If you order food online you aren't going to order the ingredients for each meal in the week individually though are you?
If you fancy a spaghetti bolognese you aren't going to order just the ingredients for that one meal alone are you?

Surely you'd order the week's shopping and make sure that you've ordered x, y and z to cover the week.

What happens if the meat, pasta,onions or any of the ingredients for that meal will be part of the recipes for other meals in the week?
It would be pointless using this software for those other meals otherwise you'd end up being overstocked on several ingredients wouldn't you?

Unless shops sell individual portions of meat, onions, pasta, or whatever I really don't see how this could possibly work.
You couldn't keep buying a bag or rice for every meal that you use this software with. You also aren't going to be able to buy 200g of flour or quarter of an onion for a specific recipe you've seen.

Once you've used this once or twice you'd soon realise that you've got ingredients left over that will soon accumulate and pile up in your cupboard if you don't use them.
What will happen is that you're only going to end up buying food as you normally do once you see that this method of using this software isn't viable in general.

You could use this once or twice a week, then will realise that for most of the time you couldn't do it like this and would spend most of the time buying ingredients as you normally do. Which would defeat the object of this software.

I don't think it's been thought through how practical this would be in reality.
I think it's a really bad idea after thinking about it if I'm honest.

Exactly. That's it in a nutshell as to how poorly planned out it was. And he simply didn't have the answers to this when put to him. It was a case of him thinking out how technically brilliant it would be to bring all these online retailers into place at the click of a button on a recipe, without thinking out portions per recipe etc and how much it would actually end up costing the consumer in the end for one meal.

Yes, I just think he was a brash young man who had a lot of growing up to do, and he has done some of that over the last few weeks.

It was interesting that Jenny and Jo were so keen on it and swore that they would definitely use it. I thought it sounded like a very small niche market though.

Haven't watched you're hired yet but Nicks idea was the best of the lot; it would have been successful. When people are planning on a small budget (such as students) they'd use it. When people are counting their calories (fitness eccentrics) they'd use it. Working class families would also make use of this (I know mine definitely would).

I just wish he'd have pointed out his target market..

He peaked at the right time, there's nothing wrong with that

But what exactly would they be using?

If the recipes all call for ingredients to be bought, then what Alrightmate said earlier needs to be called into the equation of costs for those students.

How is it feasibly cost effective per consumer is what I would want to know if I logged onto this site.

LS wasn't confused. He knows how much it costs to set up a web service as per the business plan and he could see he would be drawn in attempting to save the business a couple of months down-line. Similar schemes are rejected on Dragons Den on a regular basis even when the people wanting the investment have already spent £100, 000s of their own money beforehand.


Supermarkets don't necessarily need the service to maintain sales so are unlikely to give a commission to a third party for providing something they don't need. The customer then has to pay for the service and as most supermarket food purchases are price sensitive where is the service going to make money?

Again..I agree

Are you assuming that the service would be free?


Are you assuming that the service would be free? Would you still use it if the true cost was £5 or £10 an order?


He hadn't thought that one through He and his friends would use the service.

Personally I think the overall quality of the business plans (excluding Jade's, which was pants for so many reasons) was much better than last year.

Well done, Ricky. Personally I would have gone for Tom - and not just because I am writing for his website - because wine investment, though risky, is very much a popular topic in the CIty at the moment.

I do suspect that both Ricky and Tom will succeed.

I've recapped the final and added some additional thoughts on each candidate's ideas on my blog below, including why I think Jade's idea was so poor.

http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/...-12-the-final/

Agreed with Lord Sugar. Ricky has the best business plan.
But I did quite like Nick's idea also. It could be popular.

Before watching the final I had looked up recipes for a dessert, the 3 tabs were still open when I heard his outline plan, and all recipes had links to Ocado or other sites to buy the ingredients so Nick did not have an original idea, just a version of something already established.

I would love to know how much it would actually cost to get a delivery within an hour for such small quantities, and would this service apply all over the country? It needs a lot more thinking through. I share Alan Sugar's puzzlement at where you would make money from this, as someone above has pointed out, would the big supermarkets be willing to share their cut in the price charged?

Re Ricky's plan, I noticed AS had shifted it from scientific to technical and scientific by the time it was discussed on YF/H. Ricky came across as a lovely young man by the end of the series, hard working, capable and ambitious but grounded. I was pleased he won as I think Tom and Nick could raise finance using family contacts.

Good post mazey.

I share all of your concerns regarding Nick's online plans and can't possibly see it as feasible in any way.

I also agree that both Nick and Tom have always had a land on their feet option should it not work out with LS.

And finally, I agree that Ricky, to me, seemed to be the more viable option. And like you, I agree that he looked the most capable, hard-working and passionate about the opportunity.

Firstly let me say that I am pleased for Ricky and echo your sentiments.

I think Tom will find it difficult to raise the £25m, although his exposure on the show will help a LOT. And that's the point. By reaching the final, win or lose he was going to get great publicity for his scheme. If Sugar had attached his name to it, it would certainly have created a haloe ffect to attract other investors. But being in the final effectively gave him free promotion which I'm sure he'll be able to leverage going forward. All he had to do was get to the final so he could publicise it.

After Claude starting praising his business plan I started to suspect that this was the twist in the (tv) tale. I thought Nick and Tom had been shown to us as the men with the business minds and Ricky as the guy with more enthusiasm than actual business sense but how wrong was I. Nick's plan didn't appeal to me, even though i could see that some cooking fanatics might apprectiate it and Tom's plan seemed good if Lord Sugar had lots of money (and more than he has now) to throw away if it all goes wrong. At least with Ricky's Lord Sugar prob sees a clear plan of action whether it succeeds or fails whereas with Nick and Tom there might need to be a plan C because of added complexity of them (or the added complexity that they seemed to have imo).

While I prefered Nick more, I think Ricky's plan made more sense for Lord Sugar at this moment in time. I think Tom prob will make his millions but he just needs to pace himself more and think about steadily growing the business with quality rather than pace (because sometimes the former happens without you realizing it when the enthusiasm gets out of control). As for Jade, glad that on You're Fired she realised the best business plan would be one she believed passionately in rather than a plan based around money that will prob have made her feel empty in the long run.

Tom was only looking for the £250k from Sugar - the plan as I understand it was to leverage Sugar's name to help secure the rest of the £25m investment from others.

The thing with Ricky's plan is that it is a slower burn with lower potential returns - but it WAS safer, and you could build it slowly. Tom's plan required a quick early acceleration - and £25m for a hedge fund is pretty small beer (or wine, anyhow) in that world - but the returns are potentially enormous. Sugar chose safety over his adventure - a valid choice. I would have gone with Tom, but that's easy to say when it's not my money!

As are the losses, including a loss of reputation. In this case the whole business plan involves investment in wine and relies on the price of wine being purchased now being traded rather than being drunk. It is not unknown for the reputation of fine wines from the "old world" taking a knock when wines from the "new world" are found to be far better and people prefer to drink them, especially as the superiour product is cheaper. How long will it be before the Chinese export their own fine wines and the bottom drops out of the market for EU/Californian/Australian wine exports?

You make some good points, but I don't buy that entirely.

The fact is Sugar's reputation takes a hit if any business venture fails, not just Tom's. I can understand his discomfort because it's not a product/people business, however, in an area he doesn't know well. It's not like he's come out particularly well in recent years given that no previous Apprentice has lasted more than about 2 years and his last one under the old format, Stella, is suing him!

What you say about the Chinese is true, but it's hardly going to be something that happens next year, or even in the next few years. Firstly it takes several years (5-10) to foster the right conditions to grow great, consistent wine - and several more to establish the kind of reputation that New World wines have only recently established. The threat is there. but it is a very long-term one.

Also, I'm not sure whether the Chinese have the right climactic conditions to grow grapes - I'm sure they probably do somewhere, I just don't know where. Much of the country is too cold or too wet for vineyards, although presumably somewhere must be suitable. Making wine isn't quite as easy as setting up cheap factories.

I don't dispute Sugar's decision to go with Ricky - I'm merely saying that a lot of people here are dismissing Tom's idea too easily simply because they don't understand it.

They are already turning up at wine trade shows to peddle their wares. It will only take one TV chef/celebrity to go on a fact finding (paid holiday) to China and recommend the wine he finds for it to become popular.

Yes, Nick's plan of having relevant shop links on a niche website isn't original at all. It sounds pretty much like what thousands of sites already do when signing up to affiliate programmes.
The originality appears to come from this software which apparently automates the process of generating the store links. (I think???).

You can go onto thousands of websites about a subject with relevant store links selling products at the side of the page. When a user clicks the link to the store and buys something the website owner earns a percentage of the sale.
You or I could set up a quick affiliate website today.

From what I understand it seems that Nick's idea automates the process of what store links appear on the page by using some software which scours the internet looking for potential ingredients which match popular recipes.
I'm not sure how this would work in practice because it wasn't made clear.

Is the idea that website owners pay Nick for this software?
I'm not sure why they would if they could set up their own store links themselves manually.
In this instance web site owners wouldn't want a computer program to make decisions for them. They would want to choose the products they want to link to themselves.

Or is it supposed to be normal web surfers who land on a page with recipes and the store links for ingredients get listed for them personally in their own browser window and the software runs from their own home computer?
I guess that this is the idea, and Nick pockets a small percentage of each sale himself?

Is the software free and that it's a matter of getting people using the internet to be made aware of it and downloading it?

Can anybody clarify to me how this works?
What exactly was the plan?

I can understand the skepticism from some of them on the show because it sounds like a tall order to undertake.
Also if he has overlooked the details when projecting how much profit could be made I can see why people like Sugar and Claude have serious doubts about it and suspect that he may be embarking on something where he would be out of his depth.

I'm just not clear on what kind of viable plan he was proposing.

Absolutely right. Nick thinks like a technical geek, not like a real person who shops and cooks

and these are exactly the sort of people that the Supermarkets will NOT want to target

I think quite a few on here felt that Jade's proposal was disappointing after she appeared to be coming strong over the last couple of weeks.

When I saw her performance in the chocolate shop task I thought that she could probably do that for real, let alone for a task. So last night I sort of expected her business plan to be something like that.
But when her proposal was finally revealed I thought "Oh no Jade" and it felt like a letdown to me. I could imagine everybody on here with their face in their palm.

Over the last few weeks I started to wonder if Ricky had a chance. The last couple of weeks he too started looking good. But it was only near the start of last nights episode that I had a feeling that he really would snatch this.
He was good. His words started to sound more and more convincing and instead of sounding superficial as they used to do he started to sound like he really meant what he was saying.

Thanks for the info. I wasn't aware of that, so useful info.

But: so what? Tom's business plan is focussed on fine wines - the sort of thing that costs upwards of £100 per bottle, I'm guessing, not what's 'popular' (which I could see Chinese-produced wines becoming). Surely the vast majority of what he focuses on in his portfolio will be old world producers?

Fine wine, like fine art, is not just about the perceived quality of the product, it's about the halo of the history, the image and the reputation - and what it says about the person who owns it. It's emotional as much as rational. A celebrity chef endorsement isn't in the same league as this kind of product.

It's like trying to convince a car snob that he should buy a Skoda instead of the equivalent Audi. The cars are built from the same platform and are essentially the same cars barring some fancy trim. But will you convince the Audi owner to buy a Skoda on rational grounds, because it's basically the same car 30% cheaper? I doubt it.

Genuinely interested to get your view on it, though. But for me there's a lot more to Tom's proposal than meets the eye, and I know of at least one person who is willing to talk to Tom about setting up a prospective fund, so it must - to use a wine term - have legs.

I can't see why anyone would want to invest in a wine fund run by Tom even if it was backed by LS; neither of them have a proven track record or even professional investment management qualifications. And if Tom was so good, he could launch a new fund with his daddy's company.