Show HN: Like Airbnb but for food | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Like Airbnb but for food

cookening.com

114 pointsnegrit107 comments

Very interesting concept! How do food & restuarant laws apply in Europe? I know here in the US, restaurants need regular inspections by the local board of health. And restaurant is defined as "a facility that prepares and sells food directly to consumers for immediate consumption."

Presumably if people are paying the host, that host is now operating a restaurant. I can already see the food lobby going crazy over this one in the US.

This. I had the exact same idea (although locally oriented) about a year ago, but then I found out that all places that serve food commercially in the Netherlands require that someone on the staff is in possession of a "Social Hygiene Diploma"[1] and the health services would shut down basically anyone who attempted to do this.

I hope you guys do well, I think there's a lot of social value in this concept. Food can bring people together in special ways.

[1] http://www.sho-horeca.nl/cursussen/spoedcursus-sociale-hygie...

Actually, there was a Dutch site featured on I think DWDD. www.thuisafgehaald.nl

Was not really a success

I think this is just another way it's "like AirBnB". I assert the vast majority of AirBnB rentals break either local laws regarding guest houses or hotels, and/or the provisions of the lease in rented accommodation.

Perhaps this service can spare itself from liability from the unlicensed action of its users by including in the ToS "you must have all valid licenses required by your jurisdiction if you choose to charge for hosting a meal".

Edit: I would imagine thing become even more complicated if guests receive wine or other alcoholic drinks as part of the meal.

Oh my goodness, you're almost certainly right about the liquor. There are oodles of laws about who can get a liquor license, as well as what they can serve, to whom, and when. I believe that you're often not allowed to have an establishment that serves liquor within x distance of a church, hospital, or school. Go tell the people at 100 Main Street that they're not allowed to serve liquor to their patrons, but that the people at 150 Main Street are.

Imagine that you're running a Cookening site in your home. Are you allowed to serve wine to the children? (I realize that this is a non-issue in many countries, but it's a very serious one in the US.) What are the penalties for giving wine to the children?

I would think there would be a lot of trouble with this in the UK, because if you're serving food to people for money then you need hygiene certification for the folks preparing the food and hygiene assessments for the preparation areas, at the very least.

It's a nice idea, but like AirBnB it will probably fall foul of a lot of consumer protection laws, and a lot of consumer protection laws really are there for good reasons.

They are there for good reasons, but they doesn't mean they are good. At least not in their current form.

If it's legal to have your neighbors over for dinner, but it becomes illegal if they pay you back, something's wrong.

That's not really what's going on here though is it? It's more like informal restaurant businesses, with the service acting as a directory and booking portal.

Not that I'm saying this shouldn't be allowed, but there are good reasons we have hygiene rules and it's at least worthwhile investigating how they ought to apply here.

Getting a hygiene certificate is actually pretty straight-forward if it came to that and supper-clubs have been going fairly successfully for a couple of years now without being shut down as far as I know. I like the idea. In the uk anything that gets people from different social circles together is a great thing - I don't think it happens as much as it should. Good luck to them!

Looks great, keep going with it.

As many people have pointed out - there's a lot of potential problems and legislation that could get in the way. What constantly impresses me is that people can push right through and solve these seemingly insurmountable issues. I'm sure if AirBnB was first posted here they'd get back 50 reasons why it can't work.

"I'm sure if AirBnB was first posted here they'd get back 50 reasons why it can't work"

Absolutely this. It's a great site and a great idea. There are hundreds of reasons NOT to do something, but that doesn't always mean you shouldn't try.

Apparently just inviting people over on a regular basis is grounds for getting shut down in NYC.

"After hosting dinner parties for strangers in their own apartment, the NYC Department of Health took notice and shut them down, but Tamy and Felipe decided to open a restaurant in SOHO."

https://vimeo.com/45360751

Did you see the thread in HN yesterday about the legal issues that AirBNB is having with various municipalities? That's nothing compared with what this company (and others like it) will have to deal with. I have to imagine that the health- and food-inspection departments in most states and cities are very tough. Plus, you might need to get insurance for everything from "patrons" getting sick, to kitchen fires. I don't even know if most homeowner insurance would cover the cost of damage if you were using your kitchen for commercial purposes and quantities.

And so on, and so on. As with AirBNB, I expect that we'll eventually find a middle ground between complete anarchy and stifling regulations. But on the face of it, operating a restaurant from your house sounds like a rat's nest (no pun intended) of financial and legal issues to deal with.

This might be an American-only thing, though. In Israel (where I live), many people run small catering companies (albeit not restaurants) from their home kitchens. Perhaps the government has rules about such things, but they aren't ever enforced. and in France, I can't imagine the government stopping people from cooking and serving (and selling) high-quality food.

We'll see, I guess...

For those who want to know the tech stack. We are running on heroku(the european datacenter)[1] and amazon S3, we use RoR with some pretty nice gems(active admin, devise, ...) and Jquery for the JS. For metric we use Mixpanel and Google Analytics. For our emails we use Amazon and Mailjet.

The are on the european DC because of the Safe Harbor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Safe_Harbor_Priva...

What kind of resources are you using currently on Heroku?

Is infrastructure a noteworthy portion of your spending? (10-20%+?)

Either way, cool concept, I'd definitely consider using it.

Addons: Heroku Postgres, Memcachier, New Relic, SSL Endpoint. 1 worker, a few dynos. We don't spend a lot in infrastructure.

Thanks and let me know if you use it ! My twitter handle and my email are in my HN profile.

When the EU region was announced[1] last month they weren't Safe Harbor compliant (yet). Has that changed?

[1] https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/4/24/europe-region (near the bottom).

You're right, I did a bit of a mic mac there.

They are still not compliant with Safe Harbor in the US. Anyway since our company is located in France, the french privacy law allow us to use a hosting located in EU (instead of a US SafeHarbor one). Heroku did the EU launch just for this.

Interesting, thanks!

No. "It does not currently address data residency or jurisdiction concerns. You should assume that some portions of your app and its data will be in, or pass through, datacenters located in the US."

Hehehe, the "Airbnb for food" tagline reminded me of the http://incubatorincubator.com:

Specifically:

"AirBnBForY. AirBnBforY specializes in incubating companies that are the "AirBnB" for their respective industries (e.g. "The AirBnB for pantry space" and "The AirBnB for condiments" (A lot of people aren't making full use of their mustard, ketchup, and other condiments. AirDiments creates a marketplace by which people can use each others condiments)."

Haha, I didn't know this parody of ycombinator.com

So, "AirBnBForY" is the punchline for the HN post but we obviously don't pitch it like this :)

I love this idea and it seems like a great way to bring people together in real life through technology. Like others though I think this could have trouble with laws and probably to a greater extent than AirBnB. How liable is the host if there is an food poisoning incident for example? Is Cookening liable at all?

Anyway, good luck, it's a great idea.

Kinda sad that the first thing we have to worry about is how we could possibly be sued while having strangers over.

"Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends"

Having strangers over for money

This is not really some sort of altruistic dinner club.

In the terms and conditions, we're explaining Cookening is the third party. That's also why we're using a payment system that makes the money go directly from user to user, even if payment is made on our website.

That said, our job is also to make sure everything goes well, and if something happens, we'll have to handle it.

Very interesting idea, and great website!

A question: I'm curious whether you put a lot of consideration into the review system?

Asking hosts to invite strangers over and publicly rate their hospitality, cooking, and home is asking a lot. Yes, Airbnb does something similar, but renting a room feels like more of a business transaction. Having dinner guests share a meal is more personal and intimate - and it would be easier for hosts to take reviews personally.

Also, how will you deal with hyper-critical guests who leave mostly negative reviews? A few negative "foodies" like this could be a morale crusher for early hosts.

In any case, good luck!

Keeping track of violations of rules publicly would be a minimum kind of ratings

This is a very good remark. That's the reason why we have this three notes : food, place and hospitality. As you see, we're asking guests to review the hospitality, not the person.

As always, it is very important to us that guest expectations before any booking are the right ones: hosts do not commit on serving food like in a restaurant, they commit it is home made, they commit on a meal structure (number of courses) and they'll respect food specifics mentionned by their guests.

One thing you guys should be worried about is the effort it takes for someone to host. Airbnb can be as much or little time and work intensive as the host likes. That makes it easy to host. With hosting a meal, it's always going to be time and work intensive, which limits the number of people that would be willing to do it on a continual basis.

Solve that, and you might have something interesting on hand.

Millions of people already cook and clean for themselves and their family. Is it that hard to add one or two extra plates?

Many more eat out or over the sink. Even families have been eating out more since fast food became more prevalent (at least in the US). Has the trend reversed?

I'm not saying it won't work. It's something that people miss when they think of this idea. Perhaps it works best in countries with a strong home cooking tradition, rather than the US, like the ones listed on their homepage.

Just talking about dinner, most people eat at home most of the time. Here is one study from 2005 on that:

RESTAURANT MEALS FOR DINNER LAST WEEK?

None: 47% 1 night: 27% 2-3 nights: 21% 4+ nights: 4%

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500160_162-1060315.html

This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 936 adults, interviewed by telephone October 30-November 1, 2005. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points.

The cleanliness standards for guests is much higher. Plus, there are all sorts of dietary restrictions- this may not be more actual work, but putting a mental hurdle in front of users will reduce conversions.

That's precisely where the airbnb analogy breaks down. One of the most powerful aspects of airbnb is the ability for a host to earn good money with little time/effort. Too many companies forget to copy that feature when building an "airbnb for X".

It's now our main focus.

Here is a great talk of Brian Chesky(Co-founder of Airbnb): http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272180383

There is still a lot of work to do ! This is just the beginning !

Cool idea. I wouldn't really want to eat food prepared by someone I didn't know if that food/kitchen isn't subject to health inspections. The answer to the "What about the hygiene?" FAQ doesn't do enough to assuage my fears in this regard.

It says tables are "manually reviewed by the team". Reviewed with the stringent standards of the health dept?

Thanks for the feedback! It means we have to improve the FAQ on this part.

Hosts cook and eat with their guests, so it's a very good way to be sure about the quality: First because hosts eat it as well, second because they'll have a direct feedback, and it's not very pleasant to serve bad food to people when they're eating with you.

In fact, we think there's a fear of a risk more than a real risk. There's less risk to eat something that has been cooked at home, in smal quantities, than something in a big restaurant with food that has stayed in a fridge for several weeks...

Actually, have you often been sick when invited by friend or family?

Reviews we're doing are based on information provided by hosts (description, pictures), as well as email or phone contact if needed. And the review system will help. Risk averse foodies will eat with hosts with no reviews, less risk averse will go to hosts that already have a good reputation on the system.

This is so weird that it has to work. My first reaction was that it was dumb and no-one would do it, but this is exactly the first reaction to most things that turned out to be success. I definitely wish you all the best. Plus I see you are focused on Europe, which is probably place where good cuisine is highly valued.

Thank you !

It's very smart of Cookening to provide information about WHY users should connect with Facebook. As a privacy conscious user, I find that this is missing from many sites. I might be willing to share my information, but you have to explain what's in it for me in a straight-forward way.

Thank you !

This should definitively be a best practice.

Very nice concept!

I hope this catches fire like Airbnb! At least here in Finland "Restaurant Day" [1] has already become somewhat of an institution, so I bet there's potential for Cookening too!

A minor detail: I'd appreciate the _full_ price to be displayed with a side note like "including Cookening service free 3€".

Or is the service fee per group? In that case it could be something like: "15€ per guest + 3€ Cookening service fee per group"

With the current layout the service fee feels almost hidden.

Best of luck with this!

[1] http://www.visitfinland.com/article/restaurant-day/

Thank you ! I'll forward the feedback to our UI/UX guy !

Super Marmite, based in France, pitched this in 2010. I think it's still going.

http://www.super-marmite.com/

It's still going. We know them pretty well :)

We are doing something similar with http://www.yumwe.de too (and on a very similar stack :-), but it's focused on the German market for now.

Congrats on your launch!

Thank you !

I think we met you at Leweb 2012 in Paris.

Best of luck for you !

I was a founder at http://eatwithme.net but have since left the team.

Feel free to shoot me questions, should you have any.

Why did you leave?

I think this is a fantastic idea! I would definitely try it out if it were available in the areas I am planning to travel to.

Any plans to expand to Asia?

Thanks for the kind words !

We currently have hosts in Chile, Canada, ... so Asia should come soon. Basically as soon as someone open a table in Asia it's done. If you are asking about our marketing strategy, I don't know yet.

This reminds me a lot of the phenomenon of Pop-up Restaurants[1]; your site is very much like a booking interface for pop-ups. Good luck, I love the concept.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop-up_restaurant

Thank you !

I've thought about launching an idea like this in the US. After doing some research, it proved to be too difficult to execute because of foodservice regulations and ensuring safety.

I like your concept, especially emphasizing the benefits of home cooking. Here are some things I think you should think carefully about: -how do you ensure safety on both ends (buyer and seller)? -why would someone want to use your platform instead of doing their own underground restaurant? -how do you vet hosts? Is there a vetting process for hosts? -how do you ensure a pleasant group meal dynamic?

Would love to chat more about this if would like. This is an idea I would really, really like to see succeed!

Hey Michael !

I'll try to answer to you questions:

>-how do you ensure safety on both ends (buyer and seller)?

We do review the hosts manually. For the guests, they have to talk with the hosts in order to make a booking reservation so I guess if they don't get along nothing is going to happen. We also have a review/rating system.

>-why would someone want to use your platform instead of doing their own underground restaurant? Well, it's not only for money but also for the pleasure to share your food, culture, ... with someone else. And in order to start an underground restaurant you need to get known, it might be kind of hard if it's underground.

>-how do you vet hosts?

Sorry for my broken english, but I don't understand this question.

>-Is there a vetting process for hosts?

Yes

> -how do you ensure a pleasant group meal dynamic?

We have a blog[1] where we are trying to tell our hosts how to organize/... the event and how to deal with the culture difference.

My twitter handle and my email are in my HN profile, you're welcome to ping me !

[1] http://theartof.cookening.com

Underground food sharing (trust). Make it "karma points" (not cash) ... important to be unregulated, like the "volunteer" payments with SideCar.

Imagine tens of thousands of locations in each city, with most people's points netting to near-zero. In other words, you give as much as you take. Cooking vs eating - self-cancelling at nearly 50/50.

Open trade in points, reputation scores, and trust. People without time to cook may barter other reputations.

A vast cashless ecosystem.

Cuisine and location both, discovery via online maps.

Any home, any vehicle, anywhere that trust, reputation, and freedom may actually develop.

Personally, I believe "regulation" leads to the unsafe (thinks McDonalds) food ecosystem we have now.

Why is it that people who come up with these thought experiments can never resist talking about their beliefs?

Do you have a plan of implementation? A seed network to beat the cold start problem? An actual, non-exploitable prototype for aiding discovery? A way to demonstrate trustworthiness? Survey results to show enough people willing to cook in order to provide sufficient supply to meet demand?

Or is this just a pipe dream?

It's called future prototyping.

The Tommorow Project, by Intel. http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/research/tomorrow-pro...

It's called refusing to face reality. Preaching sermons doesn't change the world.

Make. A. Prototype.

You know what's awesome about Bitcoin? I'm not a Bitcoin fan. I think it's silly, though I admittedly don't have the chops to properly evaluate it. But you know what I can't help but respect about it? It exists. It's in the wild. It's real. No matter what wankery I choose to criticize it with, I have to square that with the actual effects it's producing.

No plan survives contact with reality. You cannot anticipate everything. This is goddamn Hacker News.

Make a prototype.

I've built code and companies, and needn't a lecture from you on how to build, nor how to dream.

Then don't provoke one. I'm not telling you how to build; I'm telling you to build.

Looks pretty nice, I just miss a 'cursor:pointer' in the 'contact the host' button.

Thank you for the feed back, I'll tell our UI/UX guy !

I love how no one (yet) on this thread took this as an opportunity to trash france and it's startups. A sign of a very successful launch! Congrats to the cookening team. Love the idea. Will use next time I'm in Paris!

Thank you !

I love this idea but don't like the idea of paying. How about instead of paying money for the meal, have an option where you can host the hosts in return at your place.

May be this doesn't belong in this app or may be it does..

Moreover, if there is no money involved, there are no issues with the law, I would think.

Yes but how do we make money then ?

Looks good.

Actually, there are many players out there in this market such as: http://eatfeastly.com/ https://kitchen.ly/ http://bigtable.co/ (Coming soon)

And some more here: http://www.quora.com/Food-Tech-Startups/What-companies-are-d...

It's a good idea this Airbnb for food. Winners will emerge. May the force be with you. :)

Thank you for the kind words.

You forgot to mention many other websites on the market :)

This is an exciting concept that has been tackled by many teams, few of which have yet been able to reach significant scale. But I believe it will happen. Feastly (http://eatfeastly.com/) is a similar approach that is active in the US. (I'm an advisor) The restaurant industry is massive (in the US, it's three times the size of the accommodations industry) so winning even a small slice is a win.

This is somewhat off-topic, but it seems kind of odd that they went with a "ly" name but didn't use that TLD, especially since "feastly" doesn't make a lot of sense except to associate with that trend.

It looks like a cool service though, I requested an invite.

Thanks. I can't wait to see what Feastly will look like. I wish them the best of luck !

It's a tough battle out there but it's very interesting !

Looks like the same concept as http://eatwith.com/

I'm going to my first eatWith event tomorrow night...

It is actually the same concept.

Let me know how it went with eatwith. My email and my twitter handle are in my HN profile.

Give this Quora post a quick read http://www.quora.com/Will-Airbnb-for-food-be-a-successful-bu...

Dozens of ventures have failed in this niche space .. wondering if Cookening has found the secret sauce.

Thanks for the link !

Isn't this what http://eatfeastly.com/ does?

Looks like eatfeastly.com is more oriented for local guests with local hosts and we try to focus more with international guest

Feastly is actually positioned for all demographics. There are lot of locals and a lot of tourists (both US and foreign) that come to meals.

There was another company that tried this concept. I forget the name, but they are not hosting dinners in restaurants for a group of random people and turning a profit. I remember they said something along the lines of burden on the host was too much.

I don't like the name. It sounds all jumbled and gross, the opposite of a delicious meal.

Yeah yeah. In French we say: "les goûts et les couleurs, ça ne se discute pas". I let you think about it.

There's a new company in SF planning to do something similar called Bigtable. Planning to launch soon http://bigtable.co

Thanks for the tips. I will follow them :)

You should look into Housefed, it was a startup that did a very similar thing, the person is now doing Tindie.

Thanks !

I will check it out.

I couldn't find my country on the list. I live in the US.

Maybe "all over the world" really means "all over Europe"

Well, welcome to the Internet most countries outside of the US experience every day.

(a little snarky I know, but the US is fantastically sheltered in this regard. I know plenty of people that have no idea that Hulu and various YouTube videos are unavailable to people outside of the US)

I know, we need to get more hosts and we are working on it. Thanks for the feedback !

Hannibal Lecter would love this

Twist: I'm Hannibal Lecter !

"Like X but Y" might be the worst elevator pitch ever. Or the best. I can't decide.

Well it's punchline for HackerNews, not a pitch for YC

What is your Business model ?

We take a 16,7% on every booking request. https://www.cookening.com/en/faq/guests#answer2

This is awesome ! What are your plans about expanding abroad ?

Actually, as soon as possible ! We still have a lot of work to do, especially to convert foodies into hosts and travelers into guests but we are working on it !

Warning: foodies != good hosts (or good cooks) in much the same way as book critiques != authors.

Isn't this basically kitchensurfing.com?

This looks well executed ... if you're in NY, and want the chef to come to you.

nice work

what's your tech stack btw?

Here ! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5752057

Thanks !

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