Today I was chatting with my girlfriend about the recession and how rip off Ireland is still alive and well. The prices we spend on products/services on this little island is absolutely shocking to say the least and we all know it. Take today for example, we went off to do some shopping in the Kildare Outlet store and went into Starbucks to take a load off.

A grande coffee, a hot chocolate, a scone and a banana muffin all for a grande total of €11.50! – Now €11.50 is a pretty “normal” price for what we ordered, but I guess I just seen it from a different angle today and thought “what the hell, why should we pay this? because everybody else does and we should just live with it? – Things have to change here and fast.

So I got thinking about other types of businesses that charge relatively high and could well afford to cut down on a few percent in their prices, especially in these “uncertain times”. So Aoife and myself began (jokingly at first) trying to think up business ideas. We came up with some pretty funny ones, like a toast cafe, where all you can eat is… you guessed it toast, with a choice of toppings but Aoife, I believe thought up an absolute gem that has real potential. There are a good few of these businesses in Ireland and throughout the world already and not uncommon, but they charge a lot for their product and I think I could quite frankly do better in terms of price and customer service.

I think to have an extremely good price point for the customers and compete with the big boys I would need to source the product from overseas such as Asia and maybe have to travel there to suppliers to work out the details? I don’t know how I would begin to undertake any of that but I’m sure I could learn and pick some people’s brains who have done this already.

This type of business would require alot of resources such as:

• Capital.
• Importing the product from Asia.
• Retail space.
• Manager / Employees.
• Branding.
• Marketing / Advertising.

I’m going to mull it over for another day and make a decision to act on it or leave it as just an idea. It is exciting though.