

Munchery Is Trying to Reinvent The Personal Chef, And Early Signs Are Promising - tt
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/04/munchery-is-trying-to-reinvent-the-personal-chef/

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qeorge
At my shop in Raleigh, NC, we order lunch delivery once a week from a local,
home-based cook for _$8/person_ (sandwich, side, drink). It's our favorite day
of the week now, and one of our most productive because everyone eats together
in the office or the park next door.

Its so much healthier, cheaper, and easier than any other option. She just
emails us the menu on Monday morning and we all pick what we want and email it
back. Couldn't be easier.

Point being: I think a lot of people want to buy this, and would if only it
was easy to connect with local cooks (a friend referred us to Thao, or we'd
have never known about her). ZeroCater is a great idea as well, but I really
like the aspect of buying home cooked food from a local person vs. a
restaurant because its cheaper, usually healthier, and its the closest thing
to getting a home-cooked meal from my Mom.

(Sidebar: anyone in Raleigh, do yourself a favor and check out Thao Beck at
<http://www.lunchboxnmore.com/>. Just shoot her an email and say you'd like to
get the menu next week and she'll take it from there [or email me and I'll be
happy to introduce you]. I can't recommend her highly enough, especially for
companies. Here's a couple favs I had to photograph:
<http://imgur.com/a/v80kd>)

~~~
prawn
Don't want to detract from your recommendation but just piggyback on the price
remark - the guys in my office buy sandwich supplies at the start of the week
and do four days worth of two sandwiches each. $10-12pp for the week. It's
pretty social too as everyone preps and eats together.

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zem
the sort of casual home-based cooking for others as a small enterprise works
well in india (any big city where people flock for work has tons of people
working to keep them fed). however, in the usa i believe commercial kitchen
requirements would make it a very high-overhead enterprise.

~~~
shabble
I came across something about this a little while ago, specifically the
Dabbawalla/Tiffin[1] industry in Indian cities. The organisation and
effectiveness of the system is quite astounding, especially given how ad-hoc
and decentralised it all is. I can't seem to find the original article I'm
thinking of, but there's one by the NY Times[2] that looks ok.

My recollection seems to tally with the WP numbers, with hundreds of thousands
of deliveries a day, with less than 1 in a million mistakes, despite a multi-
party transport network and widespread illiteracy (no written addresses!)

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala>

[2]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/business/worldbusiness/29...](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/business/worldbusiness/29lunch.html?_r=1)

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potatolicious
This is awesome, I can't believe it took me this long to hear about it. Too
bad, since I'm moving away from SF in two weeks. Gah.

There is a _gigantic_ market for "tasty, healthy, delivery" that is almost
entirely untapped right now. I've been trying to pull it off myself (mostly
ordering LOTS of veggie dishes and mixing in with the stereotypically
absurdly-sized meat dishes that delivery is known for, and spreading over
multiple meals).

Best of luck to these folks.

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trvlngwlbry
For anyone else wondering what "mofo" is (see the article's screenshot of the
daily push notification), its full name, Mofongo, shows up here:
[https://www.munchery.com/menus/mofo-with-shrimp-marinara-
sau...](https://www.munchery.com/menus/mofo-with-shrimp-marinara-sauce)

It sounds pretty good, too. The abbreviation caught me off guard though.

Edit: Mofo is actually a spin on Mofongo, not necessarily the same.

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loudin
This looks great, and while I feel the market for local, healthy dinner is
large, the price points are too high. $18 - $20 is very expensive. I don't
think I've ever paid over $15/person for takeout and even those times are
infrequent.

It's a well-executed idea, just really expensive right now.

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forgot_password
Are there any legal issues here? Aren't these chefs acting as a restaurant and
wouldn't they need a license?

~~~
tt
Indeed there are. Our chefs have business licenses, ServSafe certification,
and food reseller permits.

Regardless of legality, there are food safety issues. I wrote about how the
traditional peer to peer doesn't work for food:
<http://blog.munchery.com/2011/11/pro-to-peer-a-new-paradigm/>

~~~
shabble
It seems like there's a much greater scope for casual/ad-hoc delivery than
production, based on the safety/certification issues. Of course, there are
still potential risks with poorly trained/equipped transport workers letting
your food get too warm|cold|stale, etc.

I was thinking a little while ago about how we're almost at the point of
making the digital timer pizza-box from _Snow Crash_ a reality -- or in my
scheme, something more useful, like a data logging thermometer.

It might be a little clunky still, but if you established some sort of ongoing
service, an upfront purchase/loan/amortised lifespan device might make it
practical to have a little temp + humidity + realtime clock with bluetooth/nfc
comms to talk to your phone when your food gets delivered. And you have a
solid audit trail if anything turns out dodgy.

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tylerlh
Looking forward to you delivering in Mountain View! Our office is stoked.

