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Comment by sgift | Hacker News Reader

> When this idea inevitably takes off, people are going to be able to order take-out from their neighbors, from anyone in the city who wants to cook their family recipe. It will change cuisine forever.

I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. As if such things as hygiene regulations didn't exist and you can just open a restaurant by hanging a sign out and telling someone to deliver whatever you just produced in your kitchen.

Well, probably in some part of the world you can. In some part of the world people die of food poisoning all the time, in other parts we learned the hard way that sometimes you need this thing which bothers startups to no end called regulation.

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I made a similar argument to a friend while eating at a small street food vendor in Bangkok a couple of months ago. I was turned off by the flies and the fact I was a couple of feet from a dirty alley. My friend, who likely grew up eating in similar shops in Nigeria, pointed out I was looking at it from a very Western pov.

He argued that these kind of establishments were safe to eat at because their entire livelihood is dependent on their reputation among locals. Looking around at all the competition along the street we just walked down, it kind of made sense.

In my north american city if a shop fails inspection they are closed down for 48 hours, after which they can open back up and operate until next inspection. In Bangkok if a vendor makes some one sick the news spreads via word of mouth and their business is DONE.

I was able to enjoy an amazing meal after calming down.

That only goes so far. One only has to look into "gutter oil"(1) to see that reputation is not always paramount in vendors' minds.

(1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil

Also, the GI tracts of people in developed nations are more susceptible to some pathogens than people who have been exposed to those pathogens from an early age and have survived those pathogens in their foodsource.

I'm not following your logic. You're trying to say that the existence of regulation somehow prevents the spread of information via word of mouth? Besides, in Bangkok with its 8 million people, does the word of mouth even make any difference? You don't have to rely on return customers in the city with millions of people.

Does the word-of-mouth reputation system still work if you're using a phone app to order food from someone who isn't necessarily local? Now, everyone's competing against everyone in a much larger geographical area. Sure, you can go by reviews, but now you've got a negative-comment war.

Reputation seemed to largely work for The Silk Road. I mean, there might have been isolated incidents, but I don't seem to recall a broad trend of people dying from buying bad drugs.

At the end of the day, I think it always remains the case that "killing your customers is bad for business".

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #10: "A dead customer can't buy as much as a live one."

Or maybe if you ruin your street vendor reputation, you just move two blocks over, repaint your cart, and start over?

You talk as if word of mouth doesn't exist in the US.

There isn't a singular reason.

But one of them is that SF doesn't have the storage and refrigeration that a fixed establishment does. The other is throughput. Combined, food doesn't stick around long enough to go bad. I have gotten sick in Vietnam, and it was at the fanciest restaurant on the entire trip. Most likely it was something kept under bad refrigeration for way too long.

I agree with you.

But I remember when I laughed similarly at AirBnB and Uber, because regulations, safety etc.

I remember when Uber riders, drivers, AirbnB hosts got screwed because the other party turned up to be a criminal (remember #uberdelhirape ?)

But, sharing economy is the new buzzword and regulations have been too much of a pain, so people are willing to take a risk.

Although I agree with you, there is possibly a grain of truth to what he says. There are some states that have regulations for running a (semi) professional kitchen out of a home. It won't be just anyone who can open up a food business and start running it, but it is possible that some people not otherwise able to make it on their own could use this as a marketing vehicle for part time work.

What's to stop the WeWork of commercial kitchens from developing? I truly believe that it could, emphasize could result in a boom of small family restaurants.

There was a startup in Britain that was killing it with mom cooking and Dad doing the deliveries. But health authorities cracked down and the company cratered.

The customers loved the service but even with the help of an executive chef doing inspections the government wasn't satisfied.

They already exist. They are called shared kitchen commisaries. Most places that use these are catering companies. The other majority is companies that need a HACCP approved kitchen for meeting safety standard, you'll also find companies that sell pre-made goods like baking cookies in bulk, or places that only make sauces.

Just think of a food truck business minus the food truck / cooking on sight, you deliver to parties and receptions instead with a-la-carte cooking ahead of time

Personally, I always find it funny when those who cut their teeth in a software industry ( which based on profit margins is a toddler ) think that their skills translate into well established industries such as restaurants.

We live in an era where every company is a software company.

Having founded a daily deals company a few years back, I can say this mindset can easily be a trap. Software plays a larger role in many companies and can be part of your offering, but I strongly disagree you should run every company like a software company.

A taco truck is a software company?

A bodega on a corner is a software company?

A shoe shine guy is a software company?

Computers and telecommunications had quite the impact, but they warped the world much less than the perspectives of some people in it.

What do you mean by

> ..a software industry ( which based on profit margins is a toddler )

I thought software has higher margins than most industries.

High profit margins imply very immature industry. As industries mature the profit margins drop.

Not always. High profits largely depends on the kind of competitive advantage (trade secrets, patents, market share etc) that can be deployed in one's sector, it is independent of industry.

A few counter-examples that illustrates my point:

1. Having a trade secret that allows only you to manufacture a good exclusively with high margins. The best known example is Coca Cola. They enjoy average gross margins of 60%.

https://ycharts.com/companies/KO/gross_profit_margin

2. Intel enjoys a near-monopoly in the hardware industry selling server CPUs. They enjoy 63% margins on ~$16b in quarterly revenue.

3. Professional services. I believe this one is self-evident because you can mostly get away with charging value-based prices instead of cost-based prices that is predominant in industries like manufacturing.

IBM Global Services contributes more than 60% of IBM's revenue which allows them to enjoy about 50% gross margins even though IBM GS has only been around since 1991. If industry maturity were truly a dominant factor, 26 years is more than enough time for their industry to "mature".

1. If by trade secret you mean Coke's branding, marketing and historical dominance.

1. No, I meant Coke's recipe is a secret known only to a handful of anonymous employees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_formula#Current_ingr...

I wonder if there are fewer regulations on food processing? Ie maybe a restaurant producing a meal needs to be regulated. But what if someone sells chopped onions and other prep work?

In the U.S., it's extensively regulated by both Federal and State laws, though the amount of regulation varies from state to state, and even county. The regulations don't just cover how the food is processed, but also where the food is stored and the vehicles the food is transported in.

Very few foods can be processed outside of a licensed cannery. Usually only items that don't require refrigeration to stay fresh, for example dried foods or preserves that don't have large pieces of low-acid fruit.

That’s probably for the better. But it’s a shame as well. Food preparation takes a lot of time and would employ many people. Then people could whip up the actual recipes at home. It seems like an avenue that could employ many people who otherwise wouldn’t be employed.

Despite the regulations, I’ve been food poisoned by restaurants around half a dozen times in my life.

And despite regulations to the contrary, for the entire 7 years I lived in Chicago, not a single cab driver ever accepted a credit card (this was a ways back).

Not to say that regulations are bad or that I’m against regulations. Just that they are not magic. Further, due to the centralized enforcement mechanism, most regulations are difficult and expensive to enforce. This can often result in being seldomly enforced.

If the uber-ization of food preparation comes with an uber like rating system, my guess is that the efficacy of that distributed rating system will rival or surpass centralized regulations in preventing food poisoning.

> Despite the regulations, I’ve been food poisoned by restaurants around half a dozen times in my life.

Did you wash your hands before you ate?

For the downvoters, the #1 cause for food bourne illness is people not washing their hands before they eat.

Usually if a restaurant is to blamed, there are multiple cases of illness outbreaks.

I didn't downvote but I guess your question was a bit condescending since the narrator is likely not some helpless 10-year old still learning personal hygiene.

Over 20 years my dad investigated claims of restaurant food poisoning, and there was a never an outbreak due to negligence; it was always deemed isolated incident attributed to not washing hands.

Although I agree to a certain extent, I hope there would be certain licenses that allows third-party to distribute meals (Like how Uber licenses their drivers through the company)

>>As if such things as hygiene regulations didn't exist and you can just open a restaurant by hanging a sign out and telling someone to deliver whatever you just produced in your kitchen.

personally I find that to be a sad commentary on the state of "Free" societies when we are regulated to the point where you can not even cook for other people with out government permission.

Really highlights how much freedom has been lost and that most people view that as a good thing. Falsely putting their faith in government health inspections often which only occur once every several years and are often highly corrupt, as the reason eating in restaurants are "safe"

personally I find that to be a sad commentary on the state of "Free" societies when we are regulated to the point where you can not even cook for other people with out government permission.

Preach it, brother, preach it! Can I get an "Amen" here???

We keep telling ourselves, and each other, that we are "Free" when we are so far from "free" that it's laughable.

To get a better idea of what the proper role for government should be limited to, I suggest everyone read "The Law"[1] by Bastiat.

As Bastiat says:

And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties — liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, of labor, of trade? In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism — including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?

[1]: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

You must have never visited a kitchen of a small restaurant if you honestly think hygiene regulations are something real and enforceable

Hygiene regulations don't require visible cleanliness (i.e., clean dishes and sparkling floors), they require hygienic practices and workplaces. The big things are storing and cooking food properly, making sure that employees clean themselves and the kitchen in a proper manner, and controlling pests like rats and roaches (which is 90% accomplished by the first two). Everything beyond that is negotiable.

LA County, for example, is very strict with enforcing these rules for kitchens, and publishes monthly lists of restaurants that have been shut down for violations.

what about cutting meat and occasionally some salad on the same board? that never happens in a busy kitchen, right? totally enforceable too

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