My wife and I are very determined to start our own small business and came up with the following concept:

Deliver weeknight meals for families. the main target segment is working couples because of higher disposable income and lack of free time. This service would relieve them from grocerie shopping, meal planing and preparation, kitchen cleaning, etc. 4 times per week.

Meals would be prepared and delivered twice per week. For example on Monday afternoons, we would cook Monday and tuesday's meals, each consisting of a main course, salad or veggie, and a starch (e.q. rice, potatoes, etc.). On Wednesday we would do the same for Wednesday and Thursday nights. There would only be one menu per night but it would be different every night unitl the 4th or 5th week, at which point the menu would start to rotate.

We want to concentrate on preparing high-quality, great-tasting, homestyle food with sensible nutritional content (my wife is a chef). Nutritional labels included with every meal and no meal would ever be above 600 calories per person.

we have worked out both target-based and cost based pricing to find the sweetspot between attaining reasonable margins and pricing it attractively and have found that $10 per serving would do it.

The part that I'm mostly worried about is delivery. We definitely only want to target neighborhoods where we are able to gather at least 5 families within a reasonable distance and we are thinking of charging a $5 delivery fee per family per delivery. We think that, in time, when we have a large enough customer base we can hire a part-time delivery boy, that would be able to make at least $30 or $40 per hour and from there, subtract vehicle and gas usage. In the mean time, my wife and I would have to deliver ourselves.

Additionally, I have not found similar businessess in the area where I live. I have done a lot of online searching and have not found similar businessess in other areas either. This actually scares me and makes me question whether our business idea is feasible.

I would sincerely appreciate the perspective of other small business owners on our idea and concept.

Thanks.