Workspace Reservation App
Alcove
Alcove sought to build an app that brought profit-starved coffee shop owners and time-deprived freelancers together to mutually benefit one another.
We sought to disrupt the workspace industry by offering an on-demand hourly solution for freelancers to work out of coffee shops, restaurants, and even unconventional workspaces, such as hospitals and laundromats.
By reserving tables in their coffee shops, Alcove hosts would earn $7 per hour from freelancers who required workspace, electricity and Wi-Fi in one convenient place.
• Co-Founder + Ops
• UX/UI Designer
• Product Roadmap
• Product Management
• Brand Development
• Go-to-Market Strategy
ROLE• Upfront costs
• Securing coffee shops to participate
• Organic user growth
• Scale of Los Angeles
• Both B2B + B2C business model with competing needs
Key ChallengesThe Problem
Coffee shops are amazing places to get work done… if you can ever find a table & chair, electricity, and Wi-Fi access together in one place. But, would people be willing to pay a premium to reserve such ideal work conditions at a coffee shop?
The Process
In order for Alcove to succeed, we quickly learned that coffee shop owners needed to make “the price of two lattes” per hour for reserved tables to make sense. We knew that the Alcove service offering would have a broad appeal to not only freelancers, but also sales reps, college students, and more. We would find a handful of shops to participate in a 6-week beta testing period so we could implement a minimum viable product, charge $10 per hour for a table and see how the lives of coffee shop goers would improve.
Discovery
After surveying over 100 freelancers across the U.S., they most certainly would be willing to pay for a service like Alcove. That’s when we sought to create a win-win-win scenario -- a revenue stream for Alcove, a revenue stream for coffee shops, and a little slice of on-demand workspace heaven for the on-the-go worker.
Survey Results
Competitor Analysis
Strategy
After reviewing the market potential, we hit the ground running developing the Alcove brand positioning and identity, as well as an MVP project timeline. From the B2B perspective, we created a pitch deck and approached 100 coffee shops in the Los Angeles area to attract shop owners to participate in the beta.
Brand Architecture
User Personas
Brand Identity
Coffee Shop Host Pitch Deck
Project Timeline
Product Design
From the B2C perspective, we outlined the minimum viable product to get a booking application out into the market. It needed to feel intuitive and familiar to other reservation apps out on the market. We established our must-haves for MVP and wrote requirements for our development team.
MVP MoSCoW
UX Design
The Solution
With beta shops secured and a functioning app in the App Store, we strategically placed Alcove marketing collateral on the specially-designated reserved tables at our beta shops. We put some marketing money towards paid media targeting the locations of our shops in the Los Angeles area and posted on various freelancer announcement boards to get the word out. We also had a handful of paid “plant” beta testers to fill the tables and draw attention to them the first few weeks of our test.
“Alcove seems certainly a very timely and useful new tool to make life of freelancers like me a little easier.”
– Michael E., CustomerCustomer Experience
Customers loved the Alcove service from the outset of our testing. Like we planned, neither the user nor the host had to verbally communicate with one another to fulfill a booking. Simple table signage indicated Alcove reserved tables versus regular tables.
Host Experience
We signed up 5 shops out of 100 visited for our 6-week beta test. Hosts received a 70/30 split of revenue, automated booking and exposure to new clients through our customer network. Alcove filled empty seats, increased food & beverage revenues and had the potential to add an additional $1000 per month to the average coffee shop’s bottom line.
“Yes, this is what I have been waiting for. I have been searching for a way to book space in my shop. Very excited about the potential of this platform.”
– Andrew M., Shop Owner
The Results
Once in development, we ran into a handful of technical issues after we started building the MVP of the app. The initial scope and feature requests we had discussed with the developer when we hired him was approved with confidence from their team. But once the build started, we had to slowly start to remove features due to the unexpected complexity of the backend development. Because our business model was both a B2B and a B2C product, we had to cut features on both sides of the app. From the B2B side, we figured out a workaround that connected the bookings to Google calendar as a temporary fix until we could build out a future dashboard feature for business owners. We also had to remove our promotional "Refer A Friend" for the beta test, which was a huge part of our initial marketing plan.
In the end, we did get a functioning MVP customer version of the app into the App Store. We ran our beta test for 6-weeks where received a handful of bug identifications and feedback on the most requested features we should focus on in the next release. We had completely bootstrapped the beta and were at a crossroads as to what to do post beta. In order to lock down seed funding, we needed to increase our userbase. But in order to do that we needed to fix the bugs in the app and bring on more locations, which required hiring a new development team.
Ultimately, we learned that there was nothing propriety about our idea and that in order for it to reach mass adoption, it would need to be a coffee chain like Starbucks, not individual Ma-and-Pa coffee shops. This was also my first real-world execution of bringing a personal venture to life from ideation to MVP solely on our own. This included setting up the business as a C-Corp with partner shares, to understanding the role of funding, to hiring and working with a dev team, to launching an app in the App Store.
“I would pay a reservation fee in a heartbeat if I knew I could show up at my favorite Starbucks location where I can never get a table, and have one waiting with my name on it.”
– Dani Z., Customer6-Week Beta Test
The 6-week beta test included 5 coffee shops, primarly on the westside of Los Angeles, with one shop by Downtown Los Angeles. Customers were charged $10 per hour. Overall, we had 45 reservations with a total of 60 booked hours. Coffee shops earned profits each week ranging from $7 to $40, with overall profits at the end of the beta period ranging from $30 to $150.
Key Learnings
Difficulty getting meetings with shop owners
On average it took about 3 visits to finally get a meeting with the decision-maker to pitch Alcove hosting benefits. If baristas didn’t understand the pitch, we would never get to the owner. We went to 100 shops all around Los Angeles, with many positive responses, but only 5 commitments to join the beta test.
Great feedback on welcome kits
All hosts were very impressed with all of the marketing material for the tables.
Onboarding screens should have been included in MVP
Due to development team issues, the onboarding screens were not launched in the MVP. This left customers confused on how to use the app right of the gate. The default once you create an account landed on a GPS-centered map. With most of our locations on the westside, the vastness of Los Angeles worked against us.
Varying ecosystems within Ma-and-Pa shops
Lack of enforcement with Alcove management. Perfect storm of busyness and shop demand needs to occur, and these shops are too small. Also the culture of the shop needs to align with Alcove’s target customers.
Needs to be in franchised shops
In order to scale, the reserved table needs to be implemented in a franchised coffee shop. The management of the table would be rolled into the employees day-to-day responsibilities. The busyness factor is built into to shops like Starbucks or Coffee Bean. And can easily rollout into other regions and cities, without starting the entire sign-up process again.