Grubbux

"A QR-based digital payment platform for festivals that replaces physical tickets/tokens, giving organizers real-time sales data and vendors a frictionless smartphone-based checkout system."
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grubbux.com
Maker: joshstrange
$500+/mo (creator states 'If you take the total revenue (or profit) for the year and divide by 12 I'm well over the $500/mo limit' but no exact monthly figure given; revenue is seasonal across 3 festivals/year)

Marketing Channels

Primary

Word of mouth / referrals

Creator says all 3 festivals 'pretty much fell in my lap' — started when a local company he worked with came to him looking for a solution

Secondary

Website (grubbux.com)

Creator self-describes it as a 'crappy marketing website' and acknowledges needing to invest in marketing materials

Planned

Video / graphics marketing

Commenter suggested adding a marketing video or graphics to explain the system; creator acknowledged it's on his list but he keeps procrastinating

Growth Levers

  • Create a marketing video and visual explainers to reduce the complexity of explaining the QR-based payment flow to prospective festival organizers
  • Leverage real-time sales data and vendor accountability as the primary value proposition — festivals need to track vendor sales for revenue sharing
  • Offer in-person setup and on-site support as a differentiator from generic POS solutions (creator travels to events)
  • Expand from 3 festivals to more by beginning active sales outreach — creator has deliberately held back on marketing
  • Target festivals frustrated with physical token/ticket counting systems, which is the exact pain point that started the business
  • Use the 5-minute vendor training time as a selling point — low friction adoption even for non-technical food vendors

First Customer Strategy

The first customer came through an existing professional relationship — a local company the creator had built apps for approached him needing a solution for their food/music festival. He built a v1 in a couple months. Subsequent festivals also came through word of mouth. No active sales or marketing has been done yet.

Pricing Insight

The platform uses Stripe Connect so money flows directly to the festival's Stripe account — the creator never holds funds. Festival currency is 1:1 with USD. The business model avoids needing a Money Transmitter License. Transaction fees are minimized by batching through the festival currency system rather than having per-vendor Stripe charges (which would eat margins at $3-5 price points).

New Market Opportunities

  • UK and European festival market Commenter described UK festivals with 4-8K people and £20+/day average food spend, suggesting international expansion potential
  • Local fairs and community events Commenter expressed interest in doing the same for a local fair that had a high-friction ticket system, indicating demand beyond large festivals
  • Non-food festival transactions Creator already supports entry ticketing, bourbon tasting events, T-shirt/sticker sales, and tasting ticket packages — expanding beyond food to all festival commerce

Key Takeaways

  • • Seasonal businesses can be highly profitable even without consistent MRR — festival payment processing has extremely spiky load patterns that suit serverless architecture
  • • The biggest competitive advantage in B2B service businesses is often showing up in person and being the 'I have all the answers' partner, not the technology itself
  • • Using Stripe Connect to avoid handling money directly eliminates the need for a Money Transmitter License, dramatically reducing regulatory complexity
  • • Vendor dishonesty (shaving sales numbers, stealing tokens) is a real problem that creates strong demand for transparent digital payment tracking
  • • Over-engineering can be acceptable when used as a learning opportunity, but the creator wisely recognizes that further rewrites should be resisted in favor of sales/marketing investment
  • • Training vendors in under 5 minutes on the system is a critical adoption metric for B2B tools serving non-technical users

Sentiment Analysis

5 Pos / 1 Neu

Notable Quotes

"My best advice is this: your hardest challenges will not be technical in nature. The hardest part is the equipment, dealing with customers, hand-holding the festival organizers. — joshstrange"
"A sign of maturity is realizing the tech is always the easy part. — jf93ap29sh"
"Props to you for getting everything working! — joseph_b"
"You've done a lot of work, and this seems like an excellent way to ensure events run smoothly! — netcoyote"
"Omg, thank you for such open and clear answers. My inquisition-organ is replete with such satisfying answers! — pbhjpbhj"

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