t get profiteroles within the next 24 hours, I’m never eating again.^^^Photo of Profiterole By Stu Spivack 2006 (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (Creative Commons - Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic - CC BY-SA 2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons^^^I like to buy local, in-season vegetables and support local farmers (more on this later).Even where dry goods are concerned, Amazon does not stock all the niche brands I like at an acceptable price. I am a brand loyalist when it comes to condiments , and I think this is true for many people.^^^ Duke’s mayonnaise (my brand of choice) selling at 5x what I can buy it for at the corner shop—WTAF, Amazon???^^^I’m a bit of an ethnic foods snob. When I buy Indian jarred chutney, I like the kinds I used to eat in India. I like the fish sauce brands I used to buy in Vietnam. A key lime, to me, will never equal a calamansi. A tom yum soup is not worth eating if it doesn’t include fresh kaffir lime leaves.A week of grocery shopping for me could involve going to 5 different shops. One shop for Greek yogurt (I like the full fat kind, which is hard to find), another shop for bread, another shop for beer (I like really cheap beer), another shop for meat and veggies, another for (expensive) paper towels and (cheap) detergent.I buy a huge amount of frozen food because it tastes fairly fresh and is not quick to perish. Amazon does not currently support my frozen food habit.I am reclusive by nature: there is nothing about shopping trips that I particularly enjoy. If not for these strongly held beliefs listed above, I would gladly hang up my Harris Teeter loyalty card and never go shopping again.The second best thing (existing now) to digital/home-delivery shopping, is ordering curbside service at local shops. I do my shopping online, pay by ACH, and schedule a time for pickup. Not including the leisurely online process of filling my online cart, this process takes about 1/2 hour (ten minutes to drive to the supermarket, 10 minutes of waiting for them to roll out the cart and fill up my trunk, 10 minutes of driving home). Not optimal, but OK.All this being said, Amazon home delivery has several major potential advantages over the local supermarket curbside service: they have my payment and shipping information on file, they have sophisticated AI that knows what I like, and everything else I want to buy is there (hose adapters, shrink tubes, geranium seeds, board games, label makers, TENS units, auxiliary phone chargers), and (most importantly) I never have to leave the house or change out of my jammies to buy any of this stuff.This classic infographic from The Oatmeal on choosing movies is very similar to how I choose food, given any choice at all. Not having to put on pants is a big deal:It's time for a Netflix of food to save us from the travails of going outside and let us chill comfortably at home.Marketers, good ones, are always anthropologists. They look at how people live and figure out how to make products fit. I’m reminded of the household tours that P&G did around the time that Febreze was launched. Looking at user behavior teaches a lot about assumptions.I’m an actual marketing geek and an armchair anthropologist, and I’m gonna help you as best I can, by showing you what I’d be looking for in someone’s kitchen if I wanted to sell them (and people like them) a food product. Let’s do an anthropological, stream-of-consciousness tour, using my kitchen as an example, starting with my fridge, and see what we find:A bit about me, my house, and what we end up eating, and why:In our house, we cook a lot, we eat a lot, and we spend a long time thinking about what our next meal is going to be. We like food to be “special”.Oh my, that’s a tiny fridge.Freezer is packed. Overflowing. Mostly frozen fish and meats, packaged veggies, and 10 different kinds of really good chinese dumplings. Also an “emergency” pizza. I’m really worried about how much food I throw away, and having a well-stocked freezer is my best strategy (so far) to mitigate that problem. I’m very enthusiastic to find a better solution that involves a just-in-time supply chain and fresher foods. Meal kits seem made-to-order for that purpose.Refrigerator has a disproportionate number of condiments.Lots of condiments. Holy crow, that’s a lot of condiments. Why do I have so many condiments????Lookie here. More condiments!The big steel thing on the bottom shelf is some sad leftovers kept in a big pot that can’t be used for cooking because it’s not being used to its highest and best purpose.Ohhh, look. It’s a pot of homemade local ramps, bacon, and rigatoni. It looks gross and smells a bit like farts today, even though I just cooked it like 2 days ago and it was legit delicious at the time.Annnndddd…Down the drain it goes. I hate doing this. I really hate this. It had to be done. Nobody was going to eat it.Oh wow. there’s like 4 containers of lasagne on the top shelf of my fridge. It tastes really good but I honestly can’t bear to eat another morsel. I made enough lasagne to fit the cooking pan, and the pan was enough to feed an army. This was a half recipe! A quarter recipe woulda been better. I’ve been eating lasagne for days and if I never saw another casserole again, I’d be just as happy. I really ought to throw this away, but it seems wasteful so instead I’ll wait for it to become a science experiment and then I’ll toss it, container and all, because it’ll be too gross to do anything else.Some fresh veggies from the farmer’s market.My pantry in a constant state of semi-organized chaos. I try to keep things partitioned neatly in sterilite containers. It kinda works….OK, let’s be honest. It hardly works at all. I have no idea what’s in this pantry on any given day. I hate that all the products I buy come in different sizes and shapes and can’t be stored neatly. I’d buy everything from a single brand if it meant all my drygoods could be stocked neatly. I want them to look like this:….And that’s never gonna happen.My roll-out drawers for canned goods. Another good idea that only kinda works. I have no idea what’s lurking in here, but I do know that cans are never the “right” size for storage.I honestly have no idea what the eff is going on in this cabinet. Let’s close it and walk away slowly. Yikes.I’m very proud of my blue and white crockery and dishes. So pretty!!! I love serving things nicely and having my kitchen look neat. So hard to do, though.I have a ridiculously expensive professional model 6-quart Kitchenaid that I got as a gift and literally never use. I keep it around as a status symbol. It takes up usable space, but, hey, Kitchenaid! One of these days I’ll use it!My countertop herb garden, which is not just for decoration. I use this pretty much every day. If the herbs die, I put new ones in. The garlic races (sprouted garlic greens) are life-changing. I use aquabeads and fertilizer spikes to keep it growing, instead of soil. Works really well for the purpose, so I always have a few fresh herbs on hand.This is one day’s worth of dishes. I hate doing dishes. I hate doing dishes so much.In addition to my surfeit of condiments in oversized packages, I have a huge spice rack. I find my spice storage situation intensely frustrating. Again, why can’t everything come in an easily-stored package that has a reasonable amount, hermetically sealed? To wit: I have a container of cinnamon I bought 3 years ago and there’s still like half a thing left of it, but it’s old and tastes like sawdust. I can’t bring myself to throw it out, so it just sits there, taunting me.A small part of my cookbook collection. I don’t use it to cook with (all my recipes are from online these days), but I do use it for looking at pictures and reading descriptions of things I might want to cook and eat (using an online recipe).Where I make coffee and tea. This is one corner of the kitchen that really works as advertised. Most other parts of my kitchen are sources of unpleasant labor, wasters of time, and causes of frustration.Part 2: What does the customer (i.e., me) want?Here’s some things that would make me happy.Never having to do dishes again.Never having to go to the store again.Attractive serving containers that double as storage containers and cooking vessels.I buy this kind of tea at the Asian market because the can matches my dishes. There’s better tasting teas, but the can matches my effing dishes!!Storing less food, more efficiently.E.g., Spices should be blister packed into single-gram portions, like salt at McDonalds.Never having to throw away old produce (I counted three half-heads of different kinds of lettuce while doing my fridge inventory today; they’ll probably all end up in the trash).Getting fresh vegetables, milk, and cheese in the portions I need, the same day I order them.Preferably local.The “service” knows my billing and shipping information and knows what I like to eat (and when), and is able to recommend meals to my taste.Hint: When the first cold day of October comes, freakin’ EVERY DANG THING had better be tasting like pumpkin spice for the next two weeks.I never want to leave the house or get out of my jammies for any reason related to food.Instead of a stockpile of canned goods, I want smaller portions in clearly-labeled storage packs that can be stored neatly in smaller spaces. Preferably, these packs should be reusable and/or recyclable.I want my “service” to know what foods I have on hand, so I don’t double up on ingredients.Individuality/specialness: when I cook meals, I want to be able to add “personal” flare, while still keeping time/labor/waste to a minimum. I do want to be able to claim authorship over recipes and dishes, same as I claim authorship over pies made from refrigerated crusts.I would sometimes like to put some of my kitchen’s “professional” features to use (e.g. Kitchenaid mixer).I should not have to have the “right” size of pot or pan or tray to make a dish. Equipment provided by me should be either voluntary (Kitchenaid) or minimal.I would like my total monthly spending on make-at-home food for 2 people to not exceed 400 USD. I could be persuaded to pay a little more if it meant I was eating better food, shopping fewer hours, doing less clean-up, eating fewer leftovers, and wasting less. Let’s say 500 USD/month tops.There are certain basic-yet-time-consuming foods/ingredients that I believe should be available pre-cooked/pre-prepped unless specified otherwise. These include:Caramelized onions — or any kind of onion, for that matterRiceBechamel/beurre manieHand-pulled noodlesPie crustsMoleMirepoixPomegranates (seeded)Pineapples (peeled)BeansGarlic (peeled)Food should be packed for reasonable longevity and low-cost delivery, but the goal is fresh (local-oriented) food, every day.I’m equal parts lazy and ambitious when it comes to food. It should be interesting and (sometimes) challenging to prepare, but no effort to store or clean up after.Condiments should be brand name and authentic. Asian condiments should legit come from Asia. Mexican condiments should legit come from Mexico (or at the very least, from Bakersfield CA, where the best Mexican condiments come from, I’m told).Optimally, a modular food storage system should come with the plan, where I can see at a glance what my resources are, and what I need to buy more of. Think like K-cups, but for food that’s waiting to be cooked.A bit about my town (Asheville, NC) and how we live and eat:Eating, and eating well, is a big deal, a big part of our culture.A wealth of local food choices.Very few ethnic options. Even Italian food is hit-or-miss in restaurants.Food trucks are readily available and good.Many people are underemployed, casual economy.Logistical challenges: city is not particularly well served by distribution infrastructure (bike delivery is not an option).Why I’m not currently buying from one of the many food kit suppliers (Peach Dish, Purple Carrot, HelloFresh, Plated.com, BlueApron.com, Terra’s Kitchen, Marley Spoon, etc).Cost. I cannot afford to pay more than 500 USD/month for food for two people. That is my absolute red line, beyond which no purveyor of fine foods can pass. All meal kit plans I surveyed looked to be hovering a little above $10 USD/meal. For daily lunch and dinner for two, that adds up to over $1200 USD/month. Way too spendy.A really good local pork chop and a side of fresh vegetables runs about 5 dollars a plate here in NC. That’s what you’re trying to beat.Not local enough. When it’s ramps season here in AVL, I wanna eat some dang ramps. I want to support people here as best I can. Making ends meet is hard.Not truly labor-saving. For me, cooking is fun. It’s all the other stuff that’s awful. Buying things, driving around town, carrying groceries up stairs, bagging/eating leftovers, doing dishes, putting things away, storing things, throwing out old food.Nobody has truly saved me a trip to the grocery store. I’m still gonna have to buy stuff like laundry detergent, so why not pick up some groceries while I’m there.There doesn’t seem to be a clear (marketing) demarcation between a gourmet meal kit and something non-descript and starvation-inducing like (sorry) Nutrisystem. I want to be assured that my food is going to taste really good and be sufficiently satisfying, if I’m going to spend that much money.I’ve never tasted a kit meal. I’m going to need to taste a forkful of someone’s lunch before I commit.A “send a kit to a friend” promotion seems like a great way to solve this particular problem.I look at the weekly menus these websites have, and maybe I want to eat one or two of the things being offered, but I never want to eat all of them. It’s sort of like going to a restaurant and being at their total mercy—ordering one of everything on the menu and hoping for the best.Part 3: How do you get the product to me?The meal kit problem is a big, complicated problem. Many garage-oriented businesses have tried this and failed, right here in Asheville. They just don’t have the muscle to get off the ground. I suspect that all of the recent comers to this marketplace will either die on the vine, or get bought by someone much bigger and more powerful. The natural answer is to be a really well-developed logistical specialist with excellent data on my shopping habits and strong artificial intelligence capabilities.In rank order from most-likely to least-likely contenders for this space:You could be Amazon: You’re my first stop for online shopping. You already have my buying information and you know exactly what I like. Your distribution platform is highly-developed and coordinates multiple vendors, including cottage industries, seamlessly. Your negotiating power with delivery specialists is legendary. Localization is getting very granular with contract drivers and drone experiments.You could be Google: You have maps, self-driving cars, and my entire search history at your disposal. You know when I’m jonesing for a dang profiterole, and you probably guessed it ahead of time, by virtue of the fact that you knew I was streaming food shows on my computer. You have Youtube, and you could easily tie in a “buy this meal kit” button with youtube vlogger demos. Your “shopping” capabilities seem to be on a back burner for now, but I don’t see you leaving it there forever.You could be Uber or Lyft: You have an army of local drivers who can drop things off, piece by piece, over the course of a day, so everything’s staged and ready by dinnertime. You’re getting into self-driving cars, just like Google is. You know how to do surge/locality/availability-based pricing on the fly, which could come in handy. This is a weird brand expansion, but it could really work.You could be Blue Apron or HelloFresh: You’ve spent some time on getting name recognition (S-town anyone?), and you have an army of happy customers who tried and can presumably vouch for your product. You (hopefully, at this point) have some packaging/portioning automation infrastructure in place. What I’m recommending in logistics, though, is going to require a lot of capital up front. If you can get a very strong venture round in the near future, it’s not wholly unbelievable that you could expand into other stuff later on based on proprietary logistics knowledge, same as Amazon expanded away from books based on its extreme logistics prowess.That being said, y’all’s most likely exit strategy would be to sell yourself to one of the big guys eventually. But after you proved yourself, so your price could be pretty dang high.You could be Elon Musk: You’re worried about environmental degradation, and you think that automating the whole system of delivering meals in a zero-waste enclosed system is the answer. You have self-driving cars in your bullpen, and you are a genius with plenty of cash to throw at the problem, provided the ROI looks good. Risk doesn’t scare you—it excites you. You are well-seasoned in getting big heavy things off the ground in an efficient way.You could be Walmart: You’re an old dog, but you can learn new tricks. You are famous for being affordable (food stamps, government nutrition programs are obvious partnership avenues) and your website has everything under the sun that a person could want to buy. Your logistics are still the best in the world, and you are getting a little desperate to find a way to stop Amazon from overtaking your market share. This could be it. This could really be it!You could be Facebook: I mean you could be facebook. I don’t know why you’d do this, but I do know that y’all have way too much cash lying around, and you keep buying companies to get rid of some of it. I’m also pretty sure y’all know what I’m planning to eat for dinner on any given night, so that helps.You could be Apple: Same deal as Facebook. Too much cash on hand, decent AI, Steve Jobs would probably have approved, if his hypothetical meal kit had included sufficient wheat grass.You could be the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, interested in a low-cost way to combat “food deserts” in low-income urban and rural areas, and nutrition programs for kids and seniors. Meal kits might sound like a really good way of fixing an intractable problem with a flexible, scalable solution. Oh right. Tom Price. Never mind.Whoever decides to do this, you need to leverage a lot of things all at once, and be prepared to spend money to make money.You need to have a way to deliver food and retrieve/clean reusable food containers.You need a way to figure out what I want to eat, without me spending a lot of time figuring it out for you.You need to have a way to portion out foodstuffs that is efficient and not ridiculous. I read an article about how Blue Apron was doing this a couple years ago, and it was alarmingly inefficient and stressful:All told, interviews with 14 former employees describe a chaotic, stressful environment where employees work long days for wages starting at $12 an hour bagging cilantro or assembling boxes in a warehouse kept at a temperature below 40 degrees.“You put honey in a small container. We would put small peppers in little small bags,” said Glenn Lovely, who worked as a temp in the Richmond facility for three months. “And it was cold — cold as hell.”…Those ingredients are prepped by kitchen associates, who weigh out and perfectly portion bulk ingredients from Blue Apron’s suppliers into small plastic bottles and bags: tablespoons of soy sauce poured into tiny bottles, for example, or carefully counted fingerling potatoes put into boxes. And after the boxes are assembled, the shipping department loads them onto pallets and, ultimately, trucks.…“I would get sent to Whole Foods and buy things if we really needed an ingredient and we didn’t have it in the building,” said the former team lead. Blue Apron told BuzzFeed News that while during early days it sourced some of its product from local stores, the company’s shipments have been too large to make grocery store shopping feasible “for years now.”I mean holy crap, y’all. That sounds awful. A lot of things that clearly need to be done upstream by robots, are being done by low-wage employees whose fingers are freezing off. Buying stuff at retail at the last minute?? This is not sustainable! AI should at the very least have been used to predict “lumps” in ordering/preparation changes so nobody has to go to the store on short notice, if not to predict what an individual customer might buy on any given day. Reading this account of the struggles of Blue Apron circa 2015 reminds me very much of the (Root) Beer supply chain management game we played in B school. With a very large measure of Murphy’s Law applied. That’s no way to run a business!Any of the big logistics/AI/self-driving powerhouses I mentioned above could overcome these problems, and one of them really should.Conclusion—Here’s what it should look like from a supply side standpoint:AI-driven, simplified ordering, possibly app-based, informed by my other online activities.Kit “components” not necessarily being assembled at a single location. Can be dropped at my house throughout the day. Can be sourced locally and delivered either by humans (uber) or self-driving cars, or drones, or some combination thereof. I’ll keep a branded cooler by my front door so y’all can leave the meats and veggies there. Maybe ask Yeti to partner with you guys?I’m a big fan of hardware-plus-subscription services from an operational standpoint, not only because it simplifies shipping logistics (a lot), but because hardware-based contracts are often stickier and harder to break. I’m thinking about how many times I pondered changing my cable box service or cell phone carrier and decided it just wasn’t worth the time to turn in the equipment…Very well-thought-out packaging and storage. Food should be able to be cooked, stored, and served using supplied packaging. Packaging can be returned for washing/reuse when the next delivery comes (see hardware comment, above). My fridge should not be overrun with condiments, yet I should have condiments handy for anything I want to use them for, and they should be brand-name.Also do my laundry. (Just kidding) ((No, on second thought, actually maybe not really kidding.))Keep track of what I do and don’t have sitting around in my kitchen already.Bonus points if you can suggest things to make with things I have in my kitchen.Make sure I know the value of your product (labor-saving, satisfying meals, I don’t have to get out of my jammies, I can still cook and be unique and original, but no dishes).Recipes should be tailored for me and my tastes! An “Annika Schauer meal delivery kit” should not be identical to a “Michael Peacock meal delivery kit”. Maybe get recipes from IBM Chef Watson, so our individual styles remain individual, and stylish. At the very least, get our brands of mayo right (I like Duke’s, Michael likes Best Foods).Branding should be focused on visible collateral (food packaging), not on specific recipes (which should be tailored to individual tastes/seasons/dietary restrictions, and should not ever be limited to a weekly “menu” of only seven options, no matter how delicious those options might be.)Get busy with partnerships on all levels. Include brand-name items in kits (like Tabasco in MREs) and market directly through sponsorships on how-to cooking sites. Make kits for every recipe on ChowHound and Food.com. You get the picture.Get an “app” style marketplace for recipes, instantly translated into orderable products. An IFTTT-type dingus could easily be used for this purpose. Give recipe authors a small cut of profits on foods ordered, possibly in redeemable meal-kit credits.Get me a profiterole, or the means to make one quickly, whenever I see one on TV and get a random craving. :) Possible ad text: “Annika, you could be eating a profiterole like this one, in the comfort of your own home, by 8:00PM tonight, if you order now!”Put my food delivery order in the same online marketplace as other convenience items I’m going to need, like detergent, Ziplock bags, deodorant, etc.If I get a meal kit and I tell you I like it, give me an easy way to order that exact same meal kit again.Not all meal kits need to be delivered the same day I order them, but some same-day options should exist (replacing the “emergency pizza” from my freezer).Best case scenario, kits should include sourcing for hard-to-find ingredients, so I can make an authentic pecan pie from cane syrup at home and not have to act like corn syrup is the same thing.Special “group buys” could be a way to both source hard-to-find ingredients, and recruit new users. The “bus” leaves the station when enough passengers get on board to make an order affordable.Deliver all of the above for a price comparable to my current actual food/sundries spend. (If you get the packaging logistics sorted, you should be able to match this price based on volume and still make a reasonable profit, since you have no customer-facing brick-and-mortar retail space to maintain, no parking issues, minimal spoilage, and no shoplifters to chase away.)The business case for this plan:It’s clearly not a small project, but whoever grabs the reins on this endeavor gets, in addition to any marginal returns from the business itself, a treasure trove of demographic data more personal than even Google and Facebook can see right now. The kind of data that can target and sell things to people on a very granular level that’s not been seen heretofore. You also get a sticky customer base that will not likely drift to other sellers, and a huge window of opportunity to upsell.Like Amazon was never really just a bookseller, whoever picks up this one will not be just a purveyor of dinner. They’ll be a logistics and data collection company that sells food as a means to an end. Probably a large and impressive end. The more skin you’re willing to put into the game up front, the more impressive the end will be.All of this is doable, y’all. All of this is doable in my small town of Asheville, population <100k, tucked in a hidden corner of Western North Carolina. All of this is doable anywhere with internet, food retailers within driving distance, casual-economy workers, and cold chain. Which means pretty much the entirety of the continental United States, to start.All of this is worth doing, and worth doing well.Look at me: I’m a hillbilly. If you can get me to stick a “dash” button next to my dishwasher and a virtual “dash” button on my phone, if you can get a pair of pliers to my house on a Sunday afternoon when I order them on a Saturday morning, for a price that is comparable to what I’d pay at the Ace, if you can get me a seat in a car to anywhere in the city from my front door in less than 2 minutes, if you can sell all of my personal data, at a nice premium, to third parties, I think you’ll find it worth your while to save me the headache of shopping and doing dishes. And for that I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, in advance. Hopefully not too much advance, because I can’t wait!!!…And may the odds be ever in your favor.Edit: I found this article today, which sort of hints at some of what I’m talking about. McDonald's and Uber Just Made a Huge Announcement, and It's Going to Be a Game-Changer