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On premise cooking lessons is not something that can scale / can be implemented easy. It also comes with a whole bunch of problems (letting a stranger into your

by diziet 12y ago

On premise cooking lessons is not something that can scale / can be implemented easy. It also comes with a whole bunch of problems (letting a stranger into your home / kitchen while you are there, etc)

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
It's quite normal for the rich in the UK - as opposed to the merely middle class - to hire a personal cook to live on or near the premises and work full-time. These people used to be called 'house keepers'. Some of them offer other domestic services and may be called 'butlers.' That aside - there are some useful reality checks in the piece. Back around 2000 I had a conversation with someone who was trying to launch a pickup-your-goods service for online shoppers. He said that out of everyone he'd talked to, I was the only person who told him it was a losing idea with no commercial prospects. (It sank without trace not long after the first dotcom bust. After about a decade of unstoppable brand building, Amazon eventually reinvented something not unlike it.) It's interesting that he had the same experience of alleged market research and comments from prospective customers that gave him totally worthless and misleading information.
dkarapetyan 12y ago
It doesn't have to be at your house. It can be at a dedicated location which does scale.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Doesn't that business already exist, and isn't it called "cooking classes"? Near as I can tell, none of them are drowning in cash. People generally figure out how to cook on their own. This gets into one of the points the post made: you need to verify that people actually prioritize the problem you want to solve. Cooking might fall into an uncomfortable crack, in this model, because the people most receptive to the benefits of a home-cooked meal with greater variety and quality ingredients are also disproportionally likely to be DIY cooks.
  - dkarapetyan 12y ago
    Sure and munchery is also called take-out food. It's not like silicon valley or sf these days is some kind of center of innovation. I believe the UX designers have a word for it, skeuomorphism. Everything I see in tech these days is some old thing re-packaged as an app. "cooking classes" as you put it falls in that category and is just as valuable as every other derivative thing in tech these days if not more.

by diziet 12y ago

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago

It's quite normal for the rich in the UK - as opposed to the merely middle class - to hire a personal cook to live on or near the premises and work full-time. These people used to be called 'house keepers'. Some of them offer other domestic services and may be called 'butlers.' That aside - there are some useful reality checks in the piece. Back around 2000 I had a conversation with someone who was trying to launch a pickup-your-goods service for online shoppers. He said that out of everyone he'd talked to, I was the only person who told him it was a losing idea with no commercial prospects. (It sank without trace not long after the first dotcom bust. After about a decade of unstoppable brand building, Amazon eventually reinvented something not unlike it.) It's interesting that he had the same experience of alleged market research and comments from prospective customers that gave him totally worthless and misleading information.

dkarapetyan 12y ago

It doesn't have to be at your house. It can be at a dedicated location which does scale.

tptacek 12y ago
Doesn't that business already exist, and isn't it called "cooking classes"? Near as I can tell, none of them are drowning in cash. People generally figure out how to cook on their own. This gets into one of the points the post made: you need to verify that people actually prioritize the problem you want to solve. Cooking might fall into an uncomfortable crack, in this model, because the people most receptive to the benefits of a home-cooked meal with greater variety and quality ingredients are also disproportionally likely to be DIY cooks.
- dkarapetyan 12y ago
  Sure and munchery is also called take-out food. It's not like silicon valley or sf these days is some kind of center of innovation. I believe the UX designers have a word for it, skeuomorphism. Everything I see in tech these days is some old thing re-packaged as an app. "cooking classes" as you put it falls in that category and is just as valuable as every other derivative thing in tech these days if not more.