> I had to solve this problem another way. I posted an ad on Craigslist see if any chef would make me a home cooked meal for $8 a plate. I got 70 responses in 24 hours. I thought “Wow! There are so many people in the Bay Area that are proud of their food and want to earn a living from it.”
I wonder how many thought less "I am proud of my food and want to make a living from it", but rather, "I have a stove and a cast iron pan, I'm no more likely to fuck this up than anyone else, and I need that $8 so I can eat something this weekend."
Also "Well actually I'm cooking [x] for 3 people already, making enough for 4 in exchange for that covering a good chunk of my ingredients is an excellent deal"
ooshma spoke about developing vision and having perseverance, a reminder that's often-needed especially for those of us actually the position of steering a startup. she spoke about finding product-market fit after years of trying. she spoke about the trials and tribulations of raising funding and how that isn't always a positive step forward. these seem to be common themes for many (most?) startups, and it was genuinely heartening for me to hear her story.
Looked into gobble which this article is about... $13.95 for each meal minimal 4 meal order??? I see limited revenue growth long term for them at those prices. The person that can afford that can also order take out any time they wish; or run into whole foods and buy a ready to cook meal for 30% cheaper.
I've used one of these types of services - I think they're for people who want to cook, but have more money than time. They don't want to spend time shopping, or planning meals - but they still want to use their kitchen and the fancy knives and cookware they bought.
It's sort of like a lego kit for your kitchen. You buy a box that comes with instructions and you assemble your Ahoy Matey Pirate Ship™. Compare to just buying a bucket of random lego blocks, or buying a pre-built ship-in-a-bottle.
There's definitely a target audience there, I just dunno how big it is, and it's probably limited to large cities.
Yea you have that right. And if they can convince a large percentage of these people to use them, they will (hopefully) slowly start heading down-market where I'll be waiting for them ;).
It follows well enough. The first part "glad this person isn't leading me" is a statement of personal preference based on the facts revealed in the article, and the second portion "they clearly don't care about their employees" is a justified thing to say of someone who puts people on the clock without a way to pay for them. Had it not worked out in the end, and were we instead reading about how Gobble employees did not receive their final month's pay after the company went under, you would not be able to mod away the justified incriminations that would be up and down the thread for it on this board, but good fortune in this case still does not justify it (and we wouldn't be criticizing Ooshma's failure to secure funding).
I wonder how many thought less "I am proud of my food and want to make a living from it", but rather, "I have a stove and a cast iron pan, I'm no more likely to fuck this up than anyone else, and I need that $8 so I can eat something this weekend."