Wheelys challenges Starbucks' bicycle mobile green coffee stalls

First, to invest in nuclear fusion and Soylent, and now to invest in coffee stands!

Y Combinator invested in Wheelys, an European start-up that built a compact, fully functional coffee stand out of bicycles. You can get a coffee stand for as little as $2999. With three stoves, tap water, a horn and a powerful electric engine in the coffee stand, Wheelys today launched a crowdfunding campaign for its new coffee stand on Indiegogo.

Tomas Mazetti, co-founder of Wheelys, said: "this is a full-service coffee stand and we condensed it into a bike that can provide soft drinks, coffee, juice, fruit, chocolate bars and cupcakes. Coffee stands are powered by the sun and the human body. We started Wheelys to test how environmentally friendly business can be. Our coffee stand has achieved zero carbon dioxide emissions. "

Mazetti often does strange projects. He and his team illegally flew into Belarusian airspace and left hundreds of teddy bears marked with democratic slogans from the plane. This led to a diplomatic dispute in which several generals were dismissed.

Later, he met his current co-founder, Maria De La Croix, through a feminist organization. The two men joined the feminist movement, and Mazetti burned the money he thought he earned because he was a man, protesting the average wage gap between women and men.

Now the enthusiasm of Mazeti, Croix and Per Cromwell has become a simple, cheap and environmentally friendly way to start a business for people around the world. They take a fancy to coffee because it is one of the products that people consume most often.

Since the launch of the first version of Wheelys, they have sold or pre-sold 150 coffee stands to customers in about 20 countries, including Jordan, Singapore, Chile and Taiwan. They now sell one or two Wheelys coffee stands a day.

Today, the company launched a new Wheelys, added an integrated app for sale, and increased the available space for bicycles by half.

The more advanced Wheelys also comes with two Android tablets, a mobile greenhouse where coffee beans can be grown, and an app that displays the temperature of brewing coffee.

If customers use the Wheelys brand, they need to purchase from Wheelys. Wheelys offers more than 10 coffee and more than 30 products, all of which are fair trade and organic products. But Mazetti says customers can also adjust to local tastes and needs, such as the Wheelys coffee stand sold to Jordan to make Turkish coffee.

More importantly, Wheelys's main player makes coffee, rather than the espresso (such as lattes and cappuccinos) that many US coffee chains sell today.

"if you like coffee beans, then making coffee by hand tastes too much," Mazetti said. "

He also said that Wheelys's advantage over traditional coffee chains is that it can retain most of its revenue. If customers who buy Wheelys use the Wheelys brand and recommended products, they can retain 90% of their revenue.

The reason why Wheelys customers can retain so much income is that coffee stands do not have to pay commercial rent like brick-and-mortar stores. However, many cities charge for food stall licences.

"there are 28000 Starbucks coffees in the United States, and the market can accommodate at least five Starbucks," Mazetti said. " He estimates that setting up a Wheelys in a densely populated city with heavy traffic will earn about $400 a day, or about $200 excluding costs.

"to some extent, environmentalism has become a game played by big international companies," Mazetti said. Their environmental protection is a little fake. This is also one of our goals to build Wheelys, to do something really environmentally friendly. "

Translation: 1thinc0

Y Combinator Backs An All-In-One, Portable Coffee Stand Called Wheelys To Take on Starbucks