My Foolproof Business Ideas

Edible Wax Museum

It's a pretty self-explanatory concept. It's a wax museum, but all the statues are made of cake. See that Little Richard statue? Just grab his head and bite it like an apple. We'd have molds in the back, so we could make a new one in a few minutes.

Curbside Bird Carcass Recycling

Whenever you cook a chicken or a turkey, or if your pet parrot dies or whatever, you just shove the carcass in a little green bin, and we'll handle the rest. Our bird carcass trucks will make the rounds once a week to haul off all the bones and feathers, then we'll boil it down to stock and sell back the "liquid gold" to major soup distilleries. There might be some startup costs to buy our vehicle fleet and distribute our plastic carcass bins to every household in the nation, but I estimate the broth proceeds will cover the initial investment within about two weeks.

Vacation Anecdote Booking

When you book a flight on a site like Expedia or Orbitz, you'll get a page of offers for rental cars, hotels and tour packages. This service would plug easily into that sort of thing: for a price, travelers could tack on the exclusive rights to a funny story about their vacation. On the day of your return flight, one of our agents would ring your hotel room and concoct a hilarious, customized vacation experience-- perhaps you ran afoul of a pimp in Las Vegas and had to hide inside the ass of the Luxor sphinx with two beautiful Latina working girls. Maybe you saw Nicholas Cage yelling at a waitress in Hong Kong. It may not have happened, but it's a great story!

The Throne Room

Imagine, if you will, a Throne Room on every corner: you walk in, you pay a dollar or two, and you relieve yourself in one of a few dozen well-maintained restrooms. They're comfortable and private, free of unseemly stalls and crowded urinals; the soundproofed walls go all the way to the floor, and each door locks with an unambiguous deadbolt. For a few dollars more, you could treat yourself to a luxury suite, which includes premium toilet paper, tasteful reading material, soothing music and a European-style bidet. Who wouldn't duck out of bar for five minutes to take a dignified, troughless pee or an undisturbed doo at a reasonable price? On a long road trip, who wouldn't choose a professionally-janitorialized Throne Room over the squalor of a Chevron or the erotic menace of a highway rest stop? In fact, I think people would actually leave their houses for this-- if you've got a rude parcel in the mail, why drop it off in your own home?

By the way: please don't steal these ideas. If you do, please give me millions of dollars for the rights, or I'll try to figure out a way to sue you or something.

Many thanks to Josh Boruff, Bruno Medeiros and Matt Edwards.

– Dr. David Thorpe (@Arr)