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Launch HN: Kitchenful (YC S21) – Weekly recipes with integrated shopping

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Re: Launch HN: Kitchenful (YC S21) – Weekly recipes with integrated shopping

#51

Post by cschiller »

DantesKite wrote: post #43

I hope you succeed. I believe this space is massive. Especially considering the permutation space of recipes and how nobody has tackled the problem well, even though thousands have tried. But maybe with food delivery, it’s a problem that can be successfully tackled since you’ll get feedback on customers. That’s a sweet data pipeline.

Thanks for the kind words! And yes, indeed we feel that the combination with delivery services makes a significant difference. By improving the inspiration experience and doing the related shopping on your behalf, we’re trying to deliver a smooth and successful cooking and dinner experience without the hassle. We believe that this is critical for a service like ours.

And in addition, as you pointed out, with each order we learn from the integrated shopping about the user’s preferences which enables us to continuously improve the service over time.

Re: Launch HN: Kitchenful (YC S21) – Weekly recipes with integrated shopping

#52

Post by cschiller »

nend wrote: post #45
cschiller wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the confusion with the UK logos. Unfortunately we’re not operating in the UK yet but are definitely looking into it.

As a potential US customer, I was also a bit put off by this. Do you support all US zip codes? What kind of recipes would I be able to order if I sign up, assuming the availability is partly based on my delivery address? The free trial requires a credit card, I don't want to give you my credit card without an assurance that you have food I want to pay for, or that you'll be able to deliver to me.

Thanks for the feedback! Very helpful for us to think about how we can showcase our service before the sign-up event and remove the uncertainty related to location.

Do you mind me asking: in terms of food, what would be most important to you before signup? Is it to see the quality of the recipes, or rather a test if we can make good recommendations based on your specific preferences and needs?

Re: Launch HN: Kitchenful (YC S21) – Weekly recipes with integrated shopping

#53

Post by onion2k »

We never managed to meal plan a couple of days in advance...

I'm a little envious of founders who think this way. You've taken a problem you faced and turned it into an opportunity, which is awesome. Faced with the same problem I am certain I'd simply have tried to learn to "be more organised", and likely have failed and carried on with the same problem for a long time. Even if I thought it was a problem lots of other people face I doubt I'd have actually executed on an idea of solving it; I don't see my "failures" as viable problems to turn into businesses.

There's a lesson here for me (and probably many others) that you don't always have to look for big problems or complex problems to find viable startup ideas. Sometimes it can be something simple that just bugs you. I wish you the best of luck.

Re: Launch HN: Kitchenful (YC S21) – Weekly recipes with integrated shopping

#54

Post by cschiller »

LaffertyDev wrote: post #47

Hi! I feel like I'm part of your target demographic. I almost signed up, but a few things stopped me. * I echo that free-trial-rollover-to-paid is off-putting * I can't seem to find information about the people who are putting together your recipes. Who are they? Where are they from? Where have they cooked? * I also can't seem to find UI information about your app. Particularly, how easy is it to regenerate meals? Is…

Thank you for your structured and helpful feedback!

Let me try to cover some of the points:

- We have a small team of passionate foodies producing their own recipes and reviewing/curating weekly recommendations for our users. The team has an international background (incl. US/EU/Asia), which helps to tap into various experiences when it comes to generating the weekly menus. They have worked at some of the most popular European recipe apps. Feel free to check out our Instagram account to explore some of the recipes they have produced so far (https://www.instagram.com/kitchenful/)

- We provide our users with a personal menu each week. In addition there is the option to choose from standard categories and your own favorite recipes. Currently it’s not possible to import your own recipes, but we have it in the backlog. So far this hasn’t been a blocker for our users to use our service on a weekly basis.

- As of now we don’t have a feature to export the recipes. Mostly because so far we didn’t get that request from our users. But I see the peace of mind value in it as a user and will look into this.

- We are building our frontend clients with Flutter. So we look forward to supporting many platforms (iOS, Android, Web, Mac, Linux, ...) soon, stay tuned.

- Currently we are working with custom ranking and rotation algos for the recipe collation. But ML definitely on the horizon as we increase the number of data points :)

Happy to ping you once we have implemented a bit more features on the multi-platform and recipe import/export side. Excited to get your early feedback then.

Re: Launch HN: Kitchenful (YC S21) – Weekly recipes with integrated shopping

#55

Post by cschiller »

onion2k wrote: post #53

We never managed to meal plan a couple of days in advance... I'm a little envious of founders who think this way. You've taken a problem you faced and turned it into an opportunity, which is awesome. Faced with the same problem I am certain I'd simply have tried to learn to "be more organised", and likely have failed and carried on with the same problem for a long time. Even if I thought it was a problem lots of othe…

Thank you for it being so well said!

The beauty of it is that everyone is likely to face or notice problems in their own life which offer the chance to be solved. And usually one is not the only one facing it :)

Hopefully this inspires someone to solve a problem which nags them and which they can get passionate about.

We are excited about the opportunity to work on this problem. And are grateful for the constructive feedback we are receiving from the HN community.

Re: Launch HN: Kitchenful (YC S21) – Weekly recipes with integrated shopping

#56

Post by ph0rque »

doosomah wrote: post #15

Great idea! I wrote some code to generate nutritionally complete, minimalist diets. It got some traction, but I never managed to integrate it with recipes/prices. lkm if you want to try to integrate it.

I've been working on something similar as a small project, as well: https://automicrofarm.com/blog/2021/04/more-complete-nutriti...

Would love to chat/exchange thoughts!

Re: Launch HN: Kitchenful (YC S21) – Weekly recipes with integrated shopping

#57

Post by DantesKite »

cschiller wrote: post #51
DantesKite wrote: post #43

I hope you succeed. I believe this space is massive. Especially considering the permutation space of recipes and how nobody has tackled the problem well, even though thousands have tried. But maybe with food delivery, it’s a problem that can be successfully tackled since you’ll get feedback on customers. That’s a sweet data pipeline.

Thanks for the kind words! And yes, indeed we feel that the combination with delivery services makes a significant difference. By improving the inspiration experience and doing the related shopping on your behalf, we’re trying to deliver a smooth and successful cooking and dinner experience without the hassle. We believe that this is critical for a service like ours. And in addition, as you pointed out, with each ord…

There's also a nonzero chance 10 years from now, automation and object recognition will improve fast enough that robots can essentially do certain (or most) aspects of cooking.

And if that's true, the advantage will go to the company that is ready for it.

Re: Launch HN: Kitchenful (YC S21) – Weekly recipes with integrated shopping

#58

Post by nend »

cschiller wrote: post #52
nend wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a potential US customer, I was also a bit put off by this. Do you support all US zip codes? What kind of recipes would I be able to order if I sign up, assuming the availability is partly based on my delivery address? The free trial requires a credit card, I don't want to give you my credit card without an assurance that you have food I want to pay for, or that you'll be able to deliver to me.

Thanks for the feedback! Very helpful for us to think about how we can showcase our service before the sign-up event and remove the uncertainty related to location. Do you mind me asking: in terms of food, what would be most important to you before signup? Is it to see the quality of the recipes, or rather a test if we can make good recommendations based on your specific preferences and needs?

I have some picky family, I'm mostly interested in ensuring they'll want to eat some of the options.

Re: Launch HN: Kitchenful (YC S21) – Weekly recipes with integrated shopping

#59

Post by doosomah »

ph0rque wrote: post #56
doosomah wrote: post #15

Great idea! I wrote some code to generate nutritionally complete, minimalist diets. It got some traction, but I never managed to integrate it with recipes/prices. lkm if you want to try to integrate it.

I've been working on something similar as a small project, as well: https://automicrofarm.com/blog/2021/04/more-complete-nutriti... Would love to chat/exchange thoughts!

This is great! I pinged you using the contact form on your site.
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