With everyone working from home a lot more these days, especially in the face of a global pandemic with self isolation in effect in most place still, it becomes tricky to make good on that old “buy you a coffee” promise to your friends &/or coworkers.
My Shout is the idea for a service to send things to people by alias only. The service would leverage home delivery services such as Menu Log, Favour, etc. but aimed at sending things to other people rather than ordering for yourself, though that would be an obvious function of the service. The address and location details of the person are only known to the service and hidden from others, it would be a breeze to then be able to gift things to your friends, coworkers, or even favourite creator, etc. that is halfway across the country or even the world without knowing their address.
Once a “gift” has been sent the recipient gets a notification and can schedule when to get the gift, or even exchange to an equal value item. For example say I want to send my sister a coffee, but I’m home in Australia and she’s currently backpacking around Europe, she gets a notification that she has a “gift” waiting against her account and can select to get the coffee delivered to her hotel room, hostel, airbnb, etc. AND let’s say she’s trying to cut down on caffeine late in the evening but would like a chai tea instead, she can swap it and even upgrade the size and only pay the difference!
Anyway, just a thought when I mentioned the throw away line to a mate, “I’d buy you a coffee if you were here”