Your weekends may be full of partying. Well, a small business’ free taxi pilot program has sprung up in London recently, promising hungover workers a safe morning ride with a side of steamy noodles and a bottle of orange juice to beat back the effects of one too many.
Called Kab-U-To-Work, the taxi service is an experiment run by Kabuto Noodles, a store-bought, ready-to-eat line of noodle cups based in the U.K. and founded by Crispin Busk.
But what’s a ramen company doing in the taxi business? According to Kabuto Noodles’ website, “We often get told that a steaming pot of Kabuto Noodles has rescued a fuzzy head, so we’ve decided to go an extra step further and create the ultimate hangover cure.”
Aside from the ramen and orange juice, the company’s trial service also provides riders with mints and a pair of sunglasses–all the necessary tools to cover up the previous night’s liver beating from co-workers and managers.
By either emailing Kabuto Noodles or tweeting them @KabutoNoodles using the hashtag, #Kabutowork, a few Londoners received the complimentary ride before the trial ended on Christmas. Those few seem to have taken to it well.
Xmas party last night + #SCD press conference this morning = hell but @KabutoNoodles have SAVED us with their Kab-U-To-Work taxi service.
— Yahoo Omg! UK (@YahooOmgUK) December 19, 2013
Capitalizing on the experiment’s success, Kabuto Noodles is toying with the idea of expanding the service outside of London in 2014. In an interview with HuffPost Live, Paul Dazeley, Kabuto Noodles marketing manager, said:
“We just wanted to see what it was like, what kind of reception we’d get, and actually we’re going to look at possibly doing something more next year, maybe bigger, maybe look at different cities where we can actually look at it in more viable, sustainable way.”
That includes, according to Dazely, a paid taxi service–replete with the company’s “hangover cure” pack–and branching out to New York City.
“We have started to expand. We are in a few different European countries now and yeah, we are growing very, very fast,” said Dazeley. “There’s literally just two people at Kabuto Noodles at the moment, we’re still a small company, but New York is definitely in our sights.”
It’ll be interesting to see how the service will fare in New York’s embattled taxi scene, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to standardize cabs under his Taxi of Tomorrow program and ride-share startups continue to slam against staunch industry resistance.
But Kabuto Noodles may be on to something by appealing to the sluggish drunkard in all of us rather than reinventing the taxi cab.
Photo from Kabuto Noodles
