
Josephine is closing its doors - szermer
https://blog.josephine.com/josephine-is-winding-down-d1a4feb5837e
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michael_storm
> We will also be sending our cooks off with a transition packet, which will
> include their business data, customer contact info (for those who opt-in),
> alternative business proposals and recommendations, tool/service
> recommendations for replacing our platform functionality, and other general
> resources. We hope that these personalized packets, along with community-run
> versions of our cook community forums and groups, will be a stepping stone
> for folks who would like to continue making income through their cooking
> skills.

That is actually really impressive. I hope other companies have the
forethought and compassion to remember that their responsibilities lie with
everyone who comes to depend on them -- not just those to whom they have a
legal duty.

~~~
NamTaf
I agree. That shows some real care about seeing their community propser in the
long term. I'd never really known anything about the company (maybe their
name, though I couldn't confirm) but this speaks volumes to the type of
company they likely were.

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crsv
Two sided market business are burn barrels for cash until you hit crazy scale.
The ambition and idea was great, but actually pulling this off at some
sustainable model would be incredibly difficult with all the moving pieces.
Loved what they did around the brand, but the idea is so high on the
difficulty of execution scale, how this played out is unsurprising.

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dawhizkid
I like the idea but I think the food safety/perishabiliy/logistics challenge
is too much.

Personally I would like something like a “social buying” restaurant delivery
app, where you can vote on what you’d like made in a centralized kitchen and
then place an order to be delivered if whatever you voted on was chosen by
popular vote.

Recipe holders could submit recipes to be voted on and make a commission from
sales if their recipe is chosen.

~~~
s0rce
Don't restaurants already effectively do this? Although voting doesn't happen
in the traditional sense people will vote with their purchasing choices. The
restaurant will offer certain things on the menu and ones that don't get
ordered will likely get eliminated (assuming the restaurant wants to make
money). From what I've read most restaurants in America tend to offer many
choices compared to countries like Japan where much more specialized places
can prosper so your idea could be much more efficient but I'm not sure how
practical it is to get people to agree on anything.

~~~
dawhizkid
Not really. I mean this would be more like Top Chef on demand with no fixed
menu. There's an inventory of non-perishable/perishable ingredients available
in a commercial kitchen. If a lot of people want to order some meal then that
gets made with some scheduled delivery time.

Surprised no one's attempted the "Uber for whatever meal your heart desires
prepped by a personal chef." It'd be expensive, yes, but I could see that
being a luxury food delivery option that would be appealing to someone with
money but no personal chef.

~~~
chx
It simply can't be done on demand. I have first hand experience: I work with a
chef who spends a day to create a week's worth of meals for me but smaller
chunks are not feasible as you need to prep, cook etc and it takes hours --
even if some of the work can be done in parallel while one dish is cooking the
other can be prepared etc but still you just can't have a meal ready in 45
minutes after you click order. Quite a few meals actually need to be started
the previous day so the dish or parts of it can marinade / simmer / slow cook
/ set / etc overnight. (I think you meant private chef -- those are employed
by the super rich, a personal chef works for multiple clients.)

Also anyone like him will strive to have his schedule full for a few weeks
ahead.

So no, this is not Uberable. But, if you are in Vancouver and want good food,
drop me an email I will connect you with Michael :)

~~~
erikpukinskis
It can be done if you don’t let the client choose the meal or the delivery
moment. If the menu is chefs choice and designed for ease of production and
you deliver daily at a scheduled time, it can be done affordably.

There can be no “I’d like pad Thai in an hour and can you make it gluten
free?”

~~~
chx
But GP said

> Surprised no one's attempted the "Uber for whatever meal your heart desires
> prepped by a personal chef."

Where I presumed "Uber" meant "on demand right now".

Yes, daily at a scheduled time might work.

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alpb
It was good until it lasted.

Although it was a bit inconvenient, I had a chance to try out a few homemade
ethnic meals that I have no chance of finding in a restaurant. Eating
strangers’ meals was strange, but I bet it will become a thing in increasing
sharing economy.

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mceoin
Ouch. And they had just had a big win with their microkitchen bill passing the
California State Legislature:

[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB626)

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owenversteeg
Did it pass the Senate or just the House? I can't tell from that page.

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echan00
What's the difference between passing in senate and the house?

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myroon5
It needs to pass in both

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greatamerican
This is pretty shocking and sad. I really loved the idea of this company. I
don't see this as the 'end' of this idea.

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nasso
The site doesnt really explain what they did....

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gregschlom
I believe they allowed people to cook and sell meals in their neighborhood.

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nmeofthestate
...with an huge amount of touchy-feely "empowerment" messaging larded on top
of the whole thing.

~~~
Spivak
Well yeah, I don't expect every business to be 'Very Good Building &
Development Co.'. Why would you even start the business if you didn't buy into
all the touchy-feely stuff? It's not like there aren't better paying super
serious dev jobs out there.

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phyller
I had never heard of them before, the idea is really interesting to me. I went
to their website to see if there were any cooks in my area to see if it was
worth trying out. It looks like I have to sign up before I can even see any of
that :( I am skittish about giving out my contact information, I don't want to
deal with throwaway accounts either. I wonder how much growth they missed
because of that.

~~~
anitorosyan
Are you by chance in the Los Angeles area? If so maybe there are some of our
cooks in your zip code:
[https://www.dishdivvy.com/](https://www.dishdivvy.com/)

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hosh
Huh, interesting. I wonder what happened, after reading this:
[https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-
gr...](https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-
grab-86dfffc0be84) (Steve Yegge talking about joining Grab, and the meal-
delivery boom)

~~~
taneq
I wondered why Steve Yegge stopped blogging. I really enjoyed his old blog,
hopefully this will see him back at it!

~~~
praneshp
In the blog post your parent linked, he spoke about it.

"I have a lot of good stories saved up that I’d love to share. Google
corporate didn’t much care for my blogging, and even though they never
outright forbade it, I received a lot of indirect pressure from various VPs.
So eventually I stopped. Sad."

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gambiting
What was Josephine? I've looked at their homepage but I still have no idea
what they did. Was it a restaurant? That served home made food?

~~~
brazzy
Did you look at josephine.com, rather than blog.josephine.com? IMO the former
does well at explaining itself. The latter seems to be rather stupid in being
a pure social media thing.

~~~
gambiting
Ah, I actually didn't there was another "main" website - I just clicked on
"home" in the corner, and that only shows stories about food, not what
Josephine does. But now with this and other replies I can see it's a food
sharing-like service, thanks :-)

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aidenn0
I don't know what the final outcome was, but there was a charity that would
provide food for the homeless by having volunteers bring home-cooked
casseroles. After operating for over a decade, the county health board shut it
down because publicly serving food not made in a certified kitchen was
illegal.

I moved away from there, so never found out if they were able to resolve it,
but that wasn't that long ago and was a push in the opposite direction of what
Josephine would need.

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anitorosyan
Equally sad for this.. but Josephine is doing a great job handling the
transition. My company just launched in this space (DishDivvy) and are truly
appreciative of the work they've done on the legislative front, for bringing
opportunities to homecooks. We are working with their COOK alliance and making
sure AB 626 gets through the senate as successfully as it did the CA Assembly.

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dmode
My wife visited Israel and told me about the concept of Kibbutz. Since then I
have been thinking about it and it is such a great concept. May be someone can
borrow some aspects of the kibbutz and invent a business model. A big communal
kitchen for the neighborhood where professional chefs make food for the
community, but costs are kept low by households volunteering in prep work and
clean-up. Everyone subscribes to the communal kitchen like an HOA. Would be
great for the neighborhood community to better know each other and also access
healthy "home cooked" meals.

~~~
mooreds
Here in the USA I believe it's called co-housing. I have some friends who live
in such neighborhoods and they love it.

More here: [http://www.cohousing.org/](http://www.cohousing.org/)

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marcus_holmes
I coached two startup founders looking at this exact model (there were about
five founders plus one Startup Weekend team that attempted this all around the
same time). Josephine became my go-to "this appears to be working, let's try
and work out why..." model. I never could work it out.

Shame they couldn't get it to work. As far as I can see, the whole niche/model
is fubar'd. Good try, though, and great community attitude :)

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mooreds
Here's a take from the CEO of a competitor of Josephine:
[https://medium.com/@ashleycolpaart/saying-farewell-to-
joseph...](https://medium.com/@ashleycolpaart/saying-farewell-to-
josephine-7fbab778b2a3)

(full disclosure, I'm her co-founder.)

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wnissen
Dang. It seemed like a great thing, never became available in my neighborhood.
I know there are informal unpermitted food sellers all over the place, but
this seemed like a nice balance between getting ceviche from a random person
off Facebook (real example) and a full-up restaurant.

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tonydiv
Nooooooooo! I never managed to try the service but their team and mission was
awesome.

