Meet some women who had a great business idea. They've started a business where busy people can get a coffee in the morning without getting out of their cars.


LUISA SACCOTELLI: A consumer opportunity for the time poor among us. In fact, no need to even get out of the car. Drive-through coffee.

I'll have a latte, please.

Yes, another only-in-America business concept which is taking root here, driven by two young women with profit margins to envy.

LINDA PICKETT: People are strapped for time. They don't have the opportunity to walk into the shop and grab a coffee anymore. I was a salesperson on the road. Just the thought of getting out of my car and walking into a cafe and ordering a coffee, one more trip out of my car, I didn't want to have to do.

In America I just found all of these drive-through coffee takeaway shops and couldn't quite understand the attraction to them. But once I started using them, I became addicted to it.

LUISA SACCOTELLI: Linda Pickett came back and tried out a one-line pitch on fellow saleswoman Jane Walker, something about convenience and coffee. Both were sold.

LINDA PICKETT: We were getting up at 5.00 o'clock in the morning, working on the site from 6 until 9.00 o'clock, racing home, getting changed and out the door and maintaining our full-time jobs. So that was incredibly difficult for us.

We found the hotel and negotiated with the manager there, and then we got into the logistics of it, how we were going to actually operate from there, and then organising for the purchase of the coffee cart.

LUISA SACCOTELLI: They operate from the driveway of an inner suburban bottle shop between 6 and 9.30 in the morning, paying rent of just $70 a week.

LINDA PICKETT: The customers sit in their cars and wait for us to serve them in the window and then they continue on their way.

LUISA SACCOTELLI: 80 per cent of those buying are men.

LINDA PICKETT: The initial rush of traffic is the tradies on their way to work. Then it swings into the executives from about 7.30 until the 9.30 period. It was six months that we were actually in our business daily. That was what we had to do in order to pay ourselves back the initial investment that we made.

LUISA SACCOTELLI: Now, 12 months later, they have repaid their $35,000 start-up costs and are turning over $120,000 a year.

LINDA PICKETT: We operate at a gross margin of about 70 per cent. We do between 100 and 150 in the three, three and a half hour period. For our coffees we have actually decided that we are to charge a premium because we are offering a premium service. We sell a 12 ounce for $4.

LUISA SACCOTELLI: When it all breaks down, the $4 cup has 44c worth of coffee in it, 40c of milk and the cup costs 20c. Taking out wages and rent, the women are left with a net profit of $1.70 a cup.

LINDA PICKETT: Our accountant had suggested that with these figures we should be growing at a faster rate than we are. But there's a certain amount of fear involved with jumping into your own business, investing your own person finance into it.

JANE WALKER: Also, we had a lot of advertising costs which we hadn't calculated.

LINDA PICKETT: But we've been very fortunate that the market has not caught on to us any sooner than it has now, so that we need to throw ourselves into this, get out and get a name for ourselves and flood the market.

We don't have the capital to do that. We've sort of been throwing around the idea of whether we keep it ourselves or whether we move into that direction.

We're also looking at a potential franchising opportunity, probably 12 months down the track.