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Ask HN: Critique my biz idea – local.menu the next Airbnb
Remember the days before Airbnb when their biz idea would have been laughed at? There are LAWS against renting out your apartment. In 2016 I think the world is ready for local.menu, the app that lets you rent out your kitchen to a restaurant for a night, your restaurant. i.e. you are allowed to cook for people in your neighborhood with no health permit / zoning laws issues.
It's very simple. A mom is cooking dinner for 4. She posts to local.menu what she is making and sets a 5 min time limit. She gets 3 hits in 5 mins of people close by that want an extra serving of what she is making. They come by her house/apt and get their food to go. The mom simply made 3 extra servings of what she was making for her family anyways. And the markup is crazy. She can sell her special curry for $30 a plate to hipsters that want good curry, local, and fast.
Go ahead. Tell me this will never work because it breaks some laws.
- andrewfromx 11y agoalso think about a big apartment building. What if 1 person was the "cook" for that village? Isn't that better, more social. human like, than each human alone in their own apt eating a tv dinner?
- stephenr 11y agoWhy is the choice between everyone eating from a sole cook or everyone eating TV dinners? I don't think I'll ever understand American culture.
- andrewfromx 11y agobig american apartment building can be very lonely and isolating. No one talks to anyone. You goto work, u go home, u interact only with your tv. Bringing back the concept of a village where people gather around and eat together is a good thing.
- stephenr 11y ago> big american apartment building can be very lonely and isolating. No one talks to anyone. You goto work, u go home, u interact only with your tv. Do you see the irony of the situation - you're complaining about a lack of social interaction and community - and your solution is an app and the transfer of money.
- stephenr 11y agoYou seriously think health standards for restaurants is something that needs to be disrupted?
- andrewfromx 11y agoi seriously think people want curry and once this app takes off, laws will be re-defined because people don't want to lose this new thing they love. i.e. uber/airbnb/zenefits
- stephenr 11y agoCan you elaborate how people wanting curry equates to disregarding food safety laws?
- andrewfromx 11y agoairbnb: people wanting cheap hotel rooms equates to disregarding hotel zoning laws uber: people wanting on-demand taxi service equates to disregarding taxi medalian laws local.menu: people wanting curry next door equates to disregarding "selling" food laws. i.e. once people start using the new things that break laws and love them, they collectively go, f those laws they were dumb.
- stephenr 11y ago> once people start using the new things that break laws and love them, they collectively go, f those laws they were dumb. People collectively say a lot of things, that doesn't make them true or accurate. Americans in particular seem to have an obsession with "fuck regulations, free market ftw" - plenty of other countries regulate things that make sense, without making things overly burdensome. Go ask anyone who had a mortgage and/or pension fund in 2008 how that free market thing turned out for them. > people wanting curry next door I don't know what your obsession with curry is specifically, but if it's next door, they're your neighbour. Just ask them if you can have some fucking curry.
- pacnw 11y agoThere are a bunch of these already, exactly as you described it.
- andrewfromx 11y agolinks please.
- pacnw 11y agogobble.com, mytable.com, josephine.com... gobble seems to have pivoted to delivering ingredients, which differs from their initial plan from 2011: http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/gobble-helps-you-order-take-out-from-your-neighbors-kitchens.html http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/gobble-helps-you-order-...
- andrewfromx 11y agooh! you are totally right! haha, thanks. I'm gonna use one of these vs. build this :)
- yeukhon 11y agoHis idea is very different from gobble.com or others. This is a family/home-made kitchen idea, which is very very common in Asiaa countries like.
- altotrees 11y agoBeing a single person who does not cook often, this would be a fantastic idea to see come to fruition. On the other hand, as a person who skews toward the overly-cautious, I would be concerned about the lack of sanitation inspections, servsafe certifications and other safeguards that commercial kitchens adhere to. Also, how could you be assured that Mom is not in a dire financial situation, re-heating her special curry to sell at a marked-up price - a special curry that went bad several days ago. Law-, permit- and zoning-wise, I am not sure of what would need to be done. It is an interesting idea for sure, albeit one that would take some serious planning.
- andrewfromx 11y agoi think giving out 5 star ratings just like uber would help u find the good places. People are people. We live in a big village. Let's all eat together :)