Review my startup: Housefed.com - Airbnb for food

I love to cook, and love to try new foods. After watching Anthony Bourdain eat with families all over the world, I thought - I want to do that! So I made Housefed.com - an Airbnb for food / OpenTable for your kitchen. What do you guys think?

With 200 registered users, I launched it this morning and am opening the site piece by piece. I think people will not want to eat with a host without seeing their food first. So part 1 is aimed at photo-sharing and growing the community. After a user has uploaded 5 pics, they can apply to become a host. Once there is an initial group of hosts, I'll open the site for meal booking.

Hosts will be able to create meals other users can book a seat at. Hosts will be able to filter the users prior to booking. Users will pay through the site prior to getting directions to the host's home.

I think this will be great for people who love to cook, love trying new foods, and especially travelers. Trying real pad see ew with a Thai family would be mind blowing (at least to me).

In terms of the legality of booking a meal at a person's home, I am not sure. Each state/country has their own regulations so until it grows to a point where that is a problem, I'm not worrying about it.

What do you guys think about the site / strategy? Thanks for your time and thoughts.

Emile Emile@housefed.com

PS if you remember the HN post 'Quit Job, Learning to Code' back in July ( http://goo.gl/cxNsr ), that was from me. I have been at it since then day and night. Thanks to everyone who has helped over the last few months. You too can learn how to code.

Went to front page. Saw a bunch of photos of food. Didn't see where I could buy food. Left.

Saying "airbnb for food" is not a substitute for explaining what you do or having a user interface which visibly allows the actions you want a user to perform.

Aka GrubWithUs Residential. You have a big challenge because eating dinner with someone at their home is really intimate. I wouldn't start with photo sharing-- you need to start working on the dinner mechanics right away. Go low tech. Pick a single city, find a couple people willing to host, then send out invitations through existing social connections. Maybe get people to commit to 5 dinners up front for $100. I would also look at having a fundraising component (25% to charity?) because now the dinner can be ABOUT something. You can't just get a bunch of random people together and hope the conversation works out, you need some common cause or interest to act as social lubricant.

I'll be blunt, and I hope you take this all with the understanding that I'm only trying to help. I've tried to point out specific things you can do/add wherever possible. With that said...

Your home page is incredibly confusing, primarily because there is no call to action. Even though I know and use Airbnb, "Airbnb for food" could still mean several things, and I'm not even sure what the # of countries has to do with anything. Suggestion: ditch the Airbnb comparison and put up a 1-sentence elevator pitch followed by a 1-sentence call-to-action. Example: "Housefed.com lets you find and eat with talented chefs in your area. Get started by _______."

Continuing on the call-to-action thread, there isn't even anything for me to do! Am I supposed to search? Am I supposed to click on the food? Clicking on the food takes me to an equally confusing page with nothing for me to do there either. Suggestion: add an obvious thing for me to interact with (search box? I don't even know what...) and lose the sorting features, which add nothing to the first impression.

After signing up -- even though nothing on the site makes me want to -- nothing changes! I still have no idea what to do on your site, or where to do it. Suggestion: let a not-logged-in user browse the available food and understand WHY it's posted (so that they could eat it, I assume), and then invite them to sign up with a statement like: "Want to eat this and other delicious meals in your town? Sign up and get housefed!"

I suggest you spend a lot more time studying http://airbnb.com and the subtleties of their homepage and UX. Notice that their home page tells you EXACTLY what to do ("Find a place to stay.") and shows you HOW to do it (by filling out one field that tells them "Where are you going?"). I can use and browse everything on their site without logging in or signing up, and they detour me to the sign-up page only when absolutely necessary.

I remember your original "noob" post. Congrats on making it this far. Seriously. Most people would've given up long ago. Keep at it. I think your site fills a real need (at least, I would use it, fwiw).

Brilliant. Lose the Airbnb reference. Landing page should clearly and concisely tell me, the random passerby, exactly what you do: "Get a home cooked meal by a fellow foodie"

Just a couple of comments about the homepage:

- as said by somebody else, I'd remove the reference to Airbnb. Not many people know what Airbnb is and "Airbnb for food" doesn't really explain what it means.

- I'd also remove "food porn". I wouldn't be surprised if many people are uncomfortable with the word "porn" even if it's about food.

- right now, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing on the site or what the site is all about. I see pictures, I click on them but then there's barely any information: what am I looking at? Why are you showing this to me? What can I do with this?

- I know you're just starting and thus have to feed some content yourself but seeing "Emile P." all over the frontpage is not great. You might want to limit the number of pictures by the same person there. Even if you get traction that might be something that you would still want to change for the case of someone uploading a bunch of pictures at once.

As for the sign-up, I'm not sure why you want to limit users to put their first name and only first initial of last name. This seems a bit restrictive and I'm not sure if there's a good reason behind it. I could see having just "Name" and they put whatever they want?

Since your current focus is on the pictures, I might do a couple of things: show more and/or bigger pictures on the homepage, possibly removing the username/likes/comments metadata (with them showing on hover?) and make sure your pictures are of the best quality possible (maybe not quite professional, but at least edited a bit). As a comparison, look at what Instagram looks like when you start it up without an account: a page full of good-looking pictures of different styles, by different people…

Hope this helps, congratulations on the launch and good luck!

Disclaimer: I'm no expert or designer, this is just my humble opinion :)

That sounds lovely - but I think the legality thing is something to investigate early. I think a lot of places have rules about restaurants having hygiene certificates and passing inspections - maybe having a meal exchange would bypass that (like you can try other peoples' food as long as you also host every so often?). If you're taking money, I'd talk to a lawyer early (or friendly person with legal knowledge at least!)

Also, it might be worth starting on a specific scene first so you concentrate your community (your local town, your uni alumni, conference attendees at local tech conference or whatever).

edit: OK actually people do this, trended in London a year or so ago (sorry for non-reputable source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1253584/I-ope...)

Great idea -- I've long wanted a tool to help organize voluntary, opt-in communal cooking around where I live. It's beyond stupid for 100 single adults within a block of each other to cook 100 single servings every night.

But this could enable something much less repetitive and less obligatory than a shared cooking schedule between friends (something I've tried--everyone cooks for the others one day a week, etc.).

Anyway, if I were you I would consider this market in addition to the tourist market akin to that of airbnb. The tool probably wouldn't need to be much different, but the marketing might be.

It's a lovely concept (I hesitated to use that adjective there, but it is!) - so I would drop the line "Everyone loves a little food porn". It just conotes, you know, porn. With strangers. And you might lose some people who aren't familiar with the phrase.

Im working on the exact same concept (it isnt ready for public launch yet). The major hurdle Ive run into is the legal side of things - it is illegal to "sell" any type of potentially hazardous food i.e. hot food from a home kitchen no matter what state. You can sell baked goods like cookies, jams, jellies and so on from a home kitchen from a handful of states though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentially_Hazardous_Food

The concept is unclear to me. Is this basically about ad-hoc restaurants, where people cook for guests, and the guests can browse through hosts by looking at pictures of food they cooked? If yes, why don't you write that on the home page?

And why do you only show the food? I'd be interested to see pictures of the hosts.

Also, location would be supremely important. Where are these hosts located?

EDIT: Some more feedback: Photos should look way better. Encourage hosts to use DSLRs. Show some tips on food photography.

Make sure that browsing through the finished site shows just 1 pic per host, with all the other pics grouped together at the host page.

Apart from that, fantastic concept, wish you luck!

Saying this is the Airbnb for food made me think it's a way to sell my leftovers on the web.

There is so much wrong with the statement at the top of your site.

#1 LOTS of people have no idea what Airbnb is. This service by itself is very niche.

#2 Can you even use the name of another company like this? Do they want you to associate yourself with their service?

#3 Everyone has food porn? Really? The LAST thing foodies want to think about when looking for food related websites is pornography. In fact, for many, just the words on the page make for a disgusting feeling.

Do you plan on allowing people to charge for hosting? If so, aren't there some serious health code issues that arise (at least in the U.S.)?

Friends of mine work at a non-profit that wanted to sell espresso at their center and they ran into all kinds of health code issues due to just having milk. Apparently as soon as you introduce perishable items, all kinds of red flags get raised and you need inspections, etc.

I've actually heard of this before, there are a few but they tend to stay small. Not sure what they are officially called but I called them underground restaurants.

They only do it once or twice a week but they serve lots of different types of food, they usually are done by local chefs. But that's usually very high class food.

I also suggest not comparing yourself to another service on your home page and explicitly saying what you do.

This is a really cool concept! Awesome job.

I like the feedback someone else gave on showing photos of the people. Since this is more 'socialize here' than 'sleep here,' (unless it pivots into house-based on-availability takeout) I'd prefer to see photos of people + their interests than photos of the food.

It's saturday night, am I looking for someone making turkey sandwiches in Eugene, Oregon, or am I looking for some cool people to meet and have a few hour conversation with? Am I buying a conversation or the food? I think I'd be buying a conversation and an opportunity to meet new people. The meal is secondary.

My ex-girlfriend and I had a recurring conversation about meeting people and making new friends in our mid-20s. It's a good question, one I'd like to see tackled: "What does a non-dating 'dating' site look like?" Howaboutwe.com is sort of what I'd like to see done in this space, but a site like this that arranges social events / group 'friend' dates to meet people in your community based on food / interests / conversation? That's right up my ally.

Great job launching an MVP. I'd love to see what comes next.

1. If you have no idea what Airbnb is, which many people do not, then you have no idea what to do at the site and you'll probably leave. 2. I know what Airbnb is and still could not figure out Housefed was until I read your post here.

It sounds like a fun business. I think you should be more explicit on the front page as to what exactly it is. I would definitely try this out if there was a host near me.

Looks like a fun idea and I'll sign-up and give it a shot as a customer. One business suggestion: don't describe yourself as "Airbnb for food" on your main website. That's fine for HN but many potential customers will not know/care what Airbnb is.

One other suggestion is to spend some time looking at the GrubWithUs site; it has a great design for this type of service.

OK here's my gut reaction:

1. You don't explain what you're doing and why I would want to do it. Even with all their publicity I would wager that 90% of the people you are driving to your home page have never heard of AirBNB. Calling yourself the AirBNB of food might work when you're pitching the idea to a VC but doesn't work on the actual website.

2. Two thirds of your potential customers will be using Internet Explorer. I know it's not fair but that's reality in 2011. In IE you cannot even see the fields to sign up.

If in fact I can buy dinner at different peoples houses every night that's a really cool idea. In my state you couldn't do it legally but you've researched all that right? To succeed you need more than a cool idea, you have to execute.

I think most people are going to be puzzled/turned-off by your reference to "food porn".

Love the idea. Rails Rumble a few years ago produced this: http://tablesurfing.com/ which never actually launched, but I was really hoping it would have.

Comments:

Without the "airbnb for food" tagline on the site, nobody would have any idea that this site is anything more than a bad Foodgawker clone. Nothing about it lets users actually do anything other than share pictures.

If that's the goal, make it clear how to do that or let us know when it will be possible.

So someone pays me for me to cook for them? Sounds strange, why not get takeout or to a smaller restaurant if it's too pricey and want to eat out?

Congrats on following through on your goal, and for shipping! Really cool idea. The service may not be for everyone, but ones who use it may become fanatics. There are definitely regulatory issues with this in my mind, probably for all of the US and many other countries as well, but one thing I love about the Internet is how it challenges and sometimes breaks conventional models and rules.

It's something I might be especially likely to use if I moved to a new city, and wanted to meet people, and try something different for the hell of it.

There is a social angle to be worked here. Maybe allow users to post profiles? I'd be much more likely to try this if I could see that interesting-looking people were going to the same dinner as me.

This is a VERY intriguing idea.

I can't say that I would invite someone into my home for a few bucks, but it definitely is intriguing. Then again...I wouldn't rent out my couch to random strangers, so don't use my opinion on the deciding factor to go ahead.

Look forward to keeping track of this and seeing how it progresses.

Good luck!

I heard Brian Chesky (Airbnb's cofounder) on Gigaom talking about announcing other categories in 2011 on top of housing (which sounds like a natural extension).So kudos to the guy who executed this but I can already see this space is going get ultra competitive pretty soon.

I am betting you need a health department certificate in most states to do this.

there are a couple startups in this space (GrubWith.Us, gogrubly.com, maybe others?). what differentiates housefed? is it the international angle? the kind of foodspotting-esque type focus on user-generated photos?

any plans for adding descriptive content so that the comments aren't just "is that [fill in the blank]? Btw, I'd love to see a lot more positive user feedback before I sign up. I'd say get some good traction from friends/beta testers before spreading it too widely. Oh and I agree with others: lose the food porn reference. Good luck!

As a user of Housefed before today's front-page-on-HN, I want to give folks a heads up that it looks like the traffic may be causing a few bugs.

If anything feels strange, definitely return after a bit.

WOW thanks for the feedback! There are a few bugs I missed in my testing - so I've taken down a few of the features. Everything will be back tomorrow (with a new homepage). Thanks again!

Love the idea. I know some folks that sell home-cooked foods. This happens in ethnic communities. So that can be an option.

Also reviews are super important to decide.

Looks awesome.. one suggestion is to avoid using the word 'porn' on the front page. Love the idea though!

Awesome work Emile. I love the tenacity.

I think this is Foodspotting, not Airbnb

how bout http://mealtik.com ?

About Page

Am I the only one who thinks the local and federal food regulatory bodies are going to have a field day with this?

I hope you have a solid legal team in place to deal with the inevitable FDA, USDA, state heath boards, and local restaurant licensing regulators that are very likely to take notice if you grow.

I had never heard of Airbnb before. Once I got on your site, I went to their site, clicked around for a while, tried to get the gist of it. Then came back here to comment because I still don't get housefed.

I don't think I should have to go learn a totally different site in order to understand the tagline of your site.