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Show HN: Ratatouille is an app to share your extra food
- machbio 12y agoExactly the kind of app that is going to change the world for Good... Thanks to the Developer for making this happen..
- marksimon321 12y agoThis is what AgileInfoways.com has been doing since long.. keep it up guys!
- iancarroll 12y agountil someone poisons the food or does something bad to it.
- beobab 12y agoSuch things are typically illegal.
- arbitrage 12y agoMurderers have used craigslist to find victims. Abusing an app in the manner which you describe (which I think somehow is incredibly unlikely to happen in reality), isn't necessarily a show stopper, as we have learned before.
- ekurutepe 12y agosomebody could do something bad to your food in a restaurant too, you know?
- matteor 12y agogreat work guys, it's so nice to know that there are people who take care of such things!
- amirmc 12y agoI was chatting about exactly this kind of app/service with a few friends two summers ago. They have an apple tree and can't possibly use all the fruit they get from it. There are probably other local people with other fruits/vegetables that they have a surplus of who'd be very happy to trade for some apples. This obviously isn't a new problem/idea but a simple website would help such people connect and possibly make new friends. We never got around to building anything but it's strangely satisfying to see that others had similar ideas and actually shipped something. In the world of tweeting toasters and fridges that track your food (i.e Internet of Things/Everything), it would be great to have a list of available items automatically kept up to date (of course the incentive there is to avoid things spoiling in the first place).
- pjc50 12y agoThe fresh fruit/veg idea is excellent; gardeners nearly always end up with perishable surpluses. However, I'm a little concerned with formalising it in the EU in case some busybody decides that the many onerous agricultural rules on selling food apply.
- pjmorris 12y agoI didn't have exactly the same idea, but close enough to feel 'We never got around to building anything but it's strangely satisfying to see that others had similar ideas and actually shipped something.' Mine went "We're going to a lot of trouble to make all this food (from fancy cookbooks), and while leftovers are great, company would be better. Wouldn't it be great if there were a website where people could coordinate dinner plans with folks around them... for friendship, hospitality, good eating, and economy." Sort of like the iPhone app, but for whole dinners rather than just the ingredients, and for anybody with a web connection, not just one app market.
- amirmc 12y agoI vaguely remember a YC company doing the kind of thing you described. I don't think they do it anymore (pivoted or shut-down?) and I can't recall the name of the company at all.
- Killah911 12y agoWhy is it an iphone app instead of a web app?
- giorgia 12y agoBasically because I'm an iOS developer :) Soon for Android
- Killah911 12y agoAh! Good reason. Great idea, hopefully you can get it in android & a web app version. This could help end a lot of waste.
- untog 12y agoI thought that too. The kind of people that could really benefit from this aren't likely to have the budget for an iPhone.
- mkaziz 12y agoHypothetical- would you be more comfortable hosting an iOS-owning stranger or just someone who has access to a website? I feel more comfortable with the former (not least because of the implied affluence) but I wonder what HN's opinion is.
- dublinben 12y agoThat's incredibly discriminatory, but at least you recognize it.
- colanderman 12y agoStatus symbols have a way of bridging affluence gaps.
- calbear81 12y agoOne reason is that you can do push notifications when food becomes available near you vs. having to constantly check the status. I guess that could be solved via push to SMS or emails.
- personlurking 12y agoCool app, even though my friends and I usually give extra food to each other (if one of us is going to travel, for example).
- lucavibesmilan 12y agoIt's the typical use that we have thought about Ratatouille App
- Joeboy 12y agoDoes it allow you to share your food with people who don't have iphones?
- poischiche 12y agoyou can share your items with your friends on social networks (facebook and twitter).
- genericuser 12y agoMy thought exactly, as a food exchange for well to do people this is a neat concept and all(especially with people who garden), but if people who actually NEED the food are able to use it (people who probably don't have iPhones) to get food that would otherwise be wasted then this app transforms into something life changing. It goes from nice little app for people to waste a little less food or save a few bucks which they will spend at Starbucks or whatever, to an app that feeds people who would go hungry in a way that requires very little effort or cost to the person with extra food.
- ciganoyer 12y agothat's some fantastic leveling. thank you for that.
- ZoF 12y agoWhat does 'leveling' mean in this context?
- philippbosch 12y agoIt'd be nice if there was a public API that could be used to make the data available to people that really need food but don't have an iPhone.
- hackuser 12y agoThat's a reason to support a project that puts smartphone productivity into the hands of everyone; something like FirefoxOS perhaps: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/
- baby 12y agoThis seems like an awesome idea. What about this though: > You must be at least 17 years old to download this app. > Frequent/Intense Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References
- lucavibesmilan 12y agoHi i'm Luca, one of the Ratatouille Developer. Apple have some strict guidelines about communicating position of people or devices. After 3 rejected submissione we have decided for our MVP this was the quicker way to have the app in the app store.
- pjc50 12y agoAnother reason to do it as a web app not requiring anyone's permission. I suppose if someone offers to share their homemade damson gin that would count as "alcohol references" ...
- lucavibesmilan 12y agoWe are working in a mobile webapp version :D
- prawks 12y agoIn the US, would someone need a permit to distribute liquor like that? Seems kind of like a grey area as it's not being sold?
- regoldste 12y agoHas anyone found a review of how this app works in practice? It seems like it could work well for unopened perishable foods, but do the founders really expect that strangers are going to want to eat each others' half-eaten, saran-wrapped block of cheese? It sounds like a nice idea in theory, but in practice I think people are pretty turned off by eating strangers' food. I think the founders would be better positioned for success if they marketed a social network component, which would facilitate friends and neighbors borrowing from each other.
- scotch_drinker 12y agoOnce upon a time, when a neighbor had a peach tree, that neighbor often shared with the neighbors the extra peaches every summer because unless you're into canning and freezing, you can't use all the peaches from a tree. I think this is a app formalization of that behavior. Not sure it's necessary but it's interesting for sure.
- lucavibesmilan 12y agoHi, i'm Luca, one of Ratatouille App Developer. Seems crazy that stranger people can share food but nowadays stranger people share car with carpooling. The mechanism is the same but change the value delivered :). Thanks for the feedback
- mbesto 12y agoThe difference is that the car isn't fully consumed but can be reused. So the lessor has an incentive of maintaining quality of the original good. This is the same for apartments (AirBnB). In contrast, food get's wholly consumed. How does the original owner incentivized to maintain quality? If anything, you should spin this off to create a marketplace for food bartering system.
- regoldste 12y agoThis is an incisive and articulate explanation of my reasoning. Ride-sharing and food-sharing are different in a few meaningful ways that raise doubt that a food-sharing app should be premised on this analogy. Not only is it the case that the lessor (donator) has basically no incentive to maintain the quality of the food, but the lessee (recipient) may have no real way to evaluate the quality, other than to trust the lessor. It may be obvious when the food has spots of mold or smells expired, but it's not always that easy to tell.
- lvs 12y agoAre you going out of town and looking for someone to rob your apartment? This is the app for you. Nice thought, but you can alternatively just drop your stuff off at a neighborhood shelter. That's it. No iPhone needed.
- amirmc 12y ago> "Are you going out of town and looking for someone to rob your apartment? This is the app for you." So is every check-in based app or anything that geotags your posts/photos. This is not news. Also, it's quite likely that most people are predictably at work between the hours of 10am-4pm so there's no app nor geotagging to guess when a house may be empty.
- nodata 12y agoI could "just drop my stuff off at a shelter"? Rather than finding people _nearby_ who want the food? That's the whole point of this app!
- Rafert 12y agoSounds similar to a site we have in the Netherlands: http://www.thuisafgehaald.nl/ http://www.thuisafgehaald.nl/ ("collected from home", which is a pun on the well known site thuisbezorgd.nl or "delivered to your home", the Dutch version of takeaway.com)
- rootuid 12y agoI don't believe this will succeed, but props for trying, best of luck.
- dnewms 12y agoTo the creator, let me know if you have q's -- http://leftoverswap.com/ http://leftoverswap.com/ was a fun project for my buddy and I that seems to have brought up the exact same criticisms.
- mrtimo 12y agoNot trying to hijack, but I'm working on a complimentary idea, that is much less developed. See the MVP: http://producebuddy.com http://producebuddy.com It is an app that updates weekly with the sale prices of fruits and vegetables in your area (currently phoenix only). This will be most useful for Walmart price matchers -- which is actually a surprising number of people.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- xsmasher 12y agoI predict that some good Samaritans with iPhones will collect food with the app and redistribute it to the needy; that's a great supplement to soup kitchens which must operate at a much larger scale and are not interested in 5-10 servings of anything. I also predict that opportunists will take advantage of the free food and resell it, a la People Behaving Badly: http://news.kron4.com/features/people-that-act-greedy-and-take-from-the-needy-behave-badly/ http://news.kron4.com/features/people-that-act-greedy-and-ta...
- callmeed 12y agoIf you really want to share extra food you're growing, do one of the following: 1. Contact your local food bank. It's very possible they have a program where extra produce is donated and given to people in need. We have one where I live: http://www.gleanslo.org/ http://www.gleanslo.org/ and it looks like SV does too: http://www.shfb.org/backyardproduce http://www.shfb.org/backyardproduce 2. Have your children/nieces/neighborhood kids collect it, put it in their wagon and go around the neighborhood and sell it. It's a great way to teach kids about entrepreneurship and money. My kids do this and usually make $20-40 on a Saturday afternoon. I also let them use my phone and square, which gets quite the reaction. I have a HUGE amount of garden space and, even with 6 people in my home, we have too much tomatoes, lemons, kale and zucchini in the summer.
- jmzbond 12y agoI love this concept, and the general potential of the sharing economy to minimize waste though. I'm curious, what are the legal barriers to sharing food that you have come across or anticipate? Perhaps it's different, but with prepared food, I've read about a lot of challenges starting up because of all the liability issues. I've heard of www.leftoverswap.com, www.shareyourmeals.net, www.feedingforward.com. There's also a SF-based nonprofit called FoodRunners that does donations and claims to be protected under a Good Samaritan clause, but I know that when I asked my old company if it was OK (i.e., sufficient legally to make them feel comfortable donating the tons of corporate lunches leftover), they couldn't actually find this clause. In any case, I'm fully supportive because I believe incidents that do happen will be few and far in between and people are rarely intentional, but just wondering how hard this will be to enact.