Entrepreneur finds niche, now must find customers

Thanks to a "Eureka!" moment in late 2004, Bill Socki has found a niche. He shops at Peapod, Safeway and -- if anyone would ask -- Albertsons every week because his customers don't want to.

Socki doesn't go to the grocery store. Instead, he shops online through his Lake Zurich-based Tele-Grocers Inc., a home business with customers here and in key East Coast cities.

For entrepreneurs and wannabes, Socki is "keep-looking" proof that the one great small business idea we're looking for might be right in front of our faces. Socki's 2-year-old company also is proof that building a business, even one that seems to fill an obvious need, takes time and effort.

Tele-Grocers has just 75 customers, though Socki says the number is "growing on an almost daily basis." A West Coast try has so far fizzled.

Socki's idea is simple: Seniors and others who want to avoid the supermarket shopping hassle phone their grocery orders to Tele-Grocers, where Socki enters them into the Peapod, Safeway or Albertsons Internet shopping sites.

Tele-Grocers charges a fee of $7.50 per order, though orders over $200 are higher. The fee is on top of the fee the sites charge for picking and delivering the order.

Customers are "mostly elderly people who don't like to shop and who don't have a PC," Socki says. Others are "visually impaired or disabled, anyone who has a hard time getting out to shop."

There's no corporate link between Tele-Grocers and the supermarket sites. Socki uses them because the sites serve potentially large customer bases.

Socki was a customer care employee at Peapod when the Tele-Grocers idea burst forth. His duties included "handling phone calls from people who wanted to place a phone order, but Peapod wasn't taking phone orders from new customers. So I started thinking, 'Boy. I should open a business and take orders over the phone. I should take a shot. The only thing I'd need would be a phone line, fax and a computer.'"

And customers.

"It's been harder than I thought to get customers," Socki says, voicing a concern voiced by many small business owners. He's working on the customer thing, sending fliers to seniors' centers and independent living sites "across Illinois and along the East Coast," and visiting senior fairs and health expos. Next week Socki, a wheelchair user since a 1990 diving accident, is scheduled to visit a seniors' center in Wilmette to promote his service.

The East Coast seems to be a logical expansion. The 1,500 zip codes where Peapod delivers include the Washington, D.C., metro area, Boston and Cape Cod, Long Island, and several Connecticut markets; and Safeway is big out East.

About half of Tele-Grocers' customers are there, too. Socki e-mails and sends fliers to seniors' centers in selected East Coast cities. A similar attempt in West Coast markets, where Safeway and Albertsons are prominent, hasn't worked.

© 2008, 121 Marketing Resources Inc.