Show HN: Like Airbnb but for food

For those who want to know the tech stack. We are running on heroku(the european datacenter)[1] and amazon S3, we use RoR with some pretty nice gems(active admin, devise, ...) and Jquery for the JS. For metric we use Mixpanel and Google Analytics. For our emails we use Amazon and Mailjet.

The are on the european DC because of the Safe Harbor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Safe_Harbor_Priva...

Re: Show HN: Like Airbnb but for food

#7

Post by enoptix » Wed, May 22, 2013, 4:54 PM UTC

Very interesting concept! How do food & restuarant laws apply in Europe? I know here in the US, restaurants need regular inspections by the local board of health. And restaurant is defined as "a facility that prepares and sells food directly to consumers for immediate consumption."

Presumably if people are paying the host, that host is now operating a restaurant. I can already see the food lobby going crazy over this one in the US.

Re: Show HN: Like Airbnb but for food

#8

Post by resu » Wed, May 22, 2013, 4:57 PM UTC

I think this is a fantastic idea! I would definitely try it out if it were available in the areas I am planning to travel to.

Any plans to expand to Asia?

Re: Show HN: Like Airbnb but for food

#9

Post by desireco42 » Wed, May 22, 2013, 5:04 PM UTC

This is so weird that it has to work. My first reaction was that it was dumb and no-one would do it, but this is exactly the first reaction to most things that turned out to be success. I definitely wish you all the best. Plus I see you are focused on Europe, which is probably place where good cuisine is highly valued.

Re: Show HN: Like Airbnb but for food

#10

Post by ArikBe » Wed, May 22, 2013, 5:05 PM UTC

enoptix wrote: post #7

Very interesting concept! How do food & restuarant laws apply in Europe? I know here in the US, restaurants need regular inspections by the local board of health. And restaurant is defined as "a facility that prepares and sells food directly to consumers for immediate consumption." Presumably if people are paying the host, that host is now operating a restaurant. I can already see the food lobby going crazy over this…

This. I had the exact same idea (although locally oriented) about a year ago, but then I found out that all places that serve food commercially in the Netherlands require that someone on the staff is in possession of a "Social Hygiene Diploma"[1] and the health services would shut down basically anyone who attempted to do this.

I hope you guys do well, I think there's a lot of social value in this concept. Food can bring people together in special ways.

[1] http://www.sho-horeca.nl/cursussen/spoedcursus-sociale-hygie...