Why we do what we do

Tradition can be a wonderful thing. It is something that can strengthen the bond between people and is often passed on from parents to their children. And if you add food into the mix…. boy, then you have the perfect ingredients to create great memories

It is not about the food, but about what the food stands for. In the Netherlands there are loads of food traditions, but none of them are as classic as oliebollen. Outside of the Netherlands they would be most comparable to dutch style donuts but then without the hole. But to be honest to compare or describe oliebollen is a difficult task and simply to call it donuts would not do it justice. Oliebollen are usually made in the December holiday season and they stand for old fashioned cosy family good times. It is more about the quality time spend with your family then anything else.

There are hundreds of mobile and local vendors across the country who thrive in November and December to bring the best oliebollen to the masses, but there are also thousands and thousands of people that make them in the comfort of their home. Some people make them to treat their loved ones to something yummy, and others to sell them to fund their local sports teams, charities or other good causes. We bet that the tastiest oliebollen out there are made by grans, mothers, dads and kids throughout the country, yet you never get to taste them. And that is where we step in.

Oli is an app where you log in and you can see anyone within a couple of kilometers from you that is registered in the app as an oliebol chef. Some may be professional, some may be an amateur and some may be..well simply devine. Each and every one of these chef’s might have a different reward in mind. Some might want to get paid, some might just want good company for the afternoon and some might want to get to know their neighbors. Let’s just say that everyone can have their own reasons to start baking.

All you need to do is log into the app and see who near you is an oliebol celebrity. You can see who has the best rating, the most authentic or the best original gourmet oliebollen. Kinda like the AirBNB of baked goodness. Maybe you want to help fund the local sports team, maybe you want to get to know your neighbors so they wont be as lonely this holiday. Or maybe you just want to taste oliebol perfection.

We believe the holidays are an awesome time to make your neighborhood just a little more social, and we would love to see less food go to waste. We would love for professionals to get to know the neighborhood they serve so they can attract more business. But most importantly we hope we can contribute to create a new tradition that makes local communities a little more connected.

Oli, the best app to celebrate the true spirit of the holidays .

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About us

The idea for Oli is concieved by Mark & Eelko. Mark started some time ago with Sociabol and Eelko and Mark wanted to turn that idea into something bigger. Mark is an experienced online specialist working for Google. and Eelko is an an experienced online creative director.The idea was concieved because most food apps focus on the sales part and we wanted our food app to focus more on the social and local aspect of sharing food, and trying to create a social but viable business model out of that.

Earning model:

The business model consists out of payment through volume. This means if a professional business
in the app gets more then 20 online orders (first 20 are free), they have to pay for a weekly subscription. We first prove to them that it does pay off to be in our app by giving them 20 orders for free, and when we prove the app they will be more willing to subscribe. Also if they want to be in the top suggestions near you ranking in the app they can pay for that priviledge and can choose to do so on a daily basis. This model will work if we have enough people to leverage this model so the first year will be about reaching as many users as possible so the business end of the app will be supported by a good amount of possible clients in year two. We are currently working on ideas to do delivery and payment trough digital wallet systems as a second method of earning but this will be implemented and fully worked out after launch in season 2.

Finance:
For the campaign we need to be able to start a viable working model that we can extend in the future. We need to have the app designed and build for multiple mobile platforms and promotion of the app in oktober and november through social channel targeting and bloggin. We expect to need 50.000-60.000 in total for a viable working model.

Rewards:

There will be a 6 level investment. a €5 €15 €50 €200 €1000 €10.000
€5: the gourmetbol social recipe e-book 
€15: You will get Gourmet DIY oliebol package & the gourmetbol recipe book
€50: A ney years eve Oli party package delivered in the week before new years
€ 250: The mobile oliebollen wagon on a location of your choice making all
             you can eat oliebollen for you and up to 35 of your friends or your company.
€ 1000: 6,5% interest
€ 10.000: 10% interest 



Why oliebollen:

Oliebollen are more then food they are a tradition and if we want to strengthen the community then food with tradition is the best entree ticket. We want to start with oliebollen but do see chances for other traditional food throughout the year as well like dutch pea soup, dutch stews, dutch pancakes, poffertjes, carnival food and such

Promotion:

Part of our plan is a video channel where we show people how to make gourmet oliebollen with the oliebollen you just bought. how to make strawberry and mascarpone oliebollen, how to make steypears and honey oliebollen and such. We want to introduce the gourmet oliebol and want to invite people to film their own recipes so we can have a gourmet hall of fame. Another idea is a oliebollen bake-off where we choose the nicest 5 gourmet oliebollen from the hall of fame and we make them and have people all across the netherlands taste this. We will ride with our oliebollen cart and you can track on social media where we are in the city. (all this will be filmed ofcourse) At the end 1 flavour comes out victorious and becomes the Holy Oli. And will be crowned tastiest oliebol of that year. We will take that flavour and the content around it and do targeted ads on diverse channels to boost not only the app but the whole process around it.

The only thing we need to keep in mind is that the dutch like their tradition to remain the same so oliebollen with different flavours or buying somewhere else then the official vendorpoint may be a strecht for most of them, so the risk is that we will have a slow start. But for that we will use our google and edvertising skills to generate any pr we can.

We would love to change the tradition into something more tasty and versatile mobilising the neighbourhood to share and become connected through food. We are ready to change the world one oliebol at the time.

We are currently working on a prototype and designs and as soon as we have our first steps we will start the crowd funding campaign.