I saw a post on X: a guy bought a $400 Mac mini, walked into a coffee shop, and charged $2,100 for installing an AI agent that never touches the internet, plus a $100-150/month retainer.
Judging by the comments, it almost certainly did not happen or work as described. A coffee shop has close to zero need for a private LLM, and “every client after the first is close to pure margin” is the kind of line that sounds great but survives no contact with reality.
The underlying model, though, is real. Regulated small businesses genuinely cannot send client data to the cloud, and someone who can install a working offline document assistant for them has a product people will pay for.
So I researched and broke down the version that actually works: the one vertical that will pay, the exact hardware and software stack, real pricing and margins, the sales motion, and the limitations nobody in the replies mentioned.
In this guide you’ll find:
Why the coffee shop pitch fails and which SMBs actually pay for offline AIThe offline document Q&A stack: exact hardware and Ollama-based software to deployRealistic pricing and margins: what to charge vs the viral $2,100 flat feeThe sales motion: how to walk into a clinic or law office and close the installThe honest limitations that will burn you (and how to price around them)
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