Open-Source Business Plans?

bigattichouse asks: "I've been working on a business plan lately, sort of a 'If I ever get out of computing' fantasy. Its simple, a bakery. But since I *know* I'm not going to do anything with it, I thought it would be interesting to create a GPL equivalent.. a plan, logos, recipes, methods that anyone could use to start their own bakery/delivery service under a GPL/Copyleft sort of arrangement. I image there are a LOT of potential entreprenuers who might benefit from a 'Free/Open' franchise looking at the market. Has anyone done something like this?"

Comments

Bakery? Why not a brewery!!

[zcat_NZ]

One thing I've always wanted to do, but never got around to doing, is to develop a fairly decent homebrew recipe and release it under the GPL.

Just to totally confuse RMS's "free as in beer" analogy.

Market Saturation

[bjb]

I think the one thing that you'll have to worry about and address in the plan is avoidance of market saturation in a neighborhood. Basically, if everyone has this business plan, anyone can use it. Lets say then that 5 people want to start a bakery in the same town using this plan. They all go to the same bank for a loan to start such an operation. If they all have the same recipies, they end up making essentially the same product and thus their price competition comes down to purely aesthetic issues of the store front and location. However, given that aesthetics are an equal, there is a point where setting up too many of these essentially identical businesses in the same area will reduce the potential return for the bank (the lender of initial capital). Given also that bakeries are typically cash businesses (read: a lot of income is not declared), this poses the lender's profitability to be even less in a saturated market.

So basically, you may want to consider some kind of formula or description that can give these businesses a bit of difference, and a "volume multiplier" that estimates how many customers this operation could support, given the surrounding market conditions, preferences and demographics.

Then again, I live in NYC and I've seen two starbucks on opposite corners staring at each other, and they're both busy. I could be completely wrong :-)