Adventures in Outsourcing: Cooking with TaskRabbit | Hacker News Reader

Adventures in Outsourcing: Cooking with TaskRabbit

mtlynch.io

86 pointsmtlynch62 comments

I've been on keto for a long time. I've always been pressed for time myself and resorted to very expensive food delivery as an alternative (on keto, food delivery - especially in queens - means ordering sub par food in too small portions because the portions include rice or other carbs as filler. then you end up doubling your portion, adding delivery tip...could be a $30 shitty dinner)

I've thought about the home cook route but all the professional ones are absurdly expensive. This is a nice way to do it.

However I recently got a sous vide machine which seems like the answer to my problems. It's extremely hard to screw something up when it's cooked sous vide and it's almost always delicious. It's a worthwhile investment

Yeah, I have a sous vide as well and completely agree. I like it for cooking things like steak and chicken, but it doesn't really help me much with side dishes or desserts.

Sides can be extremely easy to cook though. Broccoli only needs to be steamed for a few minutes. I know the post of the original article is on keto, but rice can be thrown in a rice cooker and is ready automatically ~20 minutes later. Sweet potatoes can be thrown in an oven for 30 minutes.

Sides should be very simple and fast to create.

sous vide cheesecake is a great start if you are interested in desserts

Shameless plug - keto meal kit delivery service: https://ketocargo.com

A bit cheaper and more pragmatic than most delivery services, specifically for keto.

Hey! I recognize you from Indie Hackers. Fancy seeing you here.

I totally understand that feeling of not having enough time, but have you considered the side benefits of cooking your own meals? I've fallen into the 'distill every second into code' trap myself, and that way lies burnout. Take a break for a couple of hours and cook yourself a nice dinner. Even cleaning up after, while not 'fun' per se, is still downtime from work. Afterwards, if you really must get more work done, then do so, and you'll do it with a clearer mind, having had a chance to unwind. Time and time again, life has showed me that stepping back for awhile from the task at hand ultimately results in a faster solution to a problem than banging my head against it for an extra hour ( or three ).

That's fair. I think it depends on the person. I don't want to squeeze work out of every last second, but I'd rather do something I enjoy when I'm not working, like reading or emailing friends. I still cook a few times per week, but I don't feel like I get a lot out of it, so I'd rather do leisure activities that I enjoy.

I completely agree. Cooking is therapeutic and really ought not take very long once you know what you're doing. Not every tiny laborious task needs to be automated-away or outsourced. 5-10 minutes of prep is all it takes.

> When I order food from a restaurant, it arrives anywhere from 20 to 90 minutes later. It’s difficult for me to be productive in the meantime because I can’t fully focus when I know an interruption is coming.

> With a TaskRabbit chef, I get several meals that I can freeze for the week. When I want these meals later, I can just eat them as soon as I’m hungry. This eliminates unpredictable interruptions and gives me much better control of my time.

Why can't you freeze meals from restaurants just like TaskRabbit meals?

Also, you can schedule meals in advance with GrubHub, etc.

That's true. The high order bit here is really the keto diet. There aren't many restaurant options that are compatible with keto, especially desserts. The time savings is a nice side-benefit, but isn't the main driver of the decision.

How does any dessert is compatible with keto?

Keto is basically just low carbs, low sugar. You can make a lot of good desserts within that limitation. Dark chocolate is pretty low carb, as is cheesecake.

Recipe sites come up with some good stuff: https://www.ruled.me/keto-recipes/dessert/

Milk is practically all sugar. Doubt anything with sugar can be remotely considered keto.

Why not just cook? When you get good at it it doesn't take very long and you said you're not doing anything anyway

Can't speak for op, but boy do I hate cooking.

what about it do you hate that you would spend $35-$50 and apparently an hour per every meal avoiding it? Eg if you were the op.

or just answer for yourself... what do you hate about it?

It just seems like more work. The amount of time buying ingredients, cooking the ingredients, washing up after cooking in order to eat a meal seems out of wack to me. So I always end up cooking more for myself than I should because ultimately I'm sitting there thinking "there's no point going to all this effort for a tiny amount of food".

But realistically that's not what happens, I just end up buying a lot of store sandwhiches and takeaways instead.

Cooking to me seems like a hobby some people really enjoy or at least competent at, if you've got no interest in that hobby then it's easier to just swap money for food directly instead.

Is it a practice thing? My mom tricked me when I was a kid. I really liked omlettes. She plopped the Julia book and the tools and ingredients in front of me and I basically cooked omlettes for 2 hours till I got good at it and ate them. She did that for several other meals letting me perfect my technique.

Since then I've always been good at cooking as it holds no fear for me and makes sense.

This article is quite close to home. I have been doing keto for 10 years and my partner does jobs on task rabbit with quite a few cooking jobs. We've been discussing creating her own service where she goes out and cooks keto for people exactly like this guy (or any other food, but focus on ket). She is an amazing cook. First thing she said about the pics is that the pork could use some sauce. A nice creamy sauce would go well with it.

Wow, I just couldn't imagine spending that sort of money. But if you can afford it and it makes you happy, awesome.

Thanks for reading!

For Manhattan, these prices aren't that crazy. It's certainly much more than groceries, but about on par with restaurant delivery.

I used to live in Manhattan and found restaurants to be pretty cheap depending on ones tastes. I never really got food delivered because everything I wanted was within a block or two.

I feel like you are missing the fact that it is ~$100 for 4 meals, not one meal.

I spend $6 per meal if I really go all out with meat and semi premium ingredients. I would have to make a lot of money to justify $25 per meal on a regular basis. On an irregular basis, I'll just go to a restaurant.

I do somewhat enjoy cooking though so that may be the big difference. I also am trying to live a more balanced life after 4 years of college all nighters.

But also look at this way, if his hourly rate is $100 an hour, he just earned $200/hour. His 4 meals cost him $100 so he is $100 up. If he made the meals himself, he might have taken longer to make, for a product that wasn't as good and with a lost opportunity cost. Also he couldn't really make the keto dishes himself.

That's a good point, but I'm a bit more contrasted about hourly rates. It's typically (at least for me and what I observe) increasingly hard to maintain a high hourly rate while making more hours, since it implies getting less and less selective with available paying tasks (or having an overwhelming demand, but in which case, one should increase her hourly rate anyway).

In my case, it'd be borderline impossible to transform to just transform 2 hours of leisure/free time into paid work at my standard hourly rate ! (but of course, my life isn't organized for this to begin with).

Well hourly rate is one example. The other is lost opportunity cost. If he was working on his own thing, even though he isn't getting paid for it, it might be the ticket that get's his startup off the ground into a better life.

You're conflating hours actually worked with bankable hours per day, typically 8. If he gets paid for the finished product rather than his time at a desk, then and only then does it make sense.

Seeing as he is running his own projects, I would say he isn't limited to 8 bankable hours a day.

I totally was, thanks for clearing that up.

$25 a meal is a special occasion for me. That said this does seem pretty boss, having your own chef.

I did something very very similar to this two years ago. I was put on a particular diet by my nutritionist and so had the same pains as this man and went through a very similar process. Had to do the shopping myself but made it clear in the task that i wanted the tasker to give me the shopping list of what i need. It all went really well. She made me great tasting food that lasted me a whole week, cleaned up the kitchen after she was done and made sure the food was as per my dietary requirements. I was really happy. It cost me £65 for the whole thing. Unfortunately, I can't afford to spend that kind of money every week at the moment, otherwise I would because i really hate cooking. But this post has re-ignited the idea at least

This is amazing! Solves exactly the problem I have with eating out or ordering regularly: Can't track what you're eating.

This could be great for making my weekly mealprep. One less weekends chore.

I love cooking, but it's really not fun when you're pressed for time.

Thanks for reading! Yeah, I've appreciated that it gives me more control over what I'm eating without imposing the time commitment that kind of control would usually require.

Why not just do a healthy meal delivery service? Zone Diets or Munchery will deliver something already cooked and within nutritional parameters for far less than your daily budget.

I don't think I'd outsource my cooking because I enjoy it. However, I think it makes perfect sense for someone who doesn't like cooking to do so, such as the author. It was certainly an interesting read.

It took me a while to realize that there are things that could be done more cheaply by someone or something else, but add real value to my life in ways other than monetary.

So why not have the task rabbit teach you to cook?

Interesting writeup! Can you cook? How much time did you you spend arranging a cook and preparing for their arrival?

I would have thought cooking in bulk with simpler recipes would save more time overall than arranging someone to turn up to cook for you unless it was a regular thing or simpler recipes aren't good enough.

Thanks for reading!

>Can you cook?

I can cook basic meals, and I still do for a few meals per week. Things like scrambled eggs, steak, burgers, and chicken.

>How much time did you you spend arranging a cook and preparing for their arrival?

I think that's one of the main weaknesses because I'm still spending about one hour per visit searching recipes, checking which ingredients I have available, ordering new ingredients from FreshDirect, and making sure the kitchen is ready.

>I would have thought cooking in bulk with simpler recipes would save more time overall than arranging someone to turn up to cook for you unless it was a regular thing or simpler recipes aren't good enough.

A big motivating factor is desserts/snacks. If I wasn't outsourcing it, I wouldn't have the motivation to cook myself desserts. So I'd just end up eating less healthy snacks and not being able to keep up the diet.

> I can cook basic meals, and I still do for a few meals per week. Things like scrambled eggs, steak, burgers, and chicken.

So things like chilli, roasts, lasagne and burritos are classics for bulk cooking and aren't that difficult.

> A big motivating factor is desserts/snacks. If I wasn't outsourcing it, I wouldn't have the motivation to cook myself desserts. So I'd just end up eating less healthy snacks and not being able to keep up the diet.

Haha, surely you should be avoiding dessert completely if you want to be healthy? What's wrong with store bought desserts?

Not knocking whatever your preferences are by the way, I'm just genuinely curious about business models such as this and things like Blue Apron. Spending money to free up time for what you want to do makes complete sense to me.

Yeah, no offense taken.

The issue with store bought desserts is that they generally don't fit the keto diet. If I didn't want to do the keto diet, I probably would have more flexibility because there are services where I live that offer home-cooked meals delivered to you, but none of them are keto-compatible and I've only seen a few that offer any sort of desserts.

Keto desserts are usually fat bombs which haven't become popular as a store bought dessert (yet). They usually consist of a serving of fat (like cream cheese) and some sort of artificial sweetener like stevia. They fill you up but have no carbs and so are actually healthy for you in keto.

They're coming: https://caveshake.myshopify.com/

Cool post. What about finding someone on craigslist instead? Would that save money?

I am experimenting with that now. I hired someone for $175 per delivery of an entree, side, and snack similar in portion to what I described in the article. The fee covers the cost of ingredients, cooking, and delivery. It's more expensive, but it saves me more time.

This is so cringe, the notion they are pursuing keto with so much animal products is just gross. They probably think they've found their body's best way to diet. Ugh.

It was only mentioned twice, and in two paragraphs in the whole article. It established the motivation for his experiment. You might draw from different motivations for trying TaskRabbit.

Where do you get "so much" from? The portion on the sample plate shown isn't that sizeable.

> the notion they are pursuing keto with so much animal products is just gross

Why? It is my understanding that the keto community, at least on reddit, is not vegan.

It costs $100 to order delivery?!

4 times. Since the cooking is 4 servings.

But if he's eating reheated food, he could just order 4 servings worth at once.

Also, if he's ordering in bulk, a lot of restaurants also have catering arms where you can order food by the tray for much cheaper. Catering orders are also much more keto friendly as they generally decouple the starch from the mains and you can just order meat/veggies.

For $100, you can get a lot of catering food.

surely there are services where you can order multi meal prep boxes for the week?

"Each TaskRabbit worker chooses their own rate for the services they offer, so it doesn’t make sense to add a tip on top of that." yeah I'm sure they love not getting tips.

Do you receive tips for the work you voluntarily do on a daily basis?

Do you not like receiving extra appreciation in the form of compensation when doing an exceptional job at your work?

I'd feel weird if my boss or my consulting clients tipped me.

Many organizations have variable, basically unpredictable, often big year-end bonuses tied to your whole team's $$ performance.

The general rule which I've heard is you "don't tip the owner." If you are setting your own rates, it fits the same pattern. Not tipping is appropriate in this case, unless you feel like the rate was significantly under-priced for the quality of work performed. In cases like that, I've actually told someone, "for the work you're doing I'm paying you $50 not $35 per hour -- keep it up!" In other words, give them a raise, not a tip.

Just hire a part-time personal cook/housekeeper. They're often willing to do more and don't charge an arm and both legs. TaskRabbit seem like no rapport, no stability, disposable relationships. Find someone good and stick with them.

If you read the post, he's been consistently using the same TaskRabbit and has developed a rapport with her.

That's what Task Rabbit aim to do, try and setup a long term relationship between the two. But then take their cut. Most task rabbits and clients once they find each other and are happy and want it regularly, discuss with the TaskRabbit person and go direct with them.

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