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Ask HN: How often do you experiment cooking new cuisines?

2 points by mihirmp ↗ HN
My wife and I are in the early stages of starting a fresh Indian meal kit delivery service (http://rasoibox.com/). Our observation has been that people would like to cook Indian food but it can be too overwhelming to get started.

With that in mind, I wanted to ask the HN community:

- How often do you like to experiment in the kitchen by trying to cook new cuisines?

- What hurdles, if any, do you face in these experiments?

As data-driven engineers, our current hypothesis is that a good combination of pre-portioned ingredients and simple to follow instructions could lower the barrier to cooking for more young, urban professionals who are health conscious and have culinary curiosity (i.e. me when I was 25 y/o).

3 comments

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MilnerRoute
We tried a few meal-prep services. It's not really a question of "how often" we try new meal prep services, so much as it is just when the opportunity arises. (Like a good offer on a flier, or a friend trying to collect on those refer-a-friend offers...)

I think you end up holding out for alternatives that are easy, cheap, tasty, and healthy -- and that's where the deal breakers (or "hurdles") tend to come. Time-consuming or tricky to prepare; expensive; tastes weird; too much fat/sugar/salt or too many bad carbs...

mihirmp
Gotcha - that was helpful! When the opportunity does arise, what kind of meals do you normally end up trying - something you're familiar with or something new? You've also put your finger on an important point - retention. What would compel you to go back to one of those meal-prep services?

The "hurdles" you mention are very real. The intersection of easy, tasty and healthy is where we're trying to land. From our user studies, we've learned that some cuisines are misunderstood because of the way restaurants present them e.g. Indian food is always spicy and unhealthy. One of the main reasons we're not delivering prepared food is to bust these myths - by actually cooking the food, users would be able to see and customize the meals.

MilnerRoute
We eat at Indian restaurants, so we would probably try an Indian meal prep service. It's not familiarity, per se - or it is just to the extent that we need to believe it'll be tasty. (Trying a new service involves a certain amount of in-the-moment impulsiveness. Like, "Mmm, that sounds good...")

A good price on a flier will usually get us to give it a try. (The rationale is "that's about what we pay for a meal now anyways" or "that's cheaper than a restaurant." Or, "it's probably healthier than what we're eating now.")

The bigger question is why do we stop using the services. That's usually "I didn't really like the taste of the last couple meals" or "I'm getting tired of the same limited choices." At some point you recalculate the per meal cost, and decide it's not worth it.