
Why I Quit Ordering from Uber-For-Food Startups - prostoalex
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/the-food-delivery-start-up-you-havent-heard-of/414540/?single_page=true
======
jvm
This is nearly incoherent… He doesn't order from Sprig because it's too
efficient? I mean you are welcome to value whatever you want, but if you're
against efficiency you will probably have a problem with nearly every for-
profit business; all his complaints are at least as true of any restaurant
that hires full time employees.

> In the hypothetical future we can label Full Josephine, many people don’t
> cook, but some people cook a lot more, and better, than ever before, and all
> of us, cooks and non-cooks, derive pleasure from that."

Minus rhetorical flourishes, this is identical to the Sprig future, with the
difference that in the case of Sprig the cooks are compensated with full-time
employment rather than the joy of cooking. It sounds like the author doesn't
really value that, but I bet a lot of Sprig employees do!

The actual future: Some people cook for Josephine, some work for Sprig, some
work for traditional restaurants, some people eat the above food, lots of
people still make their own food.

~~~
gozo
I think his "objection" is similar to mine in that technology supposedly
promises that everyone can be a producer, but instead we are getting even more
centralization. We see the same thing in technology, were instead of open
standards we get e.g. Facebook. Or in startups were the prospects of actually
competing with one of the larger players is almost theoretical at this point.

A lot of people are fine with living for the moment hoping they can make it
rich before opportunities shift. Others think more about what future they want
to see.

~~~
rayiner
Why does anyone think technology is something other than a force enabling
centralization and consolidation? In a free market, more efficient
organizations will win out over less efficient ones. Bigger organizations
leverage economies of scale and win out over smaller ones. Organizations this
keep getting bigger until diseconomies of scale balance economies of scale.
Technology reduces diseconomies of scale, enabling organizations to keep
getting more efficient at large sizes.

Hence, Amazon versus the mom and pop shop, Uber versus an independent cab
company, Sprig versus the local Chinese delivery, etc. The future is megacorps
and technology will enable them.

~~~
nitrogen
_Why does anyone think technology is something other than a force enabling
centralization and consolidation?_

Because decentralization and democratization were central to the vision we saw
in the 1990s when we discovered the public Internet that universities had been
building. The early days _were_ all about independence and progress.

~~~
rayiner
I find that ironic because communication technology plainly facilitates
centralization. Society was less centralized and grass roots democracy was
much more important when people had to ride a horse all day to vote and you
didn't have national media markets. The Internet in comparison is going to be
what enables World Government.

~~~
nitrogen
It's definitely ironic. Speaking for my childhood self, I projected my own
naive optimism for the future and Star Trek-fueled faith in humanity onto my
visions of the Internet's potential.

Needless to say, I overestimated human nature and underestimated the inertia
of trillion dollar institutions. I still want that original vision of a
decentralized digital utopia, I just don't think much of it is achievable at a
population-wide scale.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Speaking for my childhood self, I projected my own naive optimism for the
> future and Star Trek-fueled faith in humanity onto my visions of the
> Internet 's potential._

Hey, I did the same thing and that's why I _agree_ with 'rayiner. Star Trek's
utopian future is United Federation of Planets, which is a central world(s)
government.

------
xivzgrev
He paints full Josephine in great color, but that's exactly what Airbnb is -
connecting visitors with people want to host people in their homes. Airbnb
doesn't dictate the experience beyond some guidelines, they don't hire hosts,
etc.

But

We see Airbnb enabling bad actors on its platform, refusing to take action
against them, posting ads all over san Francisco to sink prop f - acting like
a mega Corp.

Josephine is not mega Corp, yet. But imagine if it became huge. I bet it'd
look more like sprig, and all the other mega corps, than the author would
like.

Pretty much the only wildly successful company I can think of that has not
ended up acting like a mega Corp is craigslist.

~~~
nitrogen
Craigslist has had some opposition due to its "holding hostage" of people's
submissions and shutting down useful third-party apps on a whim.

~~~
x0x0
I seem to recall mostly parasites who wanted to bootstrap their businesses off
craigslist's audience and data who where shocked, shocked! when craigslist
didn't agree to let them do so.

Craigslist is virtually unique in that they don't charge most users anything
and don't have any plans to do so, and I'm happy to see them defend their
platform despite its warts. They've hooked me up with 5 apartments, a SO, and
at least 3 jobs.

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
Padmapper was the main one, right?

What's tricky there is that they provided a wonderful user interface, but used
Craigslist data. Since CL refuses to update their UI (and for potentially good
reason), I find it hard to justify a monopoly on displaying their data. The
links still go back to the CL listings, unless I'm misunderstanding the
dispute. I fail to see what is unethical about that.

~~~
x0x0
[http://www.padlister.com/](http://www.padlister.com/)

Let's not pretend padmapper was just making a nice interface; the clear goal
was to use postings from CL, get people to use padmapper, then migrate them to
padlister. Where they charge fees, with more fees on the way the second they
get any business leverage, given they are/where a VC funded company.

------
halayli
He has no proof what's going on behind the scenes, and jumped into conclusion
and project a holier than thou attitude just because.

People that write such articles should realize that they can cause a lot of
damage to businesses. If you don't have significant evidence that people
working for such companies are not treated well and are unhappy then go do
your homework first, otherwise it's just unethical and irresponsible to
publish your intuitions and project them as facts.

~~~
woah
I don't think that reporters should feel that they are responsible for the
companies they write about having a good PR day.

~~~
drumdance
No, but they should at least gather basic facts.

------
mastermojo
I see a future where a much smaller percentage of people cook. Roughly
equivalent in percentage and frequency as adults that would play a musical
instrument or tend to a garden.

Right now a lot of people cook meals not just because they enjoy to do so, but
because having someone else cook healthy meals for you all the time is too
expensive. A "Full Sprig" society can hopefully leverage specialization and
economies of scale the same way that people no longer keep hens for eggs.

Yes, the feel-good-local-farm(kitchen)-to-table aspect is lost, but most
people don't care about that.

~~~
debaserab2
I very much doubt that. Cooking is a part of every culture. It's more than
just being about a healthy meal. For many people it defines who you are. The
on-demand technophiles are not representative of the majority.

~~~
cooper12
Seriously. This is coming from a forum that believes that Soylent is the way
of the future.

~~~
hellbanner
A programmer told me that after 2 months on Soylent, he "Missed the feeling of
eating" and returned to eating regularly.

Evolution took a long time to evolve our DNA. It doesn't change easily.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I tried Joylent (a version of Soylent made in EU) for few weeks and I too
"missed the feeling of eating" a little, but I recognized it as just a habit.
The same kind of habit browsing HN is, with similar procrastination values.

~~~
hellbanner
One of those habits developed over millenia to ensure the survival of the
species. Eating is the opposite of procrastination.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Tell that to me when I'm eating to reduce stress caused by work I have to do
that I can't make myself to.

Like all habits developed over millenia, just because something worked back
then, doesn't mean it makes sense now. We had our cost/benefit evaluation
slowly tuned to the environment that rapidly (i.e. over last few thousand of
years) ceased to exist. A lot of problems we have with each other can be
explained in terms of executing adaptations we had from the time where
survival involved hunting, and not filling out forms.

Not saying that normal eating is obsolete - just that arguments from nature
tend not to be too strong in general case.

~~~
hellbanner
Good point. I meant eating as in consumption (soylent or not) when comparing
to HN but I see what you mean.

------
stupidcar
For anyone who can't be bothered reading the self-indulgent, meandering
rubbish before he actually provides the explanation:

"I stopped ordering from Sprig back in the spring, because ... they sent me a
truly sub-par chicken sandwich."

~~~
paxtonab
I thought it was more about the fact that the sharing economy can either
create positive, meaningful interactions that connect neighbors and
neighborhoods, or it can turn your neighbors into faceless drones that you
only interact with via the touch of an app button.

I admit that the dystopian future the author sets out seems a little drastic,
but it does remind me of Jobs' "below the API" argument.

------
malandrew
FWIW the restaurants behind these actually do a lot better. Imagine you own a
restaurant. You serve lunch and dinner. You kitchen is utilized from 11 to 2
for lunch and from 6 to 10 for dinner. With these apps your kitchen now is
utilized before 11 prepping food for delivery for lunch and again from 2 to 6,
prepping food for dinner. You're now making more on your capital investments
and your kitchen staff is getting more hours. The people cooking the food are
the same as if you went to a restaurant and the people delivering are the same
that would be wait staff. If you didn't feel bad for these people before why
would you feel bad for them now because there is an app in front?

~~~
duncanawoods
I'd like to believe that but long-term, I expect the app is just a rent-
seeking gatekeeper between the restaurant and their customers. We can expect
the gatekeeper to turn the screw and make margins barely survivable
eliminating quality leaving only a few low cost supply chain optimisers.

We see the same pattern again and again. Small businesses should fight like
hell to keep a direct relationship with their customers.

~~~
edoloughlin
> just a rent-seeking gatekeeper between the restaurant and their customers

Couldn't agree more. I think this central to any discussion about the 'sharing
economy'. Uber et al claim to be disrupting established monopolies and their
marketing seeks to establish themselves as champions the free market. In
reality, they are seeking to build a new monopoly, where they control the
information about relationships in a system.

Memory fails me at the moment, but I remember hearing a piece on a podcast
recently (it might have been Radiolab) where they discussed how the 'live'
view presented by Uber was a prediction coming from their algorithms and that
no actual location data was available to the app on your phone until you
booked a ride. I thought it was ironic that the new darlings of the free
market were operating what was essentially a soviet-style central planning
system, albiet with a very modern gloss.

------
thejerz
Let me stand up for Sprig. They have, in my opinion, found the holy grail of
McDonalds meets Whole Foods. They are serving organic food from local farms,
made by local chefs, with the lowest carbon footprint of anyone -- all in a
form factor that people will actually use. That's why I favor their future
over that of Pizza Hut, Postmates, Uber Eats, and even Josephine. Instead of
looking for faults, I think they deserve a round of applause.

------
protomyth
Sadly, I'm guessing Josephine is illegal (well, the home cook part) in many
cities in the US. It's in the same grouping as paid dinner parties.

~~~
sithadmin
I'd venture to guess that it's illegal in _most_ cities in the US.

Legal codes requiring certain minimum standards exist for good reasons. Home-
scale kitchens are impossible to scale to commercial levels of quality and
service without cutting corners that can make food dangerous.

~~~
venomsnake
> Legal codes requiring certain minimum standards exist for good reasons.

And sometimes for bad reasons. Couple of examples - cooking meat to 160 F / 71
C, Nycity inventing dangers of sous vide. The whole zone thing. Food codes
sometimes grossly misinterpret or twist science. Or are made towards large
scale operation - you will almost certainly have contamination when cracking 1
000 000 eggs. But with basic chance of even having salmonella in the egg
1/20000 even very sloppily prepared breakfast will be safe.

~~~
zeroonetwothree
You must have never had salmonella poisoning. It's extremely unpleasant, and
I'd certainly take the trivial extra effort to lower the risk to 0.

~~~
jdminhbg
The effects of automobile accidents are also extremely unpleasant; how would
you rate your willingness to take the extra effort of not traveling to prevent
them?

~~~
Angostura
I'm willing to live in a society that mandates annual vehicular safety checks
and seatbelts.

~~~
protomyth
A lot of states in the US do not mandate annual vehicular safety checks.

------
orthoganol
In case anyone associated with Sprig reads this, I had written you guys off a
while ago because I can't stand landing pages that do weird/ annoying
scrolling. I just checked and it's still like that... please just make it a
natural-scrolling page and I promise I'll give you a shot (instead of
SpoonRocket which also does healthy).

~~~
adminprof
Agreed. Please leave scrolling alone. It's the one constant we have in the
world of unpredictable interfaces.

------
gdubs
Tangentially, Mark Bittman's food posts on the New York Times, like 'The
Minimalist' \- as well as his books - changed my life. His philosophy is that
we do have time in our lives to cook, and that there can be great value in
doing so. Personally, I find it to be a nice balance to being so heavily
involved with technology all day.

~~~
prezjordan
I've been looking for something like this in my life, but what's a good place
to start learning how to cook?

I'm a young single dude in his 20s, and the most I can do is boil some pasta.
I work from home so time is not really a huge issue, I just don't know where
to start. Any tips?

~~~
hellbanner
There are 3 kinds of foods I make:

Sautees, Stews, Bakes

* Sautees: *

Oil your pan. Personally I use coconut oil & a cast-iron pan but do your
research and find what works for you & your budget.

Start heating your pan (low, 25%)

Chop your toughest vegetables first. For me these are sweet potatoes & carrots
& beets. Many recipes online say start with gaplic & onions but I've found
that they burn too easily.

I slice the tough veggies into slices so that a lot of surface area covers the
pan. Experiment.

Throw the tough veggies into pan, turn heat up between 35-50%.

While they cook, prepare "softer" vegetables - Broccoli, Brussel sprouts,
Ginger (great for circulation!). Chop and throw in.

As the tougher vegetables soften (6+ minutes), throw in Kale or Spinach for
vitamins & flavor. These will shrink significantly so you may have to load
multiple handfuls into the pan in sequence.

As everything cooks down softly (sample it as you feel the veggies getting
soft), add in: Eggs and/or Meat.

If you do eggs I recommend pouring into a bowl, mixing yolk & white, adding
spices (cumin, paprika, salt, cinnamon) first. Definitely add spice to your
meat - and cutting your meat will help you gauge its Done-ness well.

Cook until done, stir throughout every 20-45 seconds or so so nothing burns.
Add oil if needed to avoid burning your pan. Be liberal on this to prevent
burnt food and hardware.

When it's all ready, turn your fire off and use an oven mitt to grip the
skillet. Use a spoon to pour into a bowl. Let cool for 30 seconds and enjoy!

* Stews: *

Same principle as before - prepare heat, start with the tough ones.

Boil your water in a pot. Add in lentils & quinoa - these each take ~20+
minutes. Let boil for a few minutes while you chop tougher vegetables.

Through in the tough veggies, turn your fire down to medium. Add spices.

Add greens - I recommend mustard greens, bok choy for flavor and vitamins.

Drop a stick of butter in to add some much needed fat and improve the
consistency. Or, mix tomatoes in after cooking to thicken the consistency.

Make sure you use more water than you need -- better to use too much than burn
your food.

20-30 minutes later, you've got yourself a nice meal. I use 1 cup of lentils +
1 cup of quinoa or oats at at ime, with all the veggies & eggs & meat from the
sauteeing, you'll have plenty of food for at least a day.

* Granola Bakes: *

Open your oven, clean it. Remove burnt chunks and food. Close the door &
preheat your oven to 325. Before this started, you shopped bulk and filled
mason jars with nuts of your choosing to avoid wasteful & unhealthy plastic
bags. I recommend: Excess Peanuts or Virigina Peanuts. A massive Oat base.
Walnuts, Pecans, Almonds. Pour all of these onto a baking sheet inside of a
baking pan. Pour several spoons of honey. Add salt. Add cinnamon. Mix around.

Stick in oven, cook for 30 minutes, remove. Enjoy.

I pretty much live off of these meals. Actual ingredients vary with the season
and mood but the principles apply. Hopefully you can follow along and try
these! Vary spices for more variety. You can freeze food to store for a long
time - I recommend freezing half of a huge stew and fridging the rest to save
yourself time.

~~~
optionalparens
No offense, but I would venture your food does not taste so good and a lot of
what you are saying sounds like someone who is grossly inexperienced. Burning
garlic and onions is the sign you are not a very good cook, for instance.
That's cooking 101 and should never happen. That's like burning scrambled eggs
- easy, but a sign someone is a very bad cook.

There's a very good reason chefs generally do things in certain orders, and
it's not just consistency and cook time. You did not "figure out" what
billions of people before you could not. A lot of the reasons why people do
not cook things as you describes have to do with basic chemistry. Chemistry is
what you are really neglecting given your 3 categories - things like
caramelization, absorbing flavors, catalysts, reactions. Not all your choices
are bad (cast iron is great), but many have consequences for flavor (coconut
oil is tasty, but strong, and has a high smoke point) and others are just head
scratching.

I don't even know where to start with your cooking technique, but let's
discuss sautés. Firstly, you do not have to cook everything together, at the
same time, same temperature, all mixed by the end. I know this sounds counter-
intuitive, but some of the reasons around cook time and temperature are there
precisely so things blend together well. Other reasons include removing things
like water, salts, bitter tastes, etc. from food. For example, you can
actually often cook your meat first to some level such as a simple browning.
This will season the pan nicely, allow you to do things like sear your meat
correctly, and provide some tasty fat to add flavor to your veggies while they
cook. Later, you can add back the meat to finish it off and make sure it's
safely cooked to the proper temperature. Your way of cooking meat is not
always wrong, but for many dishes it will often have consequences - soggy
meat, veggies overdone, meat not safely cooked, lack of flavor from fat, no
sear, textural issues, and so on.

Pretty much the same applies to stews. For one, many if not most stews taste
infinitely better if you caramelize a lot of the veggies directly in your
cooking pot, then pour your liquid base on. Never mind you seem to be making
stews generally without any concept of stocks and using things like butter as
thickening agents (shudder). Too much water is definitely not a good thing for
stew and something that is not easy to fix. Thickening stews is somewhat of an
art, but there are also many well-known ways that don't involve what you
describe.

I've already written a novel, but I highly suggest you buy one of those
textbooks from a cooking school (CIA for example). You may look down on
professional texts, but cooking is one area where learning the academics are
very important. While there's always room for tweaking and personal touches in
cooking, completely ignoring cooking techniques will get you no where. I am
sure your food makes you happy, but if you want to challenge yourself and
grow, you should really do as I have suggested and buy some books. I do not
mean to harshly criticize you, but rather you seem someone interested in
cooking that could maybe enjoy it more but lacks some basic knowledge to be a
better cook.

~~~
hellbanner
My food actually takes delicious and frequently receives compliments at
potlucks. However, I am interested in improving and will research carmelizing
& stocks. Thank you for your support.

~~~
prezjordan
Parent's comment was a little aggressive, but thank you very much for this
advice!

------
lightcatcher
I'm surprised HN is so against this article. I'm unhappy with the idea of
"full Sprig" or "full Josephine". Furthermore, a "full Sprig" or "full
Josephine" society is impossible with their current business models as I
highly doubt their contractors have enough money to use their own services,
especially if they get sick and have to deal with their uninsured medical
costs. The lack of regulations around these services is just a way for the
company to transfer more liabilities onto their contractors (cough employees)
and reduce costs for themselves and their customers.

I think all of these startups are "solving all the problems of being twenty
years old, with cash on hand"[0] and do so by taking advantage (and
perpetuating) massive income inequality.

[0] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/27/change-the-
worl...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/27/change-the-world)

~~~
TulliusCicero
> "solving all the problems of being twenty years old, with cash on hand"[0]

Yeah, it's not like people with kids ever get take-out or delivery, right?

Maybe this kind of issue is more relevant to affluent young people, but it's
hardly irrevelant to others. There's nothing wrong with targeting a luxury
market. Even middle class people can afford some luxuries.

------
patio11
There's something utterly perverse with the logic that "Some people are
getting left-behind by the current economy; _definitely definitely don 't find
them new, value-creating jobs_ because that will spirit-murder them."

~~~
throwaway2048
There is also something utterly preverse in pretending exploitative "sharing
economy" companies create the kind of "value" that should be encouraged,
especially as it displaces less exploitative companies.

Which of course is a propagation of the very thing you claim they so nobly
rescue these lost souls from!

~~~
aianus
> especially as it displaces less exploitative companies.

You're joking, right? Taxi drivers are practically indentured servants who
begin each shift $100+ in the hole to some asshole rent-seeking capitalist who
happened to buy the medallion at the right time 40 years ago.

~~~
throwaway2048
There is no doubt taxi cab arrangements are often exploitive, but this article
is not about Uber. The "especially as" portion of my statement was in
reference to circumstances where this model isn't just pushing out equally
exploitative relationships.

But even that being so in Uber's case, why are people championing the
replacement of one abusive relationship with another?

~~~
aianus
What's abusive about Uber? You drive whenever you want and their commission
structure means their interests are aligned with yours and you can never lose
money on a shift (at least not to Uber).

------
datapolitical
There's another option in between Sprig and Josephine that's both a bit slower
and far more "human" in the way the author wants.

Doordash brings you food from local restaurants (the same ones you eat at when
you go out with your friends). It costs a little more than sprig, and it takes
a couple more minutes.

But the food is individualized and made to order. It's familiar, made by the
human beings you can go talk to the next time you're in there during a night
out.

In short, it's the perfect in-between. And given the tone of the article, not
all that surprising the author totally ignored it.

------
OJFord
Sounds like the most hyperbolic article ever.

"Sprig" as I see it isn't likely to replace/centralise all of cooking. It's
nothing more than an easier 'takeaway', a 'cometo' if you will.

This sort of thing's been around for years in the UK: HungryHouse, JustEat,
precursors to Deliveroo, etc. - I was shocked recently in the US when I
couldn't find an equivalent (I guess I didn't search long enough to find
Sprig, or it's not yet widespread enough).

For me at least, but I'm pretty sure for most people, HH or JE is like the
'one stop' place you can go to choose a takeaway. I don't have to think "I
want Chinese food, let me find a Chinese place that delivers", or "I want
pizza today, let me find a pizza takeaway site" \- it's all in one place.

But that certainly doesn't mean that all my food comes from a "centralised"
place, and I never cook...

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> This sort of thing's been around for years in the UK: HungryHouse, JustEat,
> precursors to Deliveroo, etc.

You are correct, and those services just wrap what's been around for even
longer - the local curry house that keeps a couple of moped drivers and a
telephone operator on staff. It's a fairly old-fashioned business model.

~~~
keithpeter
Glasgow, 1980s was my first introduction to delivered fast food - people I was
staying with phoned (POTS) local pizza/chippy for pizzas salad and chips. Came
in 15 mins. Paid (cash) at bottom of the close.

------
jonnathanson
Can we please stop describing mildly unsettling thoughts about technology as
"dystopian?"

You are gaining convenience at the theoretical expense of small businesses at
some point in the future. This is hardly the stuff of Orwellian nightmares.

[In fairness, I assume the "dystopian" subheading was chosen by an editor, and
not by the writer himself (his own phrase: 'hardly utopian').]

------
sbilstein
I think a lot of these SF-based food startups are filling a need that exists
because of SF's fairly bad model of urbanization. Things are kinda dense, but
not really, and it's very hard to get around.

If SF was a more spread out city like Sacramento or Houston, driving to a
grocery store or a Chipotle or an inexpensive eatery would be trivial to get
your food. If it was much more dense (and easy to get around) like Manhattan
or Bangkok or Tokyo, it would be trivial to get prepared food at any price
since restaurants and street side cooks of all kinds can effectively get to
dense districts to sell food.

~~~
Reedx
Yeah, that's true. Parking is really a pain for most restaurants. Basically...
good luck.

But grocery stores (at least Safeway / Trader Joes / Whole Foods) generally
have attached parking and aren't too bad to park at. Though I still try to go
during off-peak hours.

------
mbrock
All this fetishizing of authentic human connections is making my misanthropy
flare up.

------
tracker1
I really like the Josephine concept... mainly because I like "home cooking" I
like to cook too.

That said, I think that delivery services for food itself will probably become
more common too. If restaurants could just make food, and ping an uber-like
service for a driver to do the pickup/delivery it could work out better. Some
restaurants aren't busy every day, being able to combine nearby pickups and
deliveries for multiple restaurants could be a huge success.

I do think it would take more than the combined infrastructure of grubhub +
uber though. Simply because orchestration on grubhub is usually
limited/partial menus, and the deliveries themselves can go from simple to
complicated... living in a gated apartment (where there's a separate gate to
the walk-up entrance, etc) makes deliveries difficult for someone who hasn't
been there.

I'd love to see restaurants able to share delivery drivers... and delivery
drivers able to stay active, when a single location isn't busy, another may
be, and to top that, it would allow more places to offer local delivery.

------
Aqueous
This is ridiculous. In what macroeconomic transformation have we ever landed
on just one mechanism of production or distribution? There exists room for
both Sprig and Josephine - much like there exists room for both fast casual
and fine dining, and for both Uber and taxis, and brick-and-mortar book stores
and Amazon (who just opened a brick-and-mortar book store). There is often
displacement and pressure to compete, but most of the time we don't
collectively make a singular choice, eradicating the other choice totally.
There are over 300 million people in this country who all have to eat every
day (leaving aside whether they do or don't). What are the chances that all of
them are going to land on the same way to buy or prepare food? Zero, just like
it is right now.

------
bambax
So the author doesn't like Uber-for-food but loves Airbnb-for-food: is that so
much different?

Why does he not learn to cook instead, and meet people on the market where he
would go buy ingredients?

------
bencollier49
This is fascinating. I am waiting to read with interest what happens when
these startups engage with UK catering hygeine laws.

------
sgryzko
This reminds me of a recent interview with Pete Trainor:
[https://soundcloud.com/uxpodcast/112-steve-portigal-pete-
tra...](https://soundcloud.com/uxpodcast/112-steve-portigal-pete-trainor-
anjan-chatterjee#t=19:52)

"...things should be possibly be made more complex or more complicated for
people to make them smarter and to make them happier... it's flying in the
face of quite a lot of the wisdom that we've been building up for the last
15-20 years in usability."

I think one of the author's points is that he appreciates that Josephine
actually satisfies a higher level of Maslow's hierarchy than Sprig not in
spite of its lower level of convenience, but because of it.

1) Uber For Food: Immediate satisfaction of fatty, salty food.

2) Sprig: Higher-level satisfaction of food better for long-term health.

3) Josephine: Slower, more conscious choice; face-to-face connection with your
neighbors.

------
cbr

        Sprig-type operations drain agency and expertise out of
        the world. They centralize, aiming to build huge hubs
        with small spokes; their innermost mechanisms are hidden.
        They depend on humans behaving as interchangeable units
        of labor.
    

Seems like you could make the same criticism of grocery stores.

------
salimmadjd
OT I would NOT recommend any investors from investing in the uber-for-food
space. Mainly because these businesses will ultimately parallel the
competitiveness of the restaurant business. So at the end, you're ultimately
investing in a restaurant chain business and not an Uber-like business.

~~~
frozenport
Another way to think of it is like a racket, if you don't join you suffer.
Once everybody joins the customer base is the same. In this way, it makes for
a good although distasteful(maybe) investment.

------
galago
I cook all my own food. I think it takes longer to deal with ordering it and
having it delivered than it does to prepare--if you just want basic healthy
dishes. A lot of the HN crew came from upper-middle class families, so they
didn't learn this from their parents.

~~~
aianus
My mom cooked all of our meals growing up -- you could probably count on two
hands the number of times I even set foot in a restaurant before leaving for
college.

But I could tell even as a child that spending an hour and a half cooking and
cleaning every day doesn't make any sense when you're earning $40/h each and
takeout for three costs $20 and requires no clean-up.

------
aaronmhatch
Is it just me, or was that one difficult article to read? It's almost like he
was told by the Atlantic to make this a long-form piece just because it's the
Atlantic, so he tried to write an unnecessarily long and patch-worked
narrative.

------
lmartel
It's clear that the author wants me to dislike Sprig and like Josephine, but
after reading the entire article I honestly can't articulate a single reason
why other than an abstract feeling of wholesomeness. This reads like satire.

------
Splines
Personally I can never get behind any of these food startups, just because I
find that they offer extremely little value.

Sort of like grocery home-delivery, after awhile you realize the premium
you're paying for something you can easily do yourself.

I feel like this class of startups are needlessly attempting to add services
on top of existing things that people can do themselves for much cheaper.

------
wonnage
> A harried courier extracts your meal from a fat insulated bag; you say
> “thank you,” close the door, and feel bad for a moment about the differences
> between your lives.

People have been delivering food since before tech startups ~~~disrupted~~~
delivery, but enjoy that self-congratulatory pity

~~~
zyxley
> People have been delivering food since

For the urbanites among the ancient Romans, food vendors (and even things like
grab-and-go street vendors and fast food restaurants) were a normal part of
life, since their apartments generally didn't have personal kitchens.

I can't find a source for it, but I have to imagine they had at least some
personal food delivery services.

~~~
brc
The wood fired pizza (and oven design) dates to roman times.

~~~
virtualritz
No, that was just flat bred, aka focaccia.

Pizza only came to be much later, when the tomato got introduced to Europe,
from South America. And when people eventually found out that many varieties
of tomatoes are not only not poisonous but also well tasting. :)

~~~
cbr
"Pizza" doesn't have to include tomatoes. For example, "pizza bianca".

------
zedadex
> We don’t know. We don’t get to know. We’re just here to press the button.

I mean, I'm sure you could find out.

------
peterhartree
> They depend on humans behaving as interchangeable units of labor.

This isn’t a new problem...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q030WNZvXrA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q030WNZvXrA)

(Clock scene from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927))

------
alaskamiller
Trying way, way too hard.

On demand food businesses are just catering companies. Catering companies have
always existed. Bolt on pizza delivery magic, paired with remote-button access
from your little black mirror that constantly tracks your coordinates/altitude
and now it's a daily faustian dilemma weighing too heavy?

Do you want another app to help you with that too?

From the article the author's main point is this:

 _Sprig-type operations drain agency and expertise out of the world. They
centralize, aiming to build huge hubs with small spokes; their innermost
mechanisms are hidden. They depend on humans behaving as interchangeable units
of labor._

He just doesn't like that a store exists to cater to his demand. How gauche to
have to interact with a store that's not a store!

He then wax romantically about some weird hippie future where it's much more
fun to have your neighbors cooking for each other like one big timeless block
party.

That's called a marketplace. An unregulated, cottage protected, open
marketplace! That must be better better than a store but as lovely as that
sounds to mingle with a range of people to get a bowl of pho or some sandwich
one has to face the fact that every marketplace ends up centralized.

Every one.

An open marketplace is a winners take all video game.

Look at eBay and its class of power-sellers that dropship or flip their
Alibaba account. Look at Fiverr and its class of power-users that end up
dominating the search results.

You just end up dealing with the most polished store for the sake of what
being a store brings to the table. The consistency, quality, and ease.

So wait, really what's the point here? What are we really trying to discover
and realize about ourselves today? That treating people as interchangeable
economic units is bad but this hippie fuzzy feeling way is less bad? As
opposed to just cooking yourself or going to a restaurant?

Maybe this is just a promoted native post. Who knows. But it notches up
another line about how frustrating annoying Berkeley and its residents are.

For extra credit contrast this piece to another post today by New York Times
on the culture of GoFundMe community and a response by nostrademons

Per
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10526447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10526447)

 _On the whole, I think this is a good trend - it makes the economy more
efficient, it encourages people to celebrate diversity instead of shunning it,
and it 's how the upper classes have operated for a long time, which is the
source of a major power imbalance where corporations & rich people feel
entitled to ask for anything and then working-class people feel ashamed to
refuse._

I hope you take that, stuff it in your pipe and smoke it, guy.

------
GrinningFool
I'm thinking maybe the author should get his thoughts in order and try again.
That read like a collection of partially conceived ideas - it was a difficult
read.

------
kamilszybalski
I absolutely love this idea! I thought to myself - "cooked by people for
people" as a good tag line

------
amelius
Funny thing is, I'd rather have an API for cooking me meals than an API for
driving me home (Uber/Google car). Because in the latter case, when I come out
of the office, I still need to spend X minutes in a car, then spend Y minutes
in the kitchen. Whereas in the former case, my dinner is being cooked _while_
I'm driving home, so I'll need to spend only X.

------
tsudot
Don't you need a license to sell cooked food? How do FDA regulations work on
such kind of things?

------
tequila_shot
Any experiences with Postmates? I keep ordering with them everyday and things
are great so far.

------
scottmcdot
Is there a Josephine-equivalent in Melbourne?

