

Review my startup: Housefed.com - Airbnb for food - emilepetrone
http://housefed.com/#

======
emilepetrone
I love to cook, and love to try new foods. After watching Anthony Bourdain eat
with families all over the world, I thought - I want to do that! So I made
Housefed.com - an Airbnb for food / OpenTable for your kitchen. What do you
guys think?

With 200 registered users, I launched it this morning and am opening the site
piece by piece. I think people will not want to eat with a host without seeing
their food first. So part 1 is aimed at photo-sharing and growing the
community. After a user has uploaded 5 pics, they can apply to become a host.
Once there is an initial group of hosts, I'll open the site for meal booking.

Hosts will be able to create meals other users can book a seat at. Hosts will
be able to filter the users prior to booking. Users will pay through the site
prior to getting directions to the host's home.

I think this will be great for people who love to cook, love trying new foods,
and especially travelers. Trying real pad see ew with a Thai family would be
mind blowing (at least to me).

In terms of the legality of booking a meal at a person's home, I am not sure.
Each state/country has their own regulations so until it grows to a point
where that is a problem, I'm not worrying about it.

What do you guys think about the site / strategy? Thanks for your time and
thoughts.

Emile Emile@housefed.com

PS if you remember the HN post 'Quit Job, Learning to Code' back in July (
<http://goo.gl/cxNsr> ), that was from me. I have been at it since then day
and night. Thanks to everyone who has helped over the last few months. You too
can learn how to code.

~~~
jlees
"Opentable for your kitchen" is a _much_ better X for Y than "Airbnb for
food".

~~~
kenjackson
Yes x1000. I had no idea what Airbnb for food meant. Although I know what
Airbnb is, when I saw the phrase for some reason I thought air delivery of
food.

------
Eliezer
Went to front page. Saw a bunch of photos of food. Didn't see where I could
buy food. Left.

Saying "airbnb for food" is not a substitute for explaining what you do or
having a user interface which visibly allows the actions you want a user to
perform.

~~~
tt
I was worried for a bit because I thought there's new competition for our
Munchery (<http://gomunchery.com>), which is much more like Airbnb for food.
:)

~~~
geekfactor
Not that you don't know your own startup, but Munchery seems much more like
Groupon for Food.

------
oldgregg
Aka GrubWithUs Residential. You have a big challenge because eating dinner
with someone at their home is really intimate. I wouldn't start with photo
sharing-- you need to start working on the dinner mechanics right away. Go low
tech. Pick a single city, find a couple people willing to host, then send out
invitations through existing social connections. Maybe get people to commit to
5 dinners up front for $100. I would also look at having a fundraising
component (25% to charity?) because now the dinner can be ABOUT something. You
can't just get a bunch of random people together and hope the conversation
works out, you need some common cause or interest to act as social lubricant.

------
mahipal
I'll be blunt, and I hope you take this all with the understanding that I'm
only trying to help. I've tried to point out specific things you can do/add
wherever possible. With that said...

Your home page is incredibly confusing, primarily because there is no call to
action. Even though I know and use Airbnb, "Airbnb for food" could still mean
several things, and I'm not even sure what the # of countries has to do with
anything. Suggestion: ditch the Airbnb comparison and put up a 1-sentence
elevator pitch followed by a 1-sentence call-to-action. Example: "Housefed.com
lets you find and eat with talented chefs in your area. Get started by
_______."

Continuing on the call-to-action thread, there isn't even anything for me to
do! Am I supposed to search? Am I supposed to click on the food? Clicking on
the food takes me to an equally confusing page with nothing for me to do there
either. Suggestion: add an obvious thing for me to interact with (search box?
I don't even know what...) and lose the sorting features, which add nothing to
the first impression.

After signing up -- even though nothing on the site makes me want to --
nothing changes! I still have no idea what to do on your site, or where to do
it. Suggestion: let a not-logged-in user browse the available food and
understand WHY it's posted (so that they could eat it, I assume), and then
invite them to sign up with a statement like: "Want to eat this and other
delicious meals in your town? Sign up and get housefed!"

I suggest you spend a lot more time studying <http://airbnb.com> and the
subtleties of their homepage and UX. Notice that their home page tells you
EXACTLY what to do ("Find a place to stay.") and shows you HOW to do it (by
filling out one field that tells them "Where are you going?"). I can use and
browse everything on their site without logging in or signing up, and they
detour me to the sign-up page only when absolutely necessary.

I remember your original "noob" post. Congrats on making it this far.
Seriously. Most people would've given up long ago. Keep at it. I think your
site fills a real need (at least, I would use it, fwiw).

------
tgrass
Brilliant. Lose the Airbnb reference. Landing page should clearly and
concisely tell me, the random passerby, exactly what you do: "Get a home
cooked meal by a fellow foodie"

~~~
emilepetrone
I will definitely be doing this. + 1

~~~
colkassad
I would lose the "food porn" bit... I understand it's a Bourdain reference and
I love his show but I think it would jar with a lot of folks who don't know
that.

~~~
TheSOB88
Nah, gives it character. You don't need to appeal to a mass audience at this
stage.

------
Timothee
Just a couple of comments about the homepage:

\- as said by somebody else, I'd remove the reference to Airbnb. Not many
people know what Airbnb is and "Airbnb for food" doesn't really explain what
it means.

\- I'd also remove "food porn". I wouldn't be surprised if many people are
uncomfortable with the word "porn" even if it's about food.

\- right now, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing on the site or what
the site is all about. I see pictures, I click on them but then there's barely
any information: what am I looking at? Why are you showing this to me? What
can I do with this?

\- I know you're just starting and thus have to feed some content yourself but
seeing "Emile P." all over the frontpage is not great. You might want to limit
the number of pictures by the same person there. Even if you get traction that
might be something that you would still want to change for the case of someone
uploading a bunch of pictures at once.

As for the sign-up, I'm not sure why you want to limit users to put their
first name and only first initial of last name. This seems a bit restrictive
and I'm not sure if there's a good reason behind it. I could see having just
"Name" and they put whatever they want?

Since your current focus is on the pictures, I might do a couple of things:
show more and/or bigger pictures on the homepage, possibly removing the
username/likes/comments metadata (with them showing on hover?) and make sure
_your_ pictures are of the best quality possible (maybe not quite
professional, but at least edited a bit). As a comparison, look at what
Instagram looks like when you start it up without an account: a page full of
good-looking pictures of different styles, by different people…

Hope this helps, congratulations on the launch and good luck!

Disclaimer: I'm no expert or designer, this is just my humble opinion :)

------
dodo53
That sounds lovely - but I think the legality thing is something to
investigate early. I think a lot of places have rules about restaurants having
hygiene certificates and passing inspections - maybe having a meal exchange
would bypass that (like you can try other peoples' food as long as you also
host every so often?). If you're taking money, I'd talk to a lawyer early (or
friendly person with legal knowledge at least!)

Also, it might be worth starting on a specific scene first so you concentrate
your community (your local town, your uni alumni, conference attendees at
local tech conference or whatever).

edit: OK actually people do this, trended in London a year or so ago (sorry
for non-reputable source:
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1253584/I-ope...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1253584/I-opened-
restaurant-living-room--Pop-restaurants-latest-foodie-trend-open-doors.html))

~~~
mentat
This was my initial thought too. When you start selling food for money things
get complicated quick. If you look at some of the actions against shared
kitchens and such it's disturbing. You'll want to look into this ASAP as it's
complicated by locality and directly impacts your business model. It might be
that you could have "food points" that you get when you cook and spend when
you eat and essentially trade meals but I'm not sure if that's actually ok
legally or if it works with what you're thinking about.

------
pinko
Great idea -- I've long wanted a tool to help organize voluntary, opt-in
communal cooking around where I live. It's beyond stupid for 100 single adults
within a block of each other to cook 100 single servings every night.

But this could enable something much less repetitive and less obligatory than
a shared cooking schedule between friends (something I've tried--everyone
cooks for the others one day a week, etc.).

Anyway, if I were you I would consider this market in addition to the tourist
market akin to that of airbnb. The tool probably wouldn't need to be much
different, but the marketing might be.

------
mrspeaker
It's a lovely concept (I hesitated to use that adjective there, but it is!) -
so I would drop the line "Everyone loves a little food porn". It just conotes,
you know, porn. With strangers. And you might lose some people who aren't
familiar with the phrase.

------
rahooligan
Im working on the exact same concept (it isnt ready for public launch yet).
The major hurdle Ive run into is the legal side of things - it is illegal to
"sell" any type of potentially hazardous food i.e. hot food from a home
kitchen no matter what state. You can sell baked goods like cookies, jams,
jellies and so on from a home kitchen from a handful of states though.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentially_Hazardous_Food>

------
Entlin
The concept is unclear to me. Is this basically about ad-hoc restaurants,
where people cook for guests, and the guests can browse through hosts by
looking at pictures of food they cooked? If yes, why don't you write that on
the home page?

And why do you only show the food? I'd be interested to see pictures of the
hosts.

Also, location would be supremely important. Where are these hosts located?

EDIT: Some more feedback: Photos should look way better. Encourage hosts to
use DSLRs. Show some tips on food photography.

Make sure that browsing through the finished site shows just 1 pic per host,
with all the other pics grouped together at the host page.

Apart from that, fantastic concept, wish you luck!

~~~
emilepetrone
Good point -I'll work on making the cook more prominent.

------
gcheong
Saying this is the Airbnb for food made me think it's a way to sell my
leftovers on the web.

------
dpcan
There is so much wrong with the statement at the top of your site.

#1 LOTS of people have no idea what Airbnb is. This service by itself is very
niche.

#2 Can you even use the name of another company like this? Do they want you to
associate yourself with their service?

#3 Everyone has food porn? Really? The LAST thing foodies want to think about
when looking for food related websites is pornography. In fact, for many, just
the words on the page make for a disgusting feeling.

------
hesdeadjim
Do you plan on allowing people to charge for hosting? If so, aren't there some
serious health code issues that arise (at least in the U.S.)?

Friends of mine work at a non-profit that wanted to sell espresso at their
center and they ran into all kinds of health code issues due to just having
milk. Apparently as soon as you introduce perishable items, all kinds of red
flags get raised and you need inspections, etc.

------
HaloZero
I've actually heard of this before, there are a few but they tend to stay
small. Not sure what they are officially called but I called them underground
restaurants.

They only do it once or twice a week but they serve lots of different types of
food, they usually are done by local chefs. But that's usually very high class
food.

I also suggest not comparing yourself to another service on your home page and
explicitly saying what you do.

~~~
ig1
They're generally called "Pop-up restaurants"

~~~
jmm
Right. Tho the pop up restaurants that I've heard of have been set up by chefs
with some sort of following via a previous venture... this thing here ain't
that.

------
kaisdavis
This is a really cool concept! Awesome job.

I like the feedback someone else gave on showing photos of the people. Since
this is more 'socialize here' than 'sleep here,' (unless it pivots into house-
based on-availability takeout) I'd prefer to see photos of people + their
interests than photos of the food.

It's saturday night, am I looking for someone making turkey sandwiches in
Eugene, Oregon, or am I looking for some cool people to meet and have a few
hour conversation with? Am I buying a conversation or the food? I think I'd be
buying a conversation and an opportunity to meet new people. The meal is
secondary.

My ex-girlfriend and I had a recurring conversation about meeting people and
making new friends in our mid-20s. It's a good question, one I'd like to see
tackled: "What does a non-dating 'dating' site look like?" Howaboutwe.com is
sort of what I'd like to see done in this space, but a site like this that
arranges social events / group 'friend' dates to meet people in your community
based on food / interests / conversation? That's right up my ally.

Great job launching an MVP. I'd love to see what comes next.

------
jrubinovitz
1\. If you have no idea what Airbnb is, which many people do not, then you
have no idea what to do at the site and you'll probably leave. 2\. I know what
Airbnb is and still could not figure out Housefed was until I read your post
here.

It sounds like a fun business. I think you should be more explicit on the
front page as to what exactly it is. I would definitely try this out if there
was a host near me.

~~~
emilepetrone
That is true, thanks for the advice. I appreciate it

~~~
DevX101
I think it's fine. For now. It is likely that your early adopter will have
heard of AirBNB, and that phrase "AirBNB for food" carries high information
density about what your site does.

But you probably don't want to the the brand of your company in the longer
term to AirBNB.

------
winterchil
Looks like a fun idea and I'll sign-up and give it a shot as a customer. One
business suggestion: don't describe yourself as "Airbnb for food" on your main
website. That's fine for HN but many potential customers will not know/care
what Airbnb is.

One other suggestion is to spend some time looking at the GrubWithUs site; it
has a great design for this type of service.

------
rmason
OK here's my gut reaction:

1\. You don't explain what you're doing and why I would want to do it. Even
with all their publicity I would wager that 90% of the people you are driving
to your home page have never heard of AirBNB. Calling yourself the AirBNB of
food might work when you're pitching the idea to a VC but doesn't work on the
actual website.

2\. Two thirds of your potential customers will be using Internet Explorer. I
know it's not fair but that's reality in 2011. In IE you cannot even see the
fields to sign up.

If in fact I can buy dinner at different peoples houses every night that's a
really cool idea. In my state you couldn't do it legally but you've researched
all that right? To succeed you need more than a cool idea, you have to
execute.

------
grahamb
I think most people are going to be puzzled/turned-off by your reference to
"food porn".

------
baberuth
Love the idea. Rails Rumble a few years ago produced this:
<http://tablesurfing.com/> which never actually launched, but I was really
hoping it would have.

Comments:

Without the "airbnb for food" tagline on the site, nobody would have any idea
that this site is anything more than a bad Foodgawker clone. Nothing about it
lets users actually do anything other than share pictures.

If that's the goal, make it clear how to do that or let us know when it will
be possible.

------
brackin
So someone pays me for me to cook for them? Sounds strange, why not get
takeout or to a smaller restaurant if it's too pricey and want to eat out?

~~~
aridiculous
Why would you choose to use airBnb when there are small hotels and motels?

The answer is two-fold: 1) Cost. People cooking food and hosting guests don't
have the same running costs as a restaurant. It may just be a bit of side-
income or maybe they're breaking even and doing it out of passion. 2) The
experience and locality is different than hotels and motels. I could see this
being big in young, hip areas like SF (Mission, Haight Asbury) and Brooklyn.

~~~
brackin
Because I can have a decent meal for a similar price to paying someone. Airbnb
you get a nicer place to stay for a far lower price. I mean not saying this is
a terrible idea just saying it doesn't work for me.

~~~
aridiculous
Fair enough.

------
jeromec
Congrats on following through on your goal, and for shipping! Really cool
idea. The service may not be for everyone, but ones who use it may become
fanatics. There are definitely regulatory issues with this in my mind,
probably for all of the US and many other countries as well, but one thing I
love about the Internet is how it challenges and sometimes breaks conventional
models and rules.

------
impendia
It's something I might be especially likely to use if I moved to a new city,
and wanted to meet people, and try something different for the hell of it.

There is a social angle to be worked here. Maybe allow users to post profiles?
I'd be much more likely to try this if I could see that interesting-looking
people were going to the same dinner as me.

------
marcamillion
This is a VERY intriguing idea.

I can't say that I would invite someone into my home for a few bucks, but it
definitely is intriguing. Then again...I wouldn't rent out my couch to random
strangers, so don't use my opinion on the deciding factor to go ahead.

Look forward to keeping track of this and seeing how it progresses.

Good luck!

------
bluekite2000
I heard Brian Chesky (Airbnb's cofounder) on Gigaom talking about announcing
other categories in 2011 on top of housing (which sounds like a natural
extension).So kudos to the guy who executed this but I can already see this
space is going get ultra competitive pretty soon.

------
gte910h
I am betting you need a health department certificate in most states to do
this.

~~~
joeld42
I think you are OK if you have people be "members" of your food club. It's
only when you're cooking for walk-ins.

Even so, I am something of a foodie and a home cook, and I wouldn't feel
comfortable cooking for paying strangers, or paying to dine with them. To me,
something that helped organize and plan potlucks would be more appealing,
(like "Meetup meets Cooks Illustrated" perhaps). But maybe that's just me.

------
jpwagner
[http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/zapmealscom-closing-
the...](http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/zapmealscom-closing-the-gap-
between-your-mouse-your-tummy-for-supernova-2007)

------
maxhs
there are a couple startups in this space (GrubWith.Us, gogrubly.com, maybe
others?). what differentiates housefed? is it the international angle? the
kind of foodspotting-esque type focus on user-generated photos?

any plans for adding descriptive content so that the comments aren't just "is
that [fill in the blank]? Btw, I'd love to see a lot more positive user
feedback before I sign up. I'd say get some good traction from friends/beta
testers before spreading it too widely. Oh and I agree with others: lose the
food porn reference. Good luck!

------
thesethings
As a user of Housefed before today's front-page-on-HN, I want to give folks a
heads up that it looks like the traffic may be causing a few bugs.

If anything feels strange, definitely return after a bit.

------
emilepetrone
WOW thanks for the feedback! There are a few bugs I missed in my testing - so
I've taken down a few of the features. Everything will be back tomorrow (with
a new homepage). Thanks again!

------
hariis
Love the idea. I know some folks that sell home-cooked foods. This happens in
ethnic communities. So that can be an option.

Also reviews are super important to decide.

------
schwabacher
Looks awesome.. one suggestion is to avoid using the word 'porn' on the front
page. Love the idea though!

------
pkauders
Awesome work Emile. I love the tenacity.

------
ry0ohki
I think this is Foodspotting, not Airbnb

------
bradoyler
how bout <http://mealtik.com> ?

------
andrenotgiant
About Page

------
haploid
Am I the only one who thinks the local and federal food regulatory bodies are
going to have a field day with this?

I hope you have a solid legal team in place to deal with the inevitable FDA,
USDA, state heath boards, and local restaurant licensing regulators that are
very likely to take notice if you grow.

------
girlvinyl
I had never heard of Airbnb before. Once I got on your site, I went to their
site, clicked around for a while, tried to get the gist of it. Then came back
here to comment because I still don't get housefed.

I don't think I should have to go learn a totally different site in order to
understand the tagline of your site.

~~~
bvi
If you've never heard of Airbnb before, perhaps you're in the wrong place.
Airbnb is a YC company and is one of the (if not the) _hottest_ startups out
there.

~~~
girlvinyl
Perhaps you're right. I will leave at once!

