You're going to get a ton of skepticism, but I think it's possible in a dense area to find enough people who have enough overlap in the staples they consume who are willing to pay for this. I would try to focus on quality first, proving that you can get super high customer retention and unit margin, before trying to be cost-competitive with a larger grocer.
I am involved with a company called Teamshares that helps small businesses convert to employee ownership. A big part of what makes it work is exposing company financials to all employees in a way that helps connect one's actions with financial performance.
They are only fragmented at first glance. Upon a closer look, there are organizations like the Association of Bay Area Governments, and of course all kinds of unofficial meetings and shared information sources that keep people on the same page.
Similar to how "salary surveys" are "not collusion" among the big employers, even though they're used to effectively fix the price of employee salaries to certain ranges and treat that as some sort of natural barrier like a mountain range that can't be overcome.
When I've seen founders try to keep investors at arms length it seems to result in mistrust, leaving investors feeling like they can't get the real story, and thus decreasing the likelihood they invest further. So rather than keeping insiders at arms length, I'd suggest being direct about wanting to meet other investors. I suggest uncomfortable candor over comfortable misdirection.
thx so much for showing an example, very helpful.
btw, if I may, it might be nicer to stick to just serif or sans-serif fonts in your deck, the mix is making my eyes a little sad.
One trick to catch opportunists: start with those looking to increase their headcount faster than baseline (as any good opportunist will attempt), and then see if they will adopt an opposing logical argument as long as it leads to the conclusion that their headcount should grow.
This is a flavor of looking for those who make different arguments depending on the audience, which in general is a helpful warning signal.
Although it's impossible to entirely route out opportunists at a high quality, quickly growing company, as the author notes, I still find it is worthwhile to maximize the number of leaders in your company whom you trust to make arguments in the service of making the business work.
