(We originally posted this in May 2020. You can read more of our original ideas in our archive.)
Problem: Bottled water is the most successful mass-market beverage in the U.S. in terms of both revenue and volume, according to a report in Beverage Daily. However, it is also the most wasteful: for every six bottles people buy, only one is recycled and every day, people in the U.S. throw away more than 60 million plastic water bottles, most of which end up in landfills or as litter in America’s streets, parks and waterways. There are even more environmental concerns that can be found here.
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Solution: An at-home water delivery service that refills bottles in glass containers. Think of it as the modern day milkman. This business actually won’t require too much innovation, but instead would be a return to pre-1950s habits. During that time, the most popular way to receive milk was to have it delivered directly to your door by a milkman. The process is described below by Food52 (emphasis mine):
Customers would place their order with the milkman and he (almost always he) would deliver it the next day to either an insulated box on the front stoop or, in some homes, to double-doored cubbies built into the side of a house. The milkman, carrying bottles of milk either in a truck or on a cart pulled along by a horse or sometimes a very burly dog, would open the cubby’s outside door and set the milk inside (and removing the empty bottles—and payment—left for him). The family could then open a second door on the inside of the house and remove the milk. Glass bottles, sealed with a little waxed foil cap, provided both a unit for delivery (so people could order, say, 3 bottles—or 2 bottles whole milk and 1 bottle cream) and a convenient, efficient way to distribute (as opposed to the former method of portioning milk house-by-house out of a metal milk barrel). The milkman would pick up empty glass bottles along the route, clean them, and reuse them.
After almost 80 years, there is now technology that can make the process described above even more efficient and cheaper to run. The business would take on this business model, which has already proven successful, to deliver the new commodity that everyone enjoys: water. Many parts of the US and world have already seen a resurgence of the milkman (as reported by The New York Times and The Guardian), but what about The Waterman?
This market is huge: 72% of Americans say bottled water (still and/or sparkling) is their most preferred non-alcoholic beverage. This shows in the numbers too: by 2025, the bottled water market is projected to be worth $215 billion. Any business that could break into even 1% of this market (through say bottled water delivery) would automatically be a unicorn company.
American Milkman, circa 1936
Monetization: This would be a subscription service for people at their homes, they would pay for the subscription.
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)