Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

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This reminds me of the predicament that young'ish hardware component supplier companies get into. They win a huge contract with a prominent customer, but then that one customer represents 60%+ of their revenues (ex: winning a Cisco, Nintendo, or Apple contract).

I've worked at a few such companies, and they all work extra hard trying to diversify their revenue sources, for both customers and industry. If it's a startup, then such revenue dependence can mean the difference between being able to go IPO or not.

For the situation you describe for restaurants, they'd have to be vigilant about catering to multiple platform providers, and not neglecting their in-person customers (I've definitely seen a restaurant cater more to delivery rather than sit down, and slowly deteriorating in reputation among customers as order times became longer).

It's just like managing an AAPL supplier contract. Some will thrive, and others will suffer, like the sapphire supplier in Arizona.

The sapphire supplier is GTAT, and they were actually a sapphire glass manufacturing equipment manufacturer that Apple contracted to manufacture sapphire displays (a completely new business for them), then un-contracted afterwards, dropping their market cap from $1.5bn to $175m and shuttering three plants (whose workers Apple pledged to find new jobs for).

http://www.businessinsider.com/gt-advanced-files-for-bankrup...

I used to work for a company that did software development work for the local subsidiary of a multinational corporation. The corporation was their sole customer.

At some point the corporation decided it wouldn't outsource software development work anymore. They hired some of the key people at my former employer (by then I had already moved somewhere else), and almost overnight they had to close shop because they didn't have a source of revenue anymore.

This kind of thing happens in Advertising all the time. Agencies will get that ">50% of the business" account that they are utterly dependent on. LOTS of layoffs if they lose the business.

Wise agencies try to diversify - but any new business brought in will have to deal with The Big Client being the squeakiest of wheels (... that get the grease).

I can't say I've see an agency that has made the "grow other business" transition successfully.

It's just part of the natural growth process of B2B companies.

All you can do is hope that you can nail down the next large customer before your existing golden egg figures out they can push you around.

I've seen quite a few restaurants list themselves across multiple platforms lately; Uber Eats, Eat24, GrubHub, etc.

I've often wondered how well a restaurant would do in areas where those platforms are popular if it just dropped its customer-facing storefront entirely and went entirely online delivery.

The drop in operating costs versus the lack of walk-ins ...

I've started seeing this in the bay area. There are definitely places in SF which are lunch-catering only (via ZeroCater/Zesty) with no retail presence. Also there's a pizza delivery company in the East Bay (pizzamatador.com) which has no phone number, no store front (shopify website only) and will deliver you a par-baked pizza in <20mins. SpoonRocket (R.I.P.) was also delivery via app and their kitchens were in West Berkeley instead of a more expensive location that allowed foot traffic.

I expect you'll see more non-traditional kitchen locations and alternative delivery transport methods (e.g. scooters or Postmates bike couriers) to combat the high rents, congestion and parking issues common to most dense cities.

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