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Show HN: I made a website to search for half loaves of bread
- dash2 4y agoIn Scotland, "half a loaf" means a loaf. That is, "half a loaf" means an entire loaf; a whole loaf. I once had this explained to me at greatly repetitive length by a drunk man with an incomprehensible Glasgow accent, so you can be sure it is true.
- cjhveal 4y agoWas curious about the etymology so looked it up. Seems like half-loaf referred to the fact that it weighed 2 pounds, half the standard "quartern" 4lb round loaf which was typically sold in quarters. https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/half https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/half
- tunesmith 4y agoThe quartern is twice the size of the half, got it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mesozoic 4y agoI'll just keep waiting for a search to find a quarter loaf of bread.
- cinntaile 4y agoThis is oddly specific, I like it. Why is a half loaf of bread important enough to you that you made a website for it?
- ryannevius 4y agoIt's stated on the about page: > I love bread but I don't want to be eating 20 slices in 3 days. It shouldn't be so hard to find half-loaves of bread. They should be available more abundantly.
- DragonsBeHere 4y ago
- paulcole 4y agoBased on this: > *Available in: Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Pune I’d begin by guessing that half loaves of bread are much more common in India than the US.
- dmurray 4y agoCan't be that common, though, or there would be no need for the website.
- paulcole 4y agoYou think every website is created because there is a pressing need for it?
- thejosh 4y agoThey've become more popular in Australia recently as well, I've noticed. They had a two for one sale of half breads at one point, I was like "what is the point.."
- drchickensalad 4y agoWell market forces for half loaves can leave them with an oversupply, and it's a quickly deteriorating product, and a sale speeds up getting rid of that inventory. The only alternative is to perfectly predict the future.
- curiousfab 4y agoRealizing that you can put bread in the freezer changed my life - well, at least my bread buying habits ;-)
- alias_neo 4y agoMy wife does this. The only complaint I have is that when there isn't space, she forces it in anyway and then you end up with mangled, frozen slices that don't fit in the toaster.
- eatonphil 4y agoMaybe keep a toaster facing out in the freezer she can put the bread into? Will never be out of shape.
- honkdaddy 4y agoIf you have the space, a second deep freeze is a game changer. You can often find them for cheap or even free, the ones from the 90s seem to last forever.
- willismichael 4y agoI ordered a chest freezer months ago and it still hasn't been delivered. Every time I follow up, the retailer keeps blaming supply chain.
- 4y ago
- cors-fls 4y agoI thought it was an app to match people that want an half loaf so they can share a full loaf of bread. That would be innovative. But no, it only searches store inventories for half-loaves for sale. I love the laser focus on half-loaves anyway.
- rtourn 4y agoSame. It’s weird that my misunderstanding of someone’s idea often better than the idea they were actually proposing.
- netsharc 4y agoFood sharing in general should be encouraged (as a fickle single man I end up throwing away a lot of food, after e.g. opening a jar of tomato sauce and consuming half of it and leaving the other half in the fridge to use "soon"), but that's odd if it only looks in stores.
- gigaflop 4y agoI recently got into using tomato powder, have you ever tried it? It would mean more work, but much more shelf-life and granularity of how much tomato you actually want.
- criddell 4y agoI must be more fickle than you. There's no way I would trust a half jar of tomato sauce that I found on Craigslist.
- navbaker 4y agoI'm going to make billions providing an escrow service for food splitting where I guarantee the provenance of items like this. I'll make sure to find a use for blockchain so I can really up my profits.
- lostcolony 4y agoDon't sell the food; sell an NFT of the food. That'll -really- up your profits. Plus, NFTs never spoil!...until you add that feature. Once you have spoiling half cans of tomato sauce in the metaverse you'll be rich!
- postsantum 4y agoNip Alert, but for bread
- krossitalk 4y ago> don't be sending take-down notices. This is a very niche and tiny thing and is unlikely to put any strain on your servers. I smell a HN hug of death incoming
- georgehill 4y ago> The API used to call Dunzo is open but undocumented. So if someone from Dunzo is reading this, don't be sending take-down notices. This is a very niche and tiny thing and is unlikely to put any strain on your servers. I see this as a free promo for Dunzo and hope it hasn't caused them too much trouble.
- orangepanda 4y agoBig Bread will want it taken down
- Jamie9912 4y agoin india*
- wartijn_ 4y agoI was expecting a US-only site, since I wouldn't expect something like this to be available globally available and usually no mention of the location means it's targeted towards the US. Kinda refreshing to see an India-only service on the front page of HN.
- mrwnmonm 4y agoI love the design.
- bmmayer1 4y agoMel Brooks joke: a man in a deli notices that there's nothing but salt on every shelf. He asks the shopkeeper if he sells a lot of salt. The shopkeeper says "If I sell a bag of salt a week I'm lucky. But the guy who sells me salt, boy, can he sell salt!" This is a great idea that "doesn't scale" and could one day be a $1B business. Well done!
- moralestapia 4y agoSorry but, I don't get the analogy, could you elaborate?
- dubcanada 4y agoHe sucks at selling, however the guy who he buys the salt from is excellent at selling. Therefore capable of getting the shop owner to buy excessive amounts of salt.
- thruway516 4y agoGo on ... How does this relate to websites for half loaves of bread?
- gompertz 4y agoBecause big business is great at selling us more than we really need (can consume). We are buying full loaves and rarely using them up. This is likely by design too... Margins are probably higher for the seller this way. So the website helps you pass off your excess.
- bin_bash 4y agoWe put the bar a lot lower on half loaf of bread news than we do for nuclear fusion news.
- pixiemaster 4y ago.
- jacquesm 4y agoIn NL every supermarket, baker or other place where you can buy bread will be more than happy to sell you half loaves, to the point that plenty of them have them pre-sliced and packaged ready to go.
- Markoff 4y agoIn Czechia as well, all supermarkets carry (500-600g) half loaves, only difference being that some are cut and packaged already directly from 3rd party bakery and some they cut in shop, usually if they have their own bakery like Tesco or Albert (Ahold). And of course ALL convenience stores carry 1/2 loaves, many even 1/4 loaves.
- ce4 4y agoYep, i also don't quite understand what needs to be solved here. I just ask the cashier in the bakery for a half or quarter loaf. Or grab a pre-cut half/quarter one in the supermarket. There are plenty of options (types of bread, sourdough or not, based on different grains, etc) over here in germany.
- dessant 4y agoThe experiences of others could be vastly different than yours. A possible answer: the developer has been throwing away bread, and couldn't easily find their favourite bread in smaller quantities in a city in India.
- ce4 4y agoYes, I guess so. It looks very niche and more like an excuse to build something though :) Nothing wrong with that, however I'd just cut it at home and freeze the rest for later consumption.
- wartijn_ 4y agoThis is what the about page of the site says: > This website is of course a non-useful, silly little thing. But I hope that it can get people to start thinking about why more stores don't sell half loaves when it seems like a more practical thing to do.
- saltmeister 4y ago
- boplicity 4y agoFascinating just to see the prices of bread in another country. In the Mumbai area, it looks like a half loaf costs between 17 and 75 INR -- with most around 22 INR, or 30 cents US. Here in Toronto, we often pay $4 to $5 (USD) for a decent loaf of sandwich bread. The difference is pretty striking.
- mushyhammer 4y agoI’ve seen the bread in most Asian countries. You get what you pay for. Only premium bread may be worth it, and still not on pair with cheap basic European bread.
- tyingq 4y agoDo you mean for baguette/loaf type breads? I lived in Turkey, and things like gevrek, simit, and pidesi were dirt cheap but clearly worth as much as any bread I've had elsewhere, and delicious.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- soniman 4y agoWheat is often subsidized for the poor.
- joelwilliamson 4y agoI suspect that's mostly because Indian labour is much cheaper. Making a loaf of home-made bread uses about $0.30 CAD of flour, and yeast, salt and water don't add much to the cost. (Edit:) Also of course anti-competitive behaviour by the bakery cartel drives up prices in Canada.
- Gaita 4y agoThis product is so hyper focused! I love it.
- bluedino 4y agoI usually only buy bread when I make soup or stew and it's rare that the whole loaf doesn't get eaten. And that's usually one of those La Brea or whatever 'artisanal' par-baked brand the grocery store carries.
- rhplus 4y agoIn the US, producers just apply shrink-flation to sell us half-sized products at stable full-sized prized.
- ascar 4y agoAs a German the cultural differences around bread are really interesting. Already the cartoon picture of the half loaf of bread is so fundamentally different to what I am expecting it to look like. Also people in the comments saying they rarely not finish a loaf of bread. This [1] is how it looks like here and when bought at a bakery it's usually so big that we buy it in quarters and even that lasts a couple of days. It also tastes very different from what the rest of the world considers bread. It's much stronger in flavor. [1] https://www.sonachgefuehl.de/rustikales-bauernbrot/ https://www.sonachgefuehl.de/rustikales-bauernbrot/
- timeon 4y agoI'm not German but from CEE but I also do not consider 'sandwich bread' as 'bread' or at least not as default option for 'bread'.
- theobeers 4y agoKeep in mind, this service appears to be focused on India, where the kind of loaf bread pictured is also not the most traditional. (When I lived in Afghanistan and would occasionally buy loaves of sandwich bread at groceries catering to expats, my Indian colleagues referred to it as "double roti"—a term I found delightful. I wonder how common that usage is in India these days.)
- fho 4y agoIndian cuisine also has a pretty wide selection of different "breads" (dough patties? DeepL does not even know a word for "Teigfladen" (de)). Naan and Roti are probably the most known, but there are several others including very fatty ones. (somebody from India please chime in, I don't know the names :-) ) (Not from India but had an Indian roommate once and attended his wedding in India thereafter (obviously :-))
- webmobdev 4y ago- 20 different types of roti to try out if you thought all Indian breads are the same: https://www.innfinity.in/food/types-of-roti/ https://www.innfinity.in/food/types-of-roti/ - 15 Best Indian Bread Recipes: https://food.ndtv.com/lists/10-best-indian-bread-recipes-1469515 https://food.ndtv.com/lists/10-best-indian-bread-recipes-146...
- dvh 4y agoI was once scolded by my uncle for improperly cutting half loaf of bread. I started cutting the bread and when I was in the middle of bread I stopped and cut perpendicularly, thus releasing my half loaf. Apparently correct way is cutting at angle so that loaf became thin in the center of bread. This way whoever cut bread after me can decide if they want full or half. In my method there is a sudden step which forced you to first cut the leftover half. This applies for long breads, not round one.
- vishnugupta 4y agoThis is super awesome; pleasantly surprised to see this is relevant for my home town :-D Also, funnily this is how they are sourcing the data. Ingenious!! "The search is only available in select big cities in India because it uses Dunzo as the data source. No affiliation with Dunzo. The API used to call Dunzo is open but undocumented. So if someone from Dunzo is reading this, don't be sending take-down notices. This is a very niche and tiny thing and is unlikely to put any strain on your servers."
- freeCandy 4y agoWhat I love about this is the way half loaves are found, simple but really clever. Search for "bread" with the correct category, and then filter out all results that are greater than 300 grams. It works out because all the artisanal bread are excluded with a regex. https://github.com/prashantbaid/halfloaf/blob/master/lambda/halfloaves.js https://github.com/prashantbaid/halfloaf/blob/master/lambda/...
- vishnugupta 4y agoThanks :-D. So we now have an (albeit Lambda) API over an API!! This keeps getting better. https://brc5og74x0.execute-api.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/prod/findhalfloaves?lat=12.9715987&lng=77.5945627 https://brc5og74x0.execute-api.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/prod...
- chubot 4y agoWhy would you want a half loaf of bread? Maybe if you don't have a freezer or toaster? Because bread freezes very well, and if you buy a full loaf it's cheaper per serving. I might be taking this too seriously, but I just started freezing bread in my 40's LOL (artisan bread). All you need is a bread knife and zip loc bags. Big quality of life improvement. After you toast it, it's better than fresh. There is some science behind this that I don't remember.
- ccbccccbbcccbb 4y agoHalf-loaf is too coarse a unit - how do I find exactly 23 breadcrumbs I need for my breakfast?
- xoxxala 4y agoAround here, they are called “bachelor loafs”. Since my family doesn’t like wheat bread, I buy a bachelor loaf a week. Saves about a buck, but much less spoilage. I don’t eat enough bread for a full loaf a week and am too lazy to deal with frozen bread.
- Xeoncross 4y agoI thought this was a spoof on the “i just need butter” internet drama (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGQSRjpU4F8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGQSRjpU4F8)
- asiachick 4y agoPretty much every convenience and supermarket in Japan sells half loafs (well, if a "standard" loaf is L=2, W=1, H=1 and a half loaf is L=1, W=1, H=1.) The 1x1x1 "half" loaf is the standard size in Japan https://prtimes.jp/i/36645/189/origin/d36645-189-bc3e74b4250f71209fbd-0.jpg https://prtimes.jp/i/36645/189/origin/d36645-189-bc3e74b4250... Further, it's also common to be able to buy bread in 3 and even just 2 slices. https://www.panstory.jp/img/images_np/fujipan/2015/06/01.jpg https://www.panstory.jp/img/images_np/fujipan/2015/06/01.jpg For me, I crave bread, meaning if I buy the half loaf then I'd likely eat the entire thing in 1-2 days so I like being able to buy 2 slices and avoid the temptation to eat the 6 or so I would have had if I'd bought the half loaf Also, it's common in Japan to be able to buy a loaf as to comes out of the oven. Bakeries all over Japan advertise at what times bread will be freshly backed. Note: the fact that this size is ubiquitous in Japan also means the site is no really succeeding there. For example here's 7/11's bread https://www.sej.co.jp/products/a/bread/ https://www.sej.co.jp/products/a/bread/ There are over 21k 7/11 stores in Japan and that's just one of several big chains that carry half loafs
- flyinghamster 4y agoCould we get one for half-dozens of eggs (or four-packs)? Nothing like a recipe calling for one egg when you don't normally eat them as a main dish.
- faangiq 4y agoHow long till Google buys this and shuts it down?
- timvdalen 4y agoStores don't sell half loaves of bread near you?
- pvorb 4y agoI don't get it. If there are stores that sell half loaves of bread, can't you go to any of them and just buy half a loaf? Even if they don't have half ones, they will cut one into two halves, won't they? Otherwise, I don't see how they'd sell halves.
- adrielyong 4y agoactually such a useful thing to focus on. Have had my entire loaf of bread go stale so many times before
- JoeyBananas 4y agoA loaf of bread costs only 4 dollars so why not just buy the whole thing