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Review my startup: Housefed.com 2.0 - idea is an Airbnb for food

19 points by emilepetrone ↗ HN
As a one-man startup, many thanks in advance for your feedback.

Housefed.com - find home meals all over the world to book a seat at. Opentable for your kitchen / Airbnb for food. Try new foods while meeting new people from the comfort of the host's home.

A little background- on March 28th, I released the 1.0 version to being building a community of people passionate about food. Since then the site has grown to over 2,000 users from over 400 cities in 75 countries.

I have had 2 test meals at my house in San Francisco that went brilliantly. Guests from Google, Yahoo, Linkedin, Yelp, and other smaller companies. From these events, I personally knew 25% of the guests ahead of time. While initially it may seem like an awkward concept, both events were incredibly fun as everyone met each other and found mutual acquaintances.

Right now there are 2 live meals in San Francisco- a Node.JS BBQ & a Turkish Vegetarian meal.

This latest update was a huge shift as it made the meals / hosts front and center. In terms of UX, any advice the HN community has would be greatly appreciated. I am still trying to figure out the best way to present the content (meals, hosts, photos, & users).

Background on me: My name is Emile. I left my last job last July, taught myself how to code, and blogged about the journey at proudn00b.com. A little over 1 year later, Housefed is the result of that journey.

Thanks again for your ideas & comments.

15 comments

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gobongo
Your "EJ" moment will be someone dying of e-coli poisoning. Until then, have a ball!
emilepetrone
Yes thats a possibility- however I haven't gotten food poisoning from any of my friends or family before. When I was younger, I did get a bad milk from a restaurant.
dreamdu5t
That's because most if not all food from friends and family is purchased from regulated food suppliers at the grocery store.
geeksRus
Interesting idea - just a thought, I'd want to see pictures of the homes/kitchens before signing up.
emilepetrone
That is what I thought, and the reason 1.0 was basically a photo sharing app. When you click on a Host's profile, you'll see their most recent photo with the ability to dig deeper into all of their photos. For some users that is only a handful but others are up to 100+ photos.
droz
This just seems really odd to me because you are skipping a number of "social requisites" for inviting someone into your home and furthermore for cooking/eating for strangers.

I just see this turning in to another craigslist. Starts off with good intentions, then it becomes exploited and ruined by people with spurious motives.

You may also want to watch the IT Crowd episode "Moss and the German" as to what else could happen :)

ig1
FYI. The general term for this type of business is a "pop-up restaurant", there was a thread on HN about them a while back which you might find useful.

Also I believe both maxstoller and richpalmer2 on HN have founded startups in the selling home cooked food space, so it may well be worth speaking to them about the legal aspects of it and their experiences.

Another startup in this space is http://www.gusta.com/ (actually founded by ex-AirBnB employees).

ccollins
Thanks for the mention (I'm Chris from http://www.gusta.com and previously Airbnb). I do think a distinction should be drawn between "an Airbnb for food" (where regular people are cooking for strangers) and the established "pop-up" movement, often hosted by professional chefs. The first is a social site with a payment layer and the second is a ticketing site with a social layer.

Longer term, I think both models can coexist as they are approaching the industry from opposite ends. "Legality" is going to be an issue for any disruption in the food market - dealing with that is the cost of doing business. Personally, I hope Gusta gets to a point where people care enough to want to regulate us :)

ig1
In the UK pop-up restaurants are usually run by regular people and not professionals:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_dri...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/may/26/pop-up-re...

ccollins
From the first article, "Some of the highest-profile pop-ups involve established chefs relocating to summer quarters." - Agree there is a movement of DIY'ers starting these. I just acknowledge that there are two separate entrance points into the market. One, established chefs who create the highest quality food. And Two, DIY'ers where you don't know what you're going to get. From the article, "food at these instant restaurants ranges from quasi-student to haute cuisine."

There is a similar difference between Vacation Rentals & Hotels, but I expect both establishments to make money for a long time.

curt
You're going to run into big trouble with the health department from day one. Cities are shutting down and fining kids lemonade stands.
emilepetrone
The main issue with lemonade stands and other 'pop-up restaurants' is that they are open to the public. With Housefed, you actually have be a member to attend an event- or part of a 'private club.' At least in SF that is the critical distinction they are looking for. As long as the public cannot just walk in off the street (and therefor a risk to the general public), it should be fine.
blackboxxx
As a solo founder myself, I just want to congratulate you on launching what looks like an interesting and promising business. I'm particularly impressed you got the domain name housefed.com. Is there a story behind that?

P.S. I'll definitely check you out when you get into Canada.

emilepetrone
Thanks! The name actually came from one of the proudn00b readers, John Speno, @speno on twitter. I was playing around with a few ideas but he was the one that came up with Housefed while we were chatting one day
petervandijck
AirBnB for food, I like it :)

As for ux: I tried searching for "nyc", "new york city" and "san francisco", and nothing, so first thing would be to improve your search.

Good luck with this, I really like the idea.