“The average office worker wastes 45 minutes per week waiting for coffee… and every millisecond counts.”

A Toronto based app seeks to please consumers and vendors alike by eliminating the need to wait in lines while still being able to purchase delicious food and coffee.

Ritual: allowing customers to skip lines while driving additional revenues to local eateries

In 2015, founder Ray Reddy noticed that wasted time can have a major impact on people’s decision making, so he decided to start a company that would be able to change that. He noticed that without all that wasted time people are more productive, efficient and happy. Ritual was founded to overcome these negative effects so people could stop wasting time waiting for coffee and get back to being happy.

How It Works

Ritual allows consumer to skip line-ups for takeout food and beverages. People working in offices or residing in certain neighbourhoods can order their food or drinks through the app and pay ahead of time with a credit card, which means no frustration with the credit card machine or unnecessary time wasted at the establishment. You can even customize your order on the app. As well, to increase people’s happiness by wasting less time, Ritual will notify the consumer when it is time to leave to pick up their order so it will be ready as soon as they arrive. The best part is when the consumer arrives at the establishment to pick up their order, there is no waiting, the customer is able to just walk up to the counter, grab their order and head back to work.

Business Model

Ritual’s business model works on the premise that starting small is the best way to get bigger. Ritual began in the King West neighbourhood, which allowed them to gain close relationships with each of the vendors to ensure a mutual trust and understanding. They were able to work with the vendors to ensure the new orders would not mess up their existing work flow. As well, the business model works in such a way that customers are not charged any additional costs for the service but rather, Ritual takes a portion of any incremental order revenues that are placed through the Ritual app.

Value Co-Creation and Efficiency Criteria

The method through which value-creation occurs is rapidly shifting towards a personalized consumer experiences (Prahalad, C.K., & Ramaswamy, V., (2004). In this way, value has been co-created with Ritual. Consumers are co-creators because they gain value from no longer needing to wait in line, but give value by providing additional business to the vendors which they otherwise may not have received.  The vendors are co-creators because they provide the service to the customer, but gain value by receiving incremental sales. Lastly, Ritual was the medium that was able to facilitate co-creation because without them customers and vendors would have been worse off, but they are able to profit off the new symbiotic relationship they have created. It is efficient and meets the joint profit requirement because it gives incentives to all parties to cooperate. It is feasible and meets required reallocations because the polity is not related to the platform, the platform was made legal before it was launched, and Ritual will only accept credible merchants. Lastly, it is achievable because it is a new service with no true incumbents and it is scalable by neighbourhood (Carson, S.J., Dinney, T.M., Dowling, G.R., & John, G., (1999).

By Noa Zaifman, 468357

References

Prahalad, C.K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2004).  Co-creation Experiences: The Next Practice in Value Creation. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 18, 5-14.

Carson, S.J., Dinney, T.M., Dowling, G.R., & John, G. (1999). Understanding Institutional Designs within Marketing Value Systems. Journal of Marketing, 63, 115-130.

O’Kane, J. (2015, December 16). Jump to the front of the line with this app. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/the-challenge/need-for-speed-sparks-an-app-for-takeout-food/article27759031/