
Show HN: Ratatouille is an app to share your extra food - giorgia
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ratatouille/id847404887
======
callmeed
If you really want to share extra food you're growing, do one of the
following:

1\. Contact your local food bank. It's very possible they have a program where
extra produce is donated and given to people in need. We have one where I
live:

[http://www.gleanslo.org/](http://www.gleanslo.org/)

and it looks like SV does too:
[http://www.shfb.org/backyardproduce](http://www.shfb.org/backyardproduce)

2\. Have your children/nieces/neighborhood kids collect it, put it in their
wagon and go around the neighborhood and sell it. It's a great way to teach
kids about entrepreneurship and money. My kids do this and usually make $20-40
on a Saturday afternoon. I also let them use my phone and square, which gets
quite the reaction.

I have a HUGE amount of garden space and, even with 6 people in my home, we
have too much tomatoes, lemons, kale and zucchini in the summer.

------
amirmc
I was chatting about exactly this kind of app/service with a few friends two
summers ago. They have an apple tree and can't possibly use all the fruit they
get from it. There are probably other local people with other
fruits/vegetables that they have a surplus of who'd be very happy to trade for
some apples. This obviously isn't a new problem/idea but a simple website
would help such people connect and possibly make new friends.

We never got around to building anything but it's strangely satisfying to see
that others had similar ideas and actually shipped something. In the world of
tweeting toasters and fridges that track your food (i.e Internet of
Things/Everything), it would be great to have a list of available items
automatically kept up to date (of course the incentive there is to avoid
things spoiling in the first place).

~~~
pjmorris
I didn't have exactly the same idea, but close enough to feel 'We never got
around to building anything but it's strangely satisfying to see that others
had similar ideas and actually shipped something.'

Mine went "We're going to a lot of trouble to make all this food (from fancy
cookbooks), and while leftovers are great, company would be better. Wouldn't
it be great if there were a website where people could coordinate dinner plans
with folks around them... for friendship, hospitality, good eating, and
economy." Sort of like the iPhone app, but for whole dinners rather than just
the ingredients, and for anybody with a web connection, not just one app
market.

~~~
amirmc
I vaguely remember a YC company doing the kind of thing you described. I don't
think they do it anymore (pivoted or shut-down?) and I can't recall the name
of the company at all.

~~~
randall
Grubwithus I think. Had more of a dating vibe, at least when it was presented
at demo day.

------
regoldste
Has anyone found a review of how this app works in practice? It seems like it
could work well for unopened perishable foods, but do the founders really
expect that strangers are going to want to eat each others' half-eaten, saran-
wrapped block of cheese? It sounds like a nice idea in theory, but in practice
I think people are pretty turned off by eating strangers' food.

I think the founders would be better positioned for success if they marketed a
social network component, which would facilitate friends and neighbors
borrowing from each other.

~~~
lucavibesmilan
Hi, i'm Luca, one of Ratatouille App Developer. Seems crazy that stranger
people can share food but nowadays stranger people share car with carpooling.
The mechanism is the same but change the value delivered :).

Thanks for the feedback

~~~
mbesto
The difference is that the car isn't fully consumed but can be reused. So the
lessor has an incentive of maintaining quality of the original good. This is
the same for apartments (AirBnB). In contrast, food get's wholly consumed. How
does the original owner incentivized to maintain quality?

If anything, you should spin this off to create a marketplace for food
bartering system.

~~~
regoldste
This is an incisive and articulate explanation of my reasoning. Ride-sharing
and food-sharing are different in a few meaningful ways that raise doubt that
a food-sharing app should be premised on this analogy. Not only is it the case
that the lessor (donator) has basically no incentive to maintain the quality
of the food, but the lessee (recipient) may have no real way to evaluate the
quality, other than to trust the lessor. It may be obvious when the food has
spots of mold or smells expired, but it's not always that easy to tell.

------
Joeboy
Does it allow you to share your food with people who don't have iphones?

~~~
hackuser
That's a reason to support a project that puts smartphone productivity into
the hands of everyone; something like FirefoxOS perhaps:
[https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/os/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/os/)

~~~
eurleif
It's a reason to develop mobile Web apps instead of native mobile apps.

------
Killah911
Why is it an iphone app instead of a web app?

~~~
mkaziz
Hypothetical- would you be more comfortable hosting an iOS-owning stranger or
just someone who has access to a website? I feel more comfortable with the
former (not least because of the implied affluence) but I wonder what HN's
opinion is.

~~~
dublinben
That's incredibly discriminatory, but at least you recognize it.

------
xsmasher
I predict that some good Samaritans with iPhones will collect food with the
app and redistribute it to the needy; that's a great supplement to soup
kitchens which must operate at a much larger scale and are not interested in
5-10 servings of anything.

I also predict that opportunists will take advantage of the free food and
resell it, a la People Behaving Badly:

[http://news.kron4.com/features/people-that-act-greedy-and-
ta...](http://news.kron4.com/features/people-that-act-greedy-and-take-from-
the-needy-behave-badly/)

------
jmzbond
I love this concept, and the general potential of the sharing economy to
minimize waste though. I'm curious, what are the legal barriers to sharing
food that you have come across or anticipate?

Perhaps it's different, but with prepared food, I've read about a lot of
challenges starting up because of all the liability issues. I've heard of
www.leftoverswap.com, www.shareyourmeals.net, www.feedingforward.com. There's
also a SF-based nonprofit called FoodRunners that does donations and claims to
be protected under a Good Samaritan clause, but I know that when I asked my
old company if it was OK (i.e., sufficient legally to make them feel
comfortable donating the tons of corporate lunches leftover), they couldn't
actually find this clause.

In any case, I'm fully supportive because I believe incidents that do happen
will be few and far in between and people are rarely intentional, but just
wondering how hard this will be to enact.

------
baby
This seems like an awesome idea. What about this though:

> You must be at least 17 years old to download this app.

> Frequent/Intense Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References

~~~
lucavibesmilan
Hi i'm Luca, one of the Ratatouille Developer. Apple have some strict
guidelines about communicating position of people or devices. After 3 rejected
submissione we have decided for our MVP this was the quicker way to have the
app in the app store.

~~~
pjc50
Another reason to do it as a web app not requiring anyone's permission.

I suppose if someone offers to share their homemade damson gin that would
count as "alcohol references" ...

~~~
prawks
In the US, would someone need a permit to distribute liquor like that? Seems
kind of like a grey area as it's not being sold?

------
mrtimo
Not trying to hijack, but I'm working on a complimentary idea, that is much
less developed. See the MVP:
[http://producebuddy.com](http://producebuddy.com)

It is an app that updates weekly with the sale prices of fruits and vegetables
in your area (currently phoenix only). This will be most useful for Walmart
price matchers -- which is actually a surprising number of people.

------
Rafert
Sounds similar to a site we have in the Netherlands:
[http://www.thuisafgehaald.nl/](http://www.thuisafgehaald.nl/) ("collected
from home", which is a pun on the well known site thuisbezorgd.nl or
"delivered to your home", the Dutch version of takeaway.com)

------
dnewms
To the creator, let me know if you have q's --
[http://leftoverswap.com/](http://leftoverswap.com/) was a fun project for my
buddy and I that seems to have brought up the exact same criticisms.

------
rootuid
I don't believe this will succeed, but props for trying, best of luck.

------
personlurking
Cool app, even though my friends and I usually give extra food to each other
(if one of us is going to travel, for example).

~~~
lucavibesmilan
It's the typical use that we have thought about Ratatouille App

------
machbio
Exactly the kind of app that is going to change the world for Good... Thanks
to the Developer for making this happen..

------
iancarroll
until someone poisons the food or does something bad to it.

~~~
arbitrage
Murderers have used craigslist to find victims. Abusing an app in the manner
which you describe (which I think somehow is incredibly unlikely to happen in
reality), isn't necessarily a show stopper, as we have learned before.

------
lvs
Are you going out of town and looking for someone to rob your apartment? This
is the app for you.

Nice thought, but you can alternatively just drop your stuff off at a
neighborhood shelter. That's it. No iPhone needed.

~~~
amirmc
> _" Are you going out of town and looking for someone to rob your apartment?
> This is the app for you."_

So is _every_ check-in based app or _anything_ that geotags your posts/photos.
This is not news.

Also, it's quite likely that most people are predictably at work between the
hours of 10am-4pm so there's no app nor geotagging to guess when a house may
be empty.

