Backstory: With many states and major cities quarantined, ecommerce is dominating. From CPG to games, everyone is getting more items shipped to their door than ever before. Physical stores have closed their doors overnight and are struggling to find a way in this new society.

One industry that will see lasting impacts from this is the restaurant business. These take millions in investment before they can open their doors. Once they open, their success rate is low, making the over all venture risky... adding covid and quarantines, I think the amount of new restaurants will dramatically decrease over the next few years.

People will still want to eat out, not cook and pay for pre-made meals. There will be an increase in "co-working" kitchens where multiple chefs in different restaurants can prepare and sell meals. With these new freelance chefs/micro businesses, they will need to have a delivery mechanism for their foods.

The Idea: A generic set of containers for reuse with food deliveries.

Deep Dive: You would build a set of 3-5 containers that snap and fit together tightly for transportation for the food industry to use for deliveries. These containers can service all categories of cuisine and can be heated or frozen.

You would also build a delivery bag for these containers, similar to the pizza industry:

By making these containers reusable and having a standard size set, delivery drivers for different food providers would be able to pick up any previous used containers on new deliveries. You could incentivize the drivers with a small payment for each used container returned to a drop off center.

You would be providing an all in one, sustainable, solution for chefs to pack and delivery their food to the end customer.

Validation: The pizza industry has already adopted a set size box allowing for a reusable delivery container/bag.

Monetization: You would charge a fee per container. With chefs needing to use these on a consistent basis you could offer bulk discounts and turn it into a monthly subscription for a minimum number of containers.

Steps to Launch: I would start with one, popular restaurant in your area. The sheer amount of one time use plastics being used in deliveries is shocking. We're going to have to make an effort to reduce this waste.