

 Review my startup - RecipeTonite - danest
http://recipetonite.com/

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makmanalp
I love it! It solves a very real problem I have all the time. Honestly, I
think a better idea is to do it weekly, so I can say "give me ingredients for
3 nights worth." There are several reasons for this.

* I can't cook _every_ night but it's convenient to have it there so I don't have to plan from the morning to cook if I end up staying at home. I think most people would do the same.

* 5x / 7x less shipping fees for everyone.

* If you have stuff for 7 nights worth of food already set, I can pick my favourite 3. This is very powerful because I get a lot of choice and thus, satisfaction. The main problem people have with CSA farm shares for example, is that they can't control what they get. Also, this way you don't have to come up with recipes and mass-source ingredients every single day (which is very hard). Instead, you get to do that over the course of a week.

I think you can learn a lot from the methodologies of
<http://www.bostonorganics.com/>.

Also, if you really are considerate of the vegans and vegetarians, you will
get rave reviews and the support of a vocal and big customer base who love to
cook and blog.

Nice photos go a long way, especially in food. It's hard, but it makes the
difference between whether I will cook a recipe or not (i.e. a good photo will
make me do a $20 purchase and commit 1 hour)

Finally, I think you should encourage customers to "hack" your recipes with
their own ingredients, and maybe even offer a few variations with every
recipe.

Hope this helps, and good luck! :)

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wilsonlin45
thanks for the feedback, this is some really useful advice. Increasing the
frequency of our deliveries is maybe something we will consider in the future.
For now, we just wanted to get something out there, test it out and see if
people are even interested in it. The plan for the future is to have special
recipes for people on certain diets; vegetarians, vegans, paleo, etc..

We're working on our new page already. This page will have much more details,
pricing plan, sign up, etc... We definitely have to liven up the page and add
more pictures

And I love the idea of hacking recipes

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makmanalp
For some reason, I imagined you were sending daily, although I guess the
website says nothing of the sort. Sometimes I make things up in my head! :)

I like the special diets idea.

Even better with hacking is that you can have a community-voted hack of the
week (where you can't vote for yourself) and people upload their photos. Even
better, you can offer those winners one of next week's recipes for free, in
exchange for rights to their photos. So that you can uploads those photos in
time for next week, and also get some valuable feedback.

Argh, even thinking about this is getting me excited.

~~~
wilsonlin45
Haha, that's great that you're excited. That's also a pretty good way to get
our users involved with the service, good idea

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rogerbinns
Using a picture of a plane for the delivery icon is somewhat confusing. It
implies an impersonal corporation far away with a one size fits all mentality
to the whole country. What is preferable is (mostly) locally sourced
ingredients and a realization that (for example) Californians have different
tastes than Alabamans.

You'll want to provide some sort of "difficulty" level with the recipes. Not
everyone is good or confident at cooking. Following on to what makmanalp said,
that could be another factor in addition to vegetarian, number of diners etc.
Being able to pick 3 meals for the week would help greatly.

I'd recommend you publish your recipes even to those without accounts etc so
others can try them, even though they'd have to get the ingredients
themselves.

You'll find that not everyone has the best cookware and tools. You may find a
good source of ancillary revenue and/or "frequent flyer" benefits to be
supplying nice tools (eg knives, spatulas, scissors) and pots/pans.

~~~
danest
These are from really good suggestions. You brought up some points that we
didn't consider. In the future, we planned to post recipes along with blog
posts and tips.

The difficulty level is also a great idea. I think giving them a choice of
meals/difficulties is good, we also want to add the option like "surprise me"
for people to discover new things. What do you think about that?

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rogerbinns
Presumably the "surprise me" would mean a random selection of the offerings
rather than something not on the visible list? Americans are very fussy with
their food so not knowing what it is until it arrives at your door may be
going too far. But from a UX perspective I think that is shirking your
responsibility to make the meals interesting.

You can certainly gamify things, and also take inspiration from the humour of
Woot. For example bingo cards where you try to have meals covering the whole
alphabet, or colours. Or "World Tours" where there are sequences of recipes
that trace a path geographically around the world. Or voting certain
ingredients off the "island". Or pick a film/TV show and make what the
characters eat (or inspired by what they eat, or their locations). The Once
Upon A Time In Mexico DVD has a 10 minute short on it showing how to make
puerco pebil that I've done several times.

Here for example are the Indiana Jones locations:
[http://indianajones.wikia.com/wiki/Travel_with_Indy:_Locatio...](http://indianajones.wikia.com/wiki/Travel_with_Indy:_Locations)

Out of that you'd get South America, France, Egypt, UK, India, Spain, Venice,
Jordan and the US Southwest. My mouth is already watering :-)

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unohoo
Do you plan to overnite / express mail the ingredients ? Because the recipe
can contain produce / meat (perishables), you have to make sure the
ingredients reach the customer within 1-2 days, else the perishables might go
bad. Besides, you need to consider what impact the weather might have when
shipping perishables (given the 100+ temps recently in east coast), even a few
hours longer and they might spoil. If you do plan to overnite / express mail
the ingredients (which can get expensive fast), will the cost be borne by you
or passed on to the customer ?

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wilsonlin45
Right now, we're only going to be shipping to SF and I'll be doing the
deliveries for now. We have considered the weather and perishables and
shipping that can get expensive especially including the insulation and ice
pack for each box.

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jacksonshoe
Great concept. This is something I would want in NYC. Lugging groceries on the
train is a big hassle especially during rush hours and no seats. Driving to
the city to get the freshest groceries is almost impossible. What's great
about this is that you guys provide a recipe with the order! As a food lover,
I'm always down to try new recipes and add it to dishes i would love to cook
for family or friends

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lmickel1
I think this is a really smart idea. With working all day and living alone
it's hard to get the motivation to cook well for just myself, but a program
like this takes all the hassle out of it!

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wilsonlin45
Basically what we are is a subscription service that delivers ingredients and
a recipe to your door, saving you the hassle of picking out ingredients,
waiting on line, etc..

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const_int
it's a great idea. definitely gotta clean up the UI a bit though but its
pretty good. Hope it takes off! and if it takes off, hope you guys have enough
people to buy and ship all this stuff lol

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jon4thangarcia
this is awesome! hope it becomes big!

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larrys
If you want this reviewed you should have a video on the front page at the
very least giving a walk through and pitch of the service you are providing.

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danest
We are trying to make a service where ingredients and recipes are delivered
straight to your door. So that you can start cooking without the hassle of
picking up every item.

