
Cooking as a Service - GuiA
https://alexdanco.com/2019/05/09/cooking-as-a-service/
======
andr
An interesting aspect of this is the social role of restaurants in the US and
abroad. In the US pretty much every restaurant I've been to hands me the check
right after I finish my last bite. Lingering in restaurants to socialize is
not so much the norm. If you go to a very popular place, you and your party
may end up spending more time in the line to get in than on your table. So the
tradeoff between going to a restaurant just to eat and getting food delivered
is fairly small.

In other countries (e.g., Mediterranean region), it is perfectly normal to
linger for a couple of hours after finishing your dinner. The social
experience is the point of the restaurant visit, the food and drinks are just
a catalyst.

~~~
jdsully
As a counter point I frequently linger and chat at restaurants. They do often
bring the check but don’t force you to leave immediately. None of my friends
have ever been in a rush to leave either.

Waiters are judged by the promptness of their service and it’s less risky to
bring you the check than make a wrong call and annoy a table that’s waiting.
The better ones tend to leave you alone.

~~~
orev
Believe me, they are dying to get you to leave. Restaurants and servers make
their money by doing as many turnovers as they can in a night. If you’re
blocking a table the whole night, that’s money they are losing, and they
desperately want you to leave. They’re just trying to be polite and/or don’t
want a bad Yelp review. When they give you the bill and say “no rush”, they’re
lying.

~~~
shalmanese
Only once the restaurant is at capacity. If there's at least one other of your
type of table open, then the restaurant loses zero marginal dollars by you
being there (and arguably gains slightly by looking busy and more attractive).

I'm very conscious about leaving a full restaurant as soon as I'm done with my
meal but that's maybe only 10% of my dining experiences ever. I'm perfectly
happy to linger at a half full restaurant for as long as I want.

------
_hardwaregeek
I'm interested in how the data splits across demographics other than class.
One anecdotal observation I've made is that men often do not even consider
cooking or learning to cook, while women actively decide not to cook or not to
learn. Quite a lot of my female friends either cook or have actively rebelled
against any attempts to teach them how to cook. While my guy friends do not
cook by default.

It's also quite interesting seeing cooking as a service phrased as "is this
exactly what I want, yes or no?" Because that's not wrong, but part of the
reason I cook is to get exactly what I want. I like to eat healthier, spicier
food with certain restrictions (no dairy, less wheat, etc). But that just
makes me an outlier.

I've noticed a trend towards going to a restaurant, picking up food, and
eating it somewhere else, which frustrates me endlessly. Not only is there
more waste from the extra bag, the extra containers, etc., but also the food
gets cold, soggy, i.e. worse. I don't think there's the necessary financial
incentives for this, but a delivery service that used something more
sustainable (dabbas?) and optimized the food for delivery would be fantastic.

~~~
syshum
All of my male friends (and myself as I am male) all cook, and some of us even
enjoy it. That said I still eat alot of take out because I work 10-12 hours a
day and tend to just pick something up on the way home instead of spending
30-60 mins in the kitchen when i get home. My lack of cooking however does not
in anyway equate to my inability to cook.

~~~
geowwy
Maybe it's a cultural thing? I know there are places where men refuse to cook,
but most men I know enjoy cooking.

That being said I've noticed men usually pick a few dishes and become really
good at cooking them, whereas women will generalise.

~~~
dd36
Anecdata. My experience is opposite.

~~~
geowwy
Yeah it's all anecdata, that's the point. We want actual data because our
experiences differ.

~~~
collyw
Wasn't the comment he was replying to anecdata as well?

------
evrydayhustling
This is a great analysis. One giant missing factor: households with children.
It's both difficult to match dietary needs and extremely expensive to feed a
bunch of dependents with takeout! A lot of folks I know establish entirely new
habits as parents.

Perhaps someone will successfully target that demographic, but I expect the
social minefield of early parenting will be way harder to penetrate than the
easy consumption of young professionals.

~~~
syshum
It is not really missing. People are not having children and the ones that do
are having a single child on average.

I think it is one of the reasons to take out trend is so high. Of the people
under 50 that I work with exactly 1 of them have children, and 1 of them wants
children one day (but not now) the rest of us, including myself, have no
children and have zero desire to have children. Looking at population data we
are not alone in that.

~~~
SonOfLilit
Perhaps not alone, but very very far from the norm. If I may ask, How old are
you all? What else about your demographics/work environment could set you so
far apart from the average stats?

~~~
icelancer
> How old are you all? What else about your demographics/work environment
> could set you so far apart from the average stats?

They are young (not yet 40 years of age), have above-average incomes, and live
in urban areas. If you cross-reference this population with desire to have
kids, you will find them dragging the reproduction rate in this country
massively downwards. The opposite is true about... every facet of what I just
said.

EDIT: Many people have pointed out why this is a terrible trend, for reasons
that are obvious.

~~~
erklik
> Many people have pointed out why this is a terrible trend, for reasons that
> are obvious

Are they? I am not sure I see the obvious reasons. Considering the future,
maybe its a better idea to not have children.

~~~
cameronbrown
That's a little cynical isn't it?

The world is improving by many, many metrics. Absolute poverty isn't just
going down, it's accelerating towards zero. We're also hitting a point where
everyone who can be, is connected. Online education is better than ever (for
those who seek it). I could go on.

~~~
erklik
Its defintely cynical. Yes, the world is improving in many ways. Poverty is
getting pretty better, diseases are fairly easier to fight, and infanticide
isn't a thing. However, its also clear that governments have seemingly no
interest trying to fight climate change and a large amount of the world is
going to be suffering from the consequences of that in the future.

~~~
cameronbrown
My personal belief is that humans are bad at seeing into the future, but are
great at mobilising around here-and-now problems. And I believe the next
generation will be the ones to start tackling it while seeing the effects.

I think 100% irreversible processes like microplastics in oceans is something
that much more urgently needs dealing with. Repairing the climate is easy
compared to filtering trillions of molecules back out the ocean.

~~~
erklik
Well, maybe but the time it takes for the next generation to get in power, and
actually start making changes, it might be too late for many many cities of
the world. In times like this, isn't it more responsible to not have children?

------
taiwanboy
If you want to see the future of cooking as a service, no place better than to
check out the night markets of Taiwan. Every kinds of cuisine, from Taiwanese
to Japanese, Italian to Mexican. Every kind of meat from oyster to crab to
lamb. Every dish is bite sized, and can be had for $0.50 to $2. You can try
out 20 different dishes in a trip! Young people rarely cook at home (they
usually live in a small apt as well), instead buying quick dinners at these
night markets or 7-eleven.

Check out the markets:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi6f41Tq_J8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi6f41Tq_J8)

Unfortunately, there's no such thing in the big cities in US yet (New York,
SF). Anthony Bourdain was trying to start a night market up in NY though....

~~~
OkGoDoIt
I imagine between stricter heath codes and higher wages and taxes and all the
other costs involved, there’s no way to realistically get Asian style street
food in the USA. Seems like the closest I’ve seen if food trucks, but those
are often more expensive than traditional restaurants in my experience (San
Francisco and Atlanta).

I love Chinese street food, but I’m not holding my breath to see it in the
USA. I cook more nowadays in order to save money since eating out is so
insanely expensive in USA cities compared to Asia.

~~~
Aromasin
I believe it is entirely possible, but the food trade culture in the West is
the issue. There's an attitude of "my competitors' price their food at this
point - they likely know better as they were here first so I should price my
food at this point too". My father works in the trade and he's said that food
could be price at a fraction of what it's currently priced at - and they'd
like make even more money - but it would mean a lot more physical labour;
something most food vendors aren't willing to do, as it's a hard enough job
already.

I lived in the North of England for a while (one of the cheaper places in the
UK), and to go out for lunch would pretty much cost £6-£10 for a 'street-food
sized' meal. One day, a street food stall parked up in the middle of a high
traffic area and started selling massive burrito sized spring rolls for about
£3 a pop with meat and £2 without. Pre-chopped veg, meat fried in massive
woks, pancakes rolled fresh. 10 or so staff meant they were basically handing
them out as fast as the card machine could take contactless payments (no
cash). It was like the whole city damn near shut down. 1000's seemed to
congregate to that one spot. People would queue for an hours (thankfully the
English are good a queuing); any other alternative for lunch simply didn't
make sense. They were open for about 6 months, queues hundreds deep, then all
of a sudden they shut up shop overnight just like that.

Coincidentally it turns out the owner was actually a guy a played rugby with.
I interrogated him Spanish inquisition style. Basically he saved up enough
money to buy 2 commercial fat-fryers, 2 burners and woks, a chest refrigerator
and a generator to run them all; all second-hand, all super inexpensive.
Lighting, marque, prep stations and the like were all sourced on things like
freecycle and gumtree. He bought a permit from the local council to set up
shop on the high-street, found a team of part-timers, gave them all course in
food safety and he was good to go. No marketing, no branding - just a chalk
board that said "Spring Rolls £2 - add meat for £3". All in all it cost him
just shy of £8k to start, with which he got a loan for half of that.
Apparently a month in and he was turning over £5k gross in a DAY.

He told me he stopped because he had saved up enough money to call himself a
millionaire, and didn't want the stress of standing behind a searing hot
burner with a 300 deep queue in front of him anymore. He paid off his loans,
his kids loans, got an extension on his house and put the rest of his money
into some real estate.

I think the demand is there. It's just a case of vendors actually attempting
to take the risk and breaking that mould when it comes to price.

------
bpicolo
This really assumes the only point of cooking is sustenance. I think reality
is much more complicated. I'd argue that the tradition, culture and craft of
cooking is equally important. Having people prepare food on your behalf isn't
exactly a new concept.

~~~
falcor84
I think you're tacitly agreeing with the original statement. Cooking (outside
a professional seeing) may become one of those things that only some of us do,
for tradition, culture and craft, as has become of gardening or sewing.

~~~
bpicolo
More that I think (or hope) that it will continue to be widespread because of
these things. It may be right, but I like to think it's not the case. That
said, I do care much more about the culture of cooking than your average joe.

------
jger15
Great deck from a former Uber Eats employee on food delivery:
[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1v9ifaW1Sxy_oVUtzn63B...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1v9ifaW1Sxy_oVUtzn63BrqXKGcpMJ_eKrqb59BXjjXA/edit#slide=id.gd5b15f0a3_5_26)

~~~
bpicolo
I'm pretty shocked how open consumers are to paying more money for a worse
product via delivery. Foods travel poorly when steaming in boxes. Hot
sandwiches (like burgers) and anything fried are especially notable examples
(though most foods become worse in some capacity). Something this deck doesn't
mention is that online ordering of pickup is a tiny, no-profit market in
comparison. The convenience factor of delivery outweighs the rest for some set
of people, for sure.

Big note from the deck though:

> No DSP has been able to prove consistent profitability with their existing
> business model

Also not mentioned in the slides - a ton of delivery jobs from small
neighborhood joints (in the US) are paid under-the-table. This is a cost
differentiator that DSPs can't legally compete with.

------
phamilton
I think an interesting comparison is baking. Buying bread from a bakery or
supermarket has become standard. It's even gotten to a point where baking your
own bread might not be cheaper than buying it.

Not everything fits that mold, but I'm sure a few other categories of cooking
will end up in that state. But not all things. For instance, rice/beans are
just so cheap when dry. I can't see how a prepared version is going to bee
cheaper than preparing your own.

~~~
bsder
All of this seems to be merging toward how things work in Paris (for example).

Your apartment is so small that you do everything outside and you mostly
replenish things almost daily.

------
2819b
The author of the tweet that inspired the post lives in Japan, and as a first
generation Taiwanese American and occasional traveler to Asia one consistent
observation is that it's much more common to eat out than cook than here in
the US. Kitchens are tiny in most stereotypical "big Asian cities" and eating
out is cheap and options plentiful.

Point is this trend has been the case in Asia for a long time, and the only
reason why I don't think it's really the case in the West is because the cost
of operating a restaurant or even food truck is high enough that the cost of
eating out isn't as economical as it is in Asia.

~~~
max76
Why is it cheaper to operate a restaurant in a big Asian city than in the US?

~~~
michaelbuckbee
This is just guessing, but I'd think population density plays a major factor.
I'm just eyeballing this list here [1], but Japan is roughly 10x as dense
population wise as the US.

1 -
[https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_popul...](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density)

~~~
OJFord
Surely that makes the fixed costs of opening a restaurant significantly
higher, not lower?

------
Jedd
I believe the social implications are way more complex.

While TFA compares cooking to sewing or gardening, in terms of a declining in
both popularity and personal imperative, beyond the arguable claim that food
trumps both those, is the social component.

Not so much that eating can be - let alone is necessarily - more social than
pastimes such as gardening, but it's one of the few remaining opportunities to
_be_ social, both in the cooking and the partaking.

Of course, the erosion of shared meal times and the likely impacts are already
well studied.

In his 1994 book 'The Doubter's Companion', John Ralston Saul observed:

"Restaurants, until recently, were places of refuge for people excluded from
the mainstream or seeking to escape it — poor students, aging unmarried men
not rich enough to have themselves fed at home, richer men seeking sex not
wives, and the proverbial artists leading their irresponsible lives. Over the
last half-century, restaurants have risen in importance to fill the void left
by the decline of the old public celebrations. They now provide the leading
forums of public participation."

------
siliconc0w
Cooking as a service has been happening for awhile - canned goods, baked
goods, boxed goods, frozen or pre-chopped veggies, pre-marinaded meat. At this
point the vast majority of products available at grocers have had some sort of
prep done to them. It's really just a matter of degrees.

~~~
WilliamEdward
This misses the nuance of the write-up. In fact i think the author even agrees
this is well established already. But the nuance here is the ways about which
people are optimising for this kind of industry - specifically designing their
businesses for delivery, etc.

------
arichard123
On Saturday I fed a family of 4 (2 adults and 2 kids) in a Zizzi Restaurant
for £50.70+ tip. On Sunday I bought the weeks groceries for same family for
£53.76 from Aldi. Sometimes I spend as much as £90 at Aldi, but then, we
didn't have desert at Zizzi either.

------
OJFord
Why doesn't the article mention ready meals? It may not be new, but that's
'CaaS'.

It'd be interesting to see the same graph with ready meals either broken out
as a third category, or included with takeaways.

~~~
petra
Ready meals will play a big part, I agree.

In the past they had problems with quality/taste and healthiness.

But new home technology(instant pot,combi-ovens, new microwave tech) combined
with better frozen food, or different logistics that would enable chilled
meals - could offer healthy, restaurant quality meals.

And there's also a chance that the cost difference between ready meals and
cooking at home will become very low.

~~~
OJFord
Oh I'm not saying they're not awful, and I don't buy them - just that it seems
weird to discuss how we're going to not have kitchens and someone else will
cook our food, without mentioning that a lot of people already live like that
with ready meals. A microwave needn't have it's own room called a 'kitchen'.

I particularly thought of it because the graph shows the same change across
income groups, except that it's time-shifted so that it really got big in the
top bracket earliest, in the '70s, then the middle income group in the '80s,
and finally the bottom bracket in the '90s.

If ready meals were included, I suspect it would look more level, or at least
bring up the lowest income group.

------
quickthrower2
I wonder. Say in one of these rediculously priced costal cities, you convert
kitchen into a sleeping room. Would the saved rent (because it can be split
more ways) pay for FaaS?

~~~
bergie
Older apartment buildings in Helsinki didn't have kitchens in the apartments
when built. Instead, there was a central kitchen in the building.

------
vishaalk
Nice article, and good data find. I think a point missed at the end about how
we can potentially avoid "healthiness" as a premium/luxury option is by
setting a base-line, with canteen style food. Here is an HN discussion about
"canteen-style dining":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19792674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19792674).
India also instituted a similar program at their Aganwadis:
[https://www.akshayapatra.org/anganwadi-
feeding](https://www.akshayapatra.org/anganwadi-feeding). In addition, there
was no coverage about the environmental impact of "Cooking-as-a-Service". It
could be worse because of having to transport the goods (and keep them warm or
cold), including the packaging that may be disposed, or it could be better if
the packaging was re-usable (sent back somehow? everyone uses identical
swappable packaging?) or it turns out that scheduled deliveries is more
optimizable than N houses all driving to the same restaurant.

------
mochomocha
Pushing it a bit further and forgetting about regulation for a second... Do
you think people will feel comfortable eating food cooked by "strangers"? I
can see the efficiency coming from an on demand market for food where anyone
can cook anything for anyone and broadcast it in an app (especially in
ethnically diverse cities where I'm sure a lot of people know how to cook
amazing dishes), I just don't know if our norms and mental barriers will
evolve fast enough for us to see that happening in say the next 10 years. It's
one thing to enter the car of a "stranger" for an Uber ride, but maybe it's a
different thing to eat some food cooked by a stranger?

~~~
sneak
Almost all of the food that I eat is cooked by strangers.

~~~
mochomocha
Sure. I'm talking about changing where we are on the "stranger" spectrum from
say the professional cook of the restaurant you order from to... Maybe some
guy with 2 5-star reviews living 5 blocks from you who apparently makes great
burgers and who has been loosely vetted by the app... Will you feel
comfortable enough to order? I'm sure some people will. But it seems to me
that the mental threshold is higher than say taxi->Uber.

~~~
simplecomplex
I think you have a romanticized notion about who the line cooks are at your
local restaurants...

~~~
sl1ck731
That may be partially true, but there is a grounded sense of accountability in
any case. I'm sure you can find issues and your occasional booger eater with
any restaurant but, in my experience working in such places, typically those
jobs are micromanaged in the sense that the entire routine is choreographed
from start to finish to save costs and reduce liability.

We can see egregious examples of displacing any form of accountability in the
gig economy to the point that they are already immediately met with distrust
and disdain when they encroach on another market.

------
solatic
The older example of FaaS would be communal kitchens and dining rooms, e.g.
college dormitories or kibbutz lifestyles. In these cases, people arrive to
where food is being prepped for them; there is no delivery cost.

Particularly in the case of families, the notion that food delivery will ever
become cheap enough to be a default relies on negating delivery costs. It may
be so cheap to prepare food in bulk as to offset the cost of labor to prepare
it; however, that says nothing as to the cost of labor (and energy) to deliver
it.

If we ever do develop some kind of solar-powered delivery drone whose cost
amortizes out to practically nothing over the life of all of its deliveries,
then maybe yes.

~~~
y0ghur7_xxx
> Particularly in the case of families, the notion that food delivery will
> ever become cheap enough to be a default relies on negating delivery costs.

I live in Italy and delivery cost is like 2,50€. And it's the same if I order
food just for myself or for 4 people. So I would say that the delivery cost is
cheaper per person for families than for a single person.

------
mooreds
Interesting article. Hard to argue that we're going to value convenience more
and more. As I heard someone else say, in 1900 it would have been pretty
inconceivable athta in 2000 we wouldn't be sewing out clothes.

If you are interested in starting your own cloud kitchen, these folks have
written up step by step instructions (disclaimer: I was involved with the
company as CTO for a couple of years):
[https://www.thefoodcorridor.com/2019/04/30/how-to-start-
your...](https://www.thefoodcorridor.com/2019/04/30/how-to-start-your-own-
delivery-only-food-venture/)

------
edanm
Are there tax implications to explore here? Cooking for yourself is tax-free
(in terms of labor, you're paying sales tax or VAT on the ingredients).
Cooking for others is taxed.

~~~
jfk13
Here (in the UK) food is generally zero-rated for VAT if you're cooking it
yourself, but not if you're eating it at a restaurant or getting (hot)
takeout.

[https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-of-vat-on-different-
goods-...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-of-vat-on-different-goods-and-
services#food-and-drink-animals-animal-feed-plants-and-seeds)

------
alexkavon
How about Cooking-As-A-Service but you have to use my tiny NY kitchen and it’s
barely sufficient utensils/ware.

------
emersonrsantos
Is this new? Food courts and beer gardens that I go complement their sales by
using lots of delivery services, and in some days you will see more delivery
than local consumption.

There are four major delivery companies that dominates the market here in this
city: iFood, James Delivery, Rappi and lastly Uber Eats. A couple of these
companies also do supermarket shopping for you - no Amazon in Brazil for
everything shopping.

------
jacknews
+1 for "cooking healthily" rather than "cooking healthy"

------
shahbaby
Home cooking is too personal to be out sourced as a service.

When you cook yourself you optimize for YOUR health, YOUR taste, YOUR budget,
etc.

Restaurants and personal chiefs exist for those who would rather trade some of
these benefits for convenience.

------
purplezooey
Just think about all the dust bunnies and body hair that gets in your meal
when somebody else cooks it, though.

------
crazygringo
> _Cooking will, by 2040, be a niche activity like e.g. gardening or sewing_

This is one of the dumbest things I've read in a long, long time.

Most families simply do not have the money for prepared food to feed their
family regularly, and there's no evidence that this is changing at all.
Grocery store ingredients are _vastly_ cheaper than anything prepared, and
food prep is fundamentally labor-intensive no matter what. The limits of cost
advantages from scaling have _already_ been reached: it's called the freezer
section, but at most it's a moderate convenience for some.

Further, the graphs show for all income levels that "away" food increased
substantially from 1965-1994... and then has stayed mainly the _same_ ,
actually _decreasing_ from 2004-2007 across _all_ income levels, so there's
_zero_ evidence for any trend between now and 2040.

So... a third of meals are "away" and that's been _stable_ over the past _25
years_? Sounds to me like people eat lunch out... and that's it.

~~~
namanyayg
Everyone individual needs to cook thrice a day (or at least once a day + be
damn good at packaging it) while gardening or sewing are far from essentials.
Definitely concur.

~~~
throes_death
No. Not everyone eats three times a day.

~~~
batiudrami
This is a silly semantic point and you know it.

------
rebuilder
This whole service economy model just seems to me like a way to concentrate
wealth (and, therefore, power) even further. It's like we've decided it's
really inefficient to have the working population's wages tied up in houses,
cars, cookware etc. when we could just have them funnel that money directly
back into the coffers of the corporations that own more and more of
everything.

Do we need to revisit the definition of a company town?

~~~
ciconia
The whole service economy model is premised on wide availability of cheap
fossil energy. Once that is gone [1], collapse is inevitable.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil)

~~~
SmooL
Why does it matter where the energy comes from? Between natural gas, nuclear,
and renewables, I see no reason to believe that energy costs will increase

