If you ever been in a barbershop in the hood, you seen street people come in unannounced offering snacks, drinks, socks and bootleg media.  These peddlers create a very awkward situation for barbershops because on one hand, these solicitors are bottom feeding and preying off the barbershop paying customers. On the other hand, the urban barbershop understands the plight of these street peddlers trying to eat or the barbers may even know the street peddlers personally growing up. 

The overall situation is the street peddlers know they are entering a private business to solicit and disrupting the barbershop ability to operate a business without interference. The barbershop know there can be blow back if the barbers stop cutting their client hair just to get ugly with a street hawker entering their shop to peddle causing a bigger scene. 

Luckily, the ADOS Digerati are the ones who can look at this type of situation in our urban communities and find a solution that works for both the barbershop to operate without disruption and street peddlers to make money to eat.  With that said, let’s look at how we can use the blockchain technology as a possible solution. 

Micro-Delivery Service

A micro-delivery service gives waiting customers in the barbershop the ability to order items from their mobile phone for delivery while waiting for a cut. The peddlers don’t have to waste energy going door to door anymore bothering barbershops and their customers. The peddler only operate against incoming orders and deliver directly to the barbershop who advertised the micro-delivery service as an option for their waiting customers. 

There are two benefits to this approach: 

Peddlers Focus on Deliveries. Once a delivery order come in for a pair of socks for example, the peddler can now just go to the barbershop and drop the pair of socks off with the waiting customer. Now the peddler can bring a few extra items for quick selling but the peddler is no longer just randomly popping up in barbershops. The peddler is actually doing a real, professional service delivering goods that were ordered in good faith by customers. 

Barbershop Seen as Good Guys. The barbershop offering micro-delivery to support street peddlers will be seen as a hub helping the little guy trying to eat. The barbershop will not have further unannounced disruptions by street peddlers. In addition, the barbershop will find themselves possibly having more goodwill reputation and respect among the community overall for providing opportunity to those who just trying to find a way to eat. The church folks will love that barbershop and so will the local newspaper which is free marketing - maybe BuzzFeed or Vice may want to do a cover story. 

The Micro-Delivery Process

The micro-delivery process uses several technologies and workflow to get an ecosystem going. 

Barbershop Display Printed QR Posters Offering Micro-Delivery. The QR posters showcase products and resemble those haircut posters on the wall. The printed QR posters link to a web site which is a catalog of items to order such as socks, magazines, water and more (no bootlegs). 

A Customer Order a Product for Delivery. The customer orders 6-pair of socks from the web site and the delivery terms is cash on delivery or COD where the customer has the cash to pay when the peddler delivers the product. 

Order is Written on Blockchain. The blockchain ledger will contain the order information. A listening bot will download a copy of the distributed ledger at an interval and the bot finds the order for the socks and send an SMS message to the peddler or the bot can just compile a list of deliveries to drop off multiple items at multiple barbershops to make the delivery trips more efficient. 

Customer Receive Order. The customer has a QR code as a pickup ticket on their mobile for the peddler to scan to verify the product was delivered. The QR code is a shortcut link to write to the blockchain the order was delivered. The customer received a Ziploc bag of socks and the customer realize something and ask the peddler if he stole these socks out of Wal-Mart by tearing a hole in the sock packages on the display rack but the peddler runs out the barbershop before the customer finish asking his question about the socks. 

Getting Started

This micro-delivery solution is pretty already available using Swagg-Scientific platform with Kossier, Fooky.com and Kolin-Avers. Kossier can perform natural language transactions and notification services. Fooky.com can provide the blockchain and the ledger services. And Kolin-Avers can host images and the QR code for the products the peddlers want to offer. 

The nice thing is this – the peddlers can switch up from peddling socks and bootleg DVDs to peddling beard oil, homemade shea butter and beauty products that complement real needs of black men waiting at the barbershop. Good stuff like peddling cologne and flowers for a quick date as well after getting a cut. Shoe wipes, butt model magazines in brown paper sleeves and USB rechargers and other real stuff that the bros sitting in the barbershop probably want. 

Overall, the blockchain micro-delivery solution is a win-win for both the barbershop and the peddlers to create a true market equilibrium where enhanced delivery services are offered to the barbershops and the street peddlers are actually fulfilling real demand and making more money as a result of their hustle.