New Hiking Business Announcement!

I love this idea and a similar concept (provisioning Grand Canyon rafters) worked really well for our large and disparate group coming together from all over the world.

When I’ve pondered a thru hike, one sticking point was always, Which friend do I ask to all the logistical support?  Not just to drop the boxes in the mail at the right time, but hopefully to tweak the ingredients/quantities based on my early experience.

Having been a trail angel in a variety of capacities, I’d suggest offering a few other items beyond food.  Toilet paper, repackaged diaper wipes, etc, would be easy to stock and add to packages.  Fuel requires more knowledge of shipping regulations but would be so handy for hikers to rely on their alcohol or canisters without trekking far into town (even more important on the PCT).  And then there’s the unplanned stuff:  a torn tarp, a new stove (a BRS-3000T at $11 and 25 grams could be a stock item), good socks, etc.  For those items to be at one’s next stop 4-5 days away, could be a great service.

You may have trouble getting paid for the value you add.  It’s obvious to me and I’m not hurting for funds, but you’ll have to about double the wholesale cost to cover your labor, if you want to make this your “day job”.   And so many thru hikers are, of necessity, cheap bastards.  But if you stock primarily those items that are deeply discounted for wholesalers and in large quantities, then you can get your mark-up.

And since you would ship a week before the food is used, you can repackage into ziplock bags which saves weight, lets you use bulk containers, and adds value that the hiker can’t do as well themselves (because they’d repackage things months in advance of use).

You’re also essentially offering insurance.  To protect yourself, you need to get payment for 3-4 shipments in advance and that should be non-refundable because of all the hand-holding you’ve done already.  But if someone only goes a few weeks and never gets to Virginia, they can cancel with you at a much smaller penalty than having bought, repackaged, and boxed up 3 months of their own food in advance.

As for toiletries– yes, we have them! I have tried to take this from the perspective of what I needed on the trail but couldn’t always get, so that goes beyond food. Fuel canisters are also a possibility, but we haven’t worked that out entirely yet.

As far as gear goes, I think that’s a great suggestion, but I think for us that’s going to be a few steps too far removed from the customer to the manufacturer. If something goes wrong with your gear on the trail, good manufacturers will jump to help you find the solution. Plus we wouldn’t be able to compete with REI’s return policies, and I’d also rather partner with outfitters rather than compete with them. There are many gear manufacturers (Snowpeak for example) that won’t give wholesale accounts to online retailers as well. So we’re just sticking with the regular items that people will need for now, mostly food and some toiletries.

Do you have any favorite foods on the trail? Thanks for your insight.

I think this is a great idea. However, being quite cheap, it is too expensive for me to use. 1) I am retired and on a fixed income. 2) Most of my hikes are of two weeks long or greater and do not visit towns.

An example: My yearly NPT trip covers about 140mi or a bit more. Yet, I usually only go by 1 post office in that time. Really, not feasible since to save hauling the three days of food I would normally carry, I would need to set this up before I started and be guaranteed it would be there when I got there. Often, I don’t know when I will leave till the day before.

I spend around $7-10 per day on food. This includes ~$4.00 for a supper, ~$2.00 for breakfast and $1-3.00 for snacks. For example: I do not care for pre-made macaroni & cheese, but would rather make 5-1/3oz of macaroni, 2oz of cheddar, and a tablespoon of olive oil(~1oz) for a very satisfying supper(total 8oz.) For breakfast I make about 3oz of oatmeal, 1oz of hotcocoa, then make two cups of mocha out of another 1oz of hot cocoa and a half oz of coffee (total around 7oz.) Over the course of a day I might eat another bag of fritoes (1.75oz) a bar (2.5oz) or around 20oz that day. I average about 1.2pounds/day. Anyway, I like to eat but do not complain for a few weeks at a time if I don’t have pizza.

Like I say, it sounds like an excellent idea, but the cost (at around $30/day) is way too high for me. This, of course, excludes shipping. I rarely bother to ship stuff, it is much more exiting to simply stop in and get some good long distance food and buy some less than light food (a largish salad and a couple friuts, often enough) for the hike back to the trail.

Hey James, thanks for the reply!

I like your trail menu a lot. I also love packing out cheese and good stuff.

Where did you get the idea that you’d have to spend $30 a day on a site like HikerBox? I’m definitely aware of the tight budgets of many hikers, and we will try to keep our prices as competitive as possible. As we’re able to commit to better wholesale deals and pass that savings on, prices will come down further, but even now they are much lower than 30 a day.

I just did a pretend order for fun on our site, and made up a four day trip’s worth of food, keeping a budget and an appetite of a hungry hiker in mind. I made up a box for $50 without much thought, so that would be just over $12 a day. It would come out to less if you didn’t need your first breakfast or last dinner.

Anyway, thank you for the feedback, James!

Trail towns bring a lot benefit to hikers; it’s good for hikers to return the favor. The best way to do that is for hikers to say “please” and “thank you”, and to bring cash.

As these boxes may divert some money that would otherwise go to a local business, how ’bout including a list, specific to the town the box is being received, where a hiker can buy something. Some businesses might be willing to provide coupons for your boxes.

Kyrsten: Especially when hiking with my lacto-ova-ichty-veggie (a.k.a vegaquarian) wife, we’ve been using a lot of dehydrated beans and lentils and smaller amounts of dehydrated vegetables.  Not as quick to rehydrate as freeze-dried, but a whole lot cheaper and available in bulk (i.e. 1 pound containers at our usage level).  And the rehydration time can be mostly addressed by starting to soak them an hour before you get to camp so you only carry that extra pound of water for the last few miles.

A variety of curry powders, dried onions, spice mixes do a lot to make them more interesting.  Oh, and powdered coconut milk!  It adds calories and taste in a sauce to carry the spice flavors.

Something the GCNP rafting suppliers do for their clients is all the menu planning.  You just give them a list of preferences (e.g. 16 people, 4 lacto-ova, one gluten intolerant) and they put together a varied menu with instructions for each meal of each day.  You just flip a page in the binder, pull out those ingredients out of the coolers and start cooking dinner that night.  It would be far easier with thru hikers since it wouldn’t be a party of 16 with multiple sub-recipes to address dietary preferences.

Since your customers will be better off financially than the average thru-hiker, I’d expect they judge their non-hiking time more valuable and therefore worth it to them for someone else to handle those details and jiggle all the quantities.  If they provide you with body weights and miles per day, you could approximate the calories/portions they need (and adjust with feedback after the first few weeks).  Any work you put into developing a varied menu would benefit all your customers and let them focus on the other aspects of planning a through hike.  Taken to an extreme, people will pay $100,000 to have an outfitter guide them up Everest, so there is a market of people who want to show up and do some epic adventure while letting others do the organizing.

I suspect if you make this work as a business, it will be because you’re feeding yuppies and stockbrokers and not the stereotypical, scruffy thru-hiker.

And, to take a page from the health clubs that get you to sign an agreement to pay monthly fees (auto-billed to your credit card) for at least a year; I’d offer an entire AT season (say, 3 months) at a discount price IN BIG PRINT and with a 50% refund (in small print) for any unused days if they bail.  Because at least half will bail.

Hi Kyrsten, The numbers are from http://www.hikerboxresupply.com/ and used the number for a 2 day resupply pack ($59 + tax.) I would not have chosen any Mountain House stuff. I often get a couple per year as gifts. I have about $700-1000 in trail foods packed for this year. The Harmony House stuff is generally not pre-cooked before dehydrating. That stuff takes too long, though I have some onions and carrot pieces I sometimes use.

Oh hey, I knew it was a possibility that people might google the store, but it’s really just not ready yet. Those resupply packs that are linked there will be “premium boxes” for busy people who want great stuff without a lot of thought. I haven’t worked out the final details of them yet, so those are just dummy prices. I’m not sure what they’ll total. But now I get it!

HikerBox, by the way, is now open for business! Thanks again for your suggestions : )

So, is there a deal here or….?