All Mint.com really did for 90%+ of people is display pretty charts of their finances in a completely automated way. The "big idea" they had of helping people transform their financial lives was mostly bullshit and never realized IMHO.
It was really: enter your bank account credentials and get instant visualization of what you spend your money on. Useful, but hardly life altering for most people. "Wow, I spend a lot on eating out. I should cook at home more."
If you really want to be the Mint.com of food you would create an iPhone app that OCRs your restaurant and grocery receipts and displays cool charts of what types of food you eat. "Wow, I eat a lot of unhealthy food, I should cook at home more."
I suspect the solution to the problem you've identified doesn't look anything like Mint.com. The startups that are delivering pre-made meals are probably closer to the mark.
It should be possible to affordably deliver quality food to people's houses on a bi-weekly basis. You could take into account all requirements you specified.
You get a package, open it up, drop the meals into a pot/microwave and instantly get a fresh healthy meal. That's the only real "drag and drop" solution.
Fair enough critique of Mint. What Mint did for me was track all of my different incoming and outgoing money and display them in the a very pretty, intuitive and easy to understand way. You are correct that the product I'm describing is a lot more complex than Mint.com. The comparison I made was based purely on the fact that the visualization mint gives me transformed my financial life in the way I would hope this product would transform my eating life.
Also, the product you described is interesting but it has serveral problems. One, it's going to be more expensive than doing the shopping on my own and keeping cost down of my food budget is one of my primary goals. Two, being able to shop locally at Farmer's markets, etc... is going to be important for a lot of users including myself.
Anyways, thanks for the feedback. You do make some good points about Mint and why it's not a 1 to 1 comparison.
Comments
All Mint.com really did for 90%+ of people is display pretty charts of their finances in a completely automated way. The "big idea" they had of helping people transform their financial lives was mostly bullshit and never realized IMHO.
It was really: enter your bank account credentials and get instant visualization of what you spend your money on. Useful, but hardly life altering for most people. "Wow, I spend a lot on eating out. I should cook at home more."
If you really want to be the Mint.com of food you would create an iPhone app that OCRs your restaurant and grocery receipts and displays cool charts of what types of food you eat. "Wow, I eat a lot of unhealthy food, I should cook at home more."
I suspect the solution to the problem you've identified doesn't look anything like Mint.com. The startups that are delivering pre-made meals are probably closer to the mark.
It should be possible to affordably deliver quality food to people's houses on a bi-weekly basis. You could take into account all requirements you specified.
You get a package, open it up, drop the meals into a pot/microwave and instantly get a fresh healthy meal. That's the only real "drag and drop" solution.
Fair enough critique of Mint. What Mint did for me was track all of my different incoming and outgoing money and display them in the a very pretty, intuitive and easy to understand way. You are correct that the product I'm describing is a lot more complex than Mint.com. The comparison I made was based purely on the fact that the visualization mint gives me transformed my financial life in the way I would hope this product would transform my eating life.
Also, the product you described is interesting but it has serveral problems. One, it's going to be more expensive than doing the shopping on my own and keeping cost down of my food budget is one of my primary goals. Two, being able to shop locally at Farmer's markets, etc... is going to be important for a lot of users including myself.
Anyways, thanks for the feedback. You do make some good points about Mint and why it's not a 1 to 1 comparison.