Day 3 — Farina Day 3: Competitor Scan & Pricing Recommendation

Supermarket fresh pasta aisle (Continente, Pingo Doce, El Corte Inglés Gourmet) — THE REAL SUBSTITUTE Who they serve: everyone in Lisbon already doing their weekly grocery run, including our exact target flat-dwellers. What they charge: a 250g pack of fresh tagliatelle or ravioli runs €2.20-€3.50; a jar of decent sauce (Barilla, Zeta, or the store's own "gourmet" line) is €2.50-€4. A two-person dinner assembled this way costs roughly €8-€11 total, zero delivery fee, available same-day. What they're bad at: zero surprise or curation — it's the same 6 ravioli flavors on rotation, nobody's cooking or sourcing anything special, and it requires the customer to actually go to the shop, which is the exact friction Farina is selling relief from. This is the substitute we lose to when we fail to prove we're worth the delivery premium.

HelloFresh Portugal — recipe-box meal kits Who they serve: households (often families or couples) who want dinner solved for the whole week, not just pasta night, and don't mind cooking meat/fish/veg from scratch. What they charge: roughly €7-€9 per serving depending on plan size and box frequency, so a 2-person/3-meal week lands near €45-€55. What they're bad at: total overkill for someone who just wants pasta — customers pay for proteins, spice sachets, and recipe cards they don't need, and the box requires real stovetop cooking time (30-40 min), not the 8-10 minute pasta-and-sauce turnaround Farina promises.

Uber Eats / Glovo ordering from a local Italian restaurant Who they serve: the impulse dinner-tonight buyer in the same flats we're targeting, especially at 8-9pm on a weeknight. What they charge: a pasta main from a mid-range Italian spot in Lisbon (Chiado, Príncipe Real, Alvalade) is €11-€16 plus €2.50-€4 delivery fee and service charge, so €14-€20 for one portion. What they're bad at: it's a single-night decision with no relationship or habit built — no subscription, no batching economics, and the pasta itself is often steam-tabled and gone soft by the time it arrives, which is the exact "fresh" claim Farina can beat on price and quality simultaneously.

Independent Italian pastificios / delis in Lisbon (small fresh-pasta counters in Chiado, Campo de Ourique, Príncipe Real) Who they serve: food-serious locals and expats willing to walk to a counter for genuinely handmade pasta. What they charge: fresh pasta by weight, typically €14-€20/kg, so a 2-person dinner portion (~400g) is €6-€8 before sauce, and a bottled house sauce adds another €4-€6. What they're bad at: no delivery, limited hours (most close by 7-8pm and are shut Sundays/Mondays), and no subscription mechanism — you have to remember to go and hope they haven't sold out of that week's shape. They're a quality benchmark Farina should match, not a convenience competitor.

Portuguese meal-prep subscription services (prepared-meal delivery brands operating in Lisbon, e.g. weekly tupperware meal plans) Who they serve: gym-going, macro-counting professionals who want ready-to-reheat meals, not ingredients to assemble. What they charge: typically €6-€9 per meal, sold in 5- or 10-meal weekly bundles (€35-€70/week). What they're bad at: the food is fully cooked and reheated, so texture suffers badly on pasta specifically (mushy, sauce-separated) — pasta is the one dish that punishes this format, which is Farina's clearest wedge: we deliver the components fresh and let the customer do the 8-minute finish that actually preserves quality. SECTION 2 — PRICING RECOMMENDATION Recommended SKU: the "Coppia Box" — fresh pasta + sauce for 2 people, 3 dinners per week, delivered once weekly to the door. Price: €29.90/week (€4.98 per serving, before any first-box discount). Packaging: 3 sealed pasta portions (one shape rotates weekly), 3 matching sauce pouches, a parmesan sachet, and a printed card with the week's pairing story. Companion SKU for solo flats: "Solo Box," 3 dinners for 1, €18.90/week. Add-ons at checkout: extra sauce pouch €4.50, extra pasta portion €3.90 — no separate delivery fee, it's baked into the box price. Reasoning: - €4.98/serving sits clearly above the supermarket "do nothing" substitute (~€4-5.50/serving assembled yourself) so it doesn't read as a rip-off next to Pingo Doce, but well under HelloFresh's €7-9/serving and Uber Eats' €14-20 single-portion cost — Farina wins on being cheaper than delivery and more convenient than the supermarket, not cheaper than everything. - At an estimated 40-45% COGS (fresh pasta + sauce ingredients + packaging + last-mile delivery in central Lisbon), €29.90 clears roughly €16-18 gross margin per box, which leaves room to run the 50%-off first box promo the Day 2 outreach emails will need without going underwater on week one. - €29.90 is a round, low-commitment number for the target flat-share/young-couple buyer — it reads as "skip one restaurant dinner, get three home dinners," which is the exact trade-up story the outreach emails are already making; a €35+ price would push it into "second grocery bill" territory and kill impulse sign-ups. Number to watch: week-2 non-discounted reorder rate — the percentage of first-box customers (post free/discounted trial) who place a second Coppia Box at full €29.90 without a promo code. If that number is below roughly 35%, the price is wrong relative to perceived value (either drop to €24.90 or fatten the box with a 4th portion) rather than a marketing problem to outreach around.