[KeepTalking]

hmmmm.... I wonder if Uber eats can do what AirBnb did to the hotel business by allowing home chefs-after-6pm to take low risk experiments and launch micro Uber only restaurants from their home kitchen or a common kitchen (managed by Uber eats to deal with sanitation challenges).

[extrapickles]

It would have to be from a commercial kitchen to pass health regulations in most places. There are a few restaurants than share kitchens with the one next door, and I would not be surprised if they had a virtual restaurant or two for delivery only.

No reason that the kitchens that food trucks use can’t support this as I suspect they dont have much demand for space around 5pm.

[Forge36]

I agree with your point on kitchen sharing, but I'm wondering if we sharing an incorre assumption:

should we expect that the laws will be followed? Policing unlicensed taxis _should_ have prevented Uber from succeeding. I recall early Uber being a considered "ride-sharing" in attempt to avoid this problem.

How will unlicensed restaurants be enforced? Will people simply call the practice food-sharing or splitting-meals? Start from the same model: two friends living across the city but one didn't cook, the other makes large meals. Uber meals is just a delivery service. Combine with money transfer app: it's not a restaurant, is a group of friends pitching in for a good meal.

Uber successfully managed to get driver's to assume the risk when running unlicensed taxis. It wouldn't surprise me if they could reimagine that success here. The biggest hurdle I foresee: keeping the branding, and scale small enough to fly under the radar until it's well established

[extrapickles]

There are a few places that stay under the radar, but generally they don’t heavily promote the food side of the “experience”, and aim their businesses at non-locals who would be less likely to report them if they are not perfectly happy.

Another problem is that health laws are generally stronger and better enforced than taxi law. See [0] for the definition of a Food Establishment for Washington State. Also there are generally tip lines for reporting restaurants and it only takes 1 person to have a bad experience to shut down a location.

[0]: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=246-215-01115

[prostoalex]

> How will unlicensed restaurants be enforced?

One story about a dead cockroach or rat feces making into a meal will let market forces take care of it. The story doesn’t even have to be true.

[reaperducer]

One story about a dead cockroach or rat feces making into a meal will let market forces take care of it. The story doesn’t even have to be true.

On the other hand, it's a virtual restaurant. So all you have to do is pay some kid on Fivrr five bucks for a new logo with a different name, and you're back in business!

[petra]

If you sell food without a license, in some states you could go in jail.

So it's pretty different from getting a fine which UBER pays.

[dawnerd]

In Portland damn near every food cart is on some delivery platform. It’s actually made ordering from some of my favorite spots almost impossible in person since their order volume is just too high.

[stephengillie]

It would have to be a common kitchen, and they would need everyone to pass a food handler's class.

Given Uber's reputation for bucking regulation, I would be doubly-hesitant to trust meals from their kitchen.

[esotericn]

Individuals are not allowed to opt out of commercial food safety in most advanced economies.

It could be done using a decentralized platform, but any registered company attempting that sort of business model wouldn't last very long.

[acover]

Individuals weren't allowed to run unlicensed hotels or operate unlicensed taxis.

I've never gotten sick from home cooking but have from restaurants. I always hear horror stories about the conditions of restaurants.

Does anyone know why the risk rate of food production in a home kitchen thought to be higher? Can that be mitigated somehow?

[crazygringo]

> I've never gotten sick from home cooking

Well then you and your family and friends happen to follow good hygiene standards... but plenty of people don't, and are even more incentivized not to if there's a buck or two in it. ("I think I can still use this meat..." "I'll just wash off this mold...")

I don't know why you'd trust random strangers cooking out of their homes with zero food safety training whom you haven't personally vetted at all. It's not to say commercial kitchens are perfect, but there are verifiable processes in place to try to hold them to certain standards and ultimately shut them down if they don't, which simply aren't scalable to apply to home kitchens.

[always_good]

You clearly have never worked in the food industry.

I have, and I trust most of my neighbors to prepare a chicken cutlet with more care than any revolving-door restaurant I ever worked in.

Consider just restaurants of a rank <= Outback Steakhouse (where I was a line cook for three years). Pure minimum-wage apathy will be cooking your food. Almost anyone can do better than that, especially someone inviting people into their home.

I'm seriously having a hoot over someone on the internet using restaurant food/hygiene quality as a standard for any argument.

[Guest9812398]

I wouldn't have a trust issue assuming there is a rating system. If people are getting sick from someone's kitchen, they're going to leave a bad review.

Think about taxi drivers compared to Uber drivers. Uber drivers know a few bad ratings can be detrimental to their income, so they typically try to put their best foot forward. They push hard for perfect reviews, offer bottles of water, try to be extra considerate with the choice of music, air temperature, etc. Taxi drivers don't have the same incentives. They're not going to be fired if a few passengers feel it's too cold in their car.

I imagine the same would apply to home chefs. They know one batch of food that gets customers sick could leave them out of work, and cost them their entire reputation. A few bad ratings and they're dropping down the recommendation list and watching 80% of their business disappear. I could see home chefs trying to go above and beyond like Uber drivers to secure better reviews. Did you order 6 cookies? Well, they're going to give you 7, and a little note that says thanks, here's a free cookie just for you.

It could actually be a great business for more elderly people. We all love our grandmother's specialties, right? Imagine a grandparent that could prepare big lasagnas, soups, and chilis at home, and a driver could come pick up portions to deliver to people around the neighborhood. Feel like takeout tonight? Instead of Dominos, you can see Ruth down the street prepared homemade cabbage rolls that you can get delivered. I wouldn't mind supporting that type of business.

[crazygringo]

> I wouldn't have a trust issue assuming there is a rating system.

That was the original free-market rationale for not having food or medical regulation at all: reputation will take care of it!

Unfortunately, unsafely prepared food can literally kill you. So the country wised up and requires food safety certification.

Ratings are great for pushing up average quality. They're a non-starter when it comes to guaranteeing minimum quality, i.e. the product won't make you sick or kill you.

Honestly, I don't trust someone's grandmother who thinks it's fine to cut the cooked chicken with the knife she used when it was raw, because she was never certified in a food safety course, even if it only happens 1% of the time. It's not fair to make people get sick so enough of them leave 1-star reviews.

Because again, there's a world of difference between an Uber driver who doesn't know the route (minor inconvenience), and food that makes me ill for days.

[Guest9812398]

We allow strangers that haven't had their driving or eyes tested in 50 years drive us down the highway (Uber). We allow strangers to operate hotels out of their homes (Airbnb). However, we can't allow a stranger to cook us a chicken breast or prepare a soup?

There isn't a world of a difference here. They all present minor dangers, and I'm willing to take the risk of buying a piece of lasagna from my neighbor.

[esotericn]

That's not the fundamental issue unfortunately.

I do trust random taxi drivers and I do trust arbitrary individuals to cook for me (trust is a bad word to use here; rather, I think the positives outweigh the negatives, I'd rather pay less and take some small risks).

But regulation in these areas doesn't apply because I might get into trouble. With food it's about preventing illness outbreak, with taxis it's about preventing massive congestion. At least, that's the goal (in practice the regulation gets corrupted).

[crazygringo]

> I do trust random taxi drivers and I do trust arbitrary individuals to cook for me

Do you though?

All the taxis you take are with licensed drivers. The government has already set up certification standards.

Likewise, how often do you eat a meal by an arbitrary individual? Generally it's either someone you know and trust, or else a professional cook under food safety certification working in an inspected kitchen.

Are you saying you'd get into a taxi driven by someone without a driver's license because you'd rather pay less and take risks? Or eat a hamburger made from ground beef sitting in a refrigerator for 4 weeks because the cook "thinks it's fine", and again you'd rather pay less and take risks?

[esotericn]

You're assuming a lot about my life here.

Without going in to huge detail I'll just say that most of this is false. A few years back I went hitch-hiking around Europe, no licensing was involved, as far as I'm concerned my drivers _were_ randomly selected (if anything, _they_ chose _me_).

Your last sentence is essentially an enormous strawman.

That all said, this isn't about me. The point of regulation is to prevent tragedy of the commons style situations. One instance of someone buying a meal from a neighbour or paying a friend for a lift doesn't matter, the commercialisation causes problems.

[acover]

Most restaurant food is expensive and terrible for you. It all depends on the risk rate but I suspect for people with a good reputation the risk rate of home cooked food is low.

[kevin_b_er]

Your "home cooking" wasn't required to make profit. This perverts the incentive from "good food" to "profit". Also your home cooking has a reputation issue.

Uber Eats will not have a reputation issue. Any given "restaurant" can be a facade easily recycled into a new brand name. Any problems Uber can pawn off as a problem with that restaurant and not a fundamental problem of Uber operating above the law and not having safety regulations on its "independent contractors".

As Uber has repeatedly shown a disregard for laws, we can expect it will continue to show a similar disdain for safety, including food safety.

[user5994461]

That's not a good comparison. The rental market always had a big part of black market through local listings, mouth to mouth or sites like craiglist/gumtree.

The regulator/IRS could go through some residential blocks in popular cities and find undeclared tenants in almost every house. AirBnB makes it worse and shorter term but it didn't invent any of that. It just makes it more visible.

In comparison, restaurants are rarely undeclared or illegal operations.

[djur]

Also, unlike AirBnB, even a conscientiously-run underground restaurant would have trouble not attracting attention from my neighbors. If the house down the street has a different car in front of it every week I would never notice. If there's a constant stream of people visiting (parking on the street, etc.) I'd notice and probably be inclined to figure out what's going on. That pattern of behavior is also likely to get the cops called on suspicion of drug dealing.

I think a very, very cautious person who carefully screened their clientele could get away with having one, maybe two small groups dine at their house a night. Probably not even every day a week. Suffice it to say that we're talking about a market so small it might as well be said not to exist, and by that point you might as well just call it catering or a private chef, not a restaurant.

[jaequery]

I guess there too many variables. But most important is. Depends on the cleanliness of the home and willingness of the chef to properly handle food

[sampo]

> Individuals are not allowed to opt out of commercial food safety in most advanced economies.

Since 2011, Finland (and now also some other countries) has twice a year a special "restaurant day" food festival, when anyone is allowed to run a pop-up restaurant for one day, and serve food cooked at home.

[disappearance]

I think Deliveroo Editions use commercial kitchens from temporary shipping containers, dropped in 'dead space', out of hours car/ industrial parks. Ah, from 2017:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/28/deliveroo-d...

[zby]

Sounds risky. Not that uber drivers are riskless - but food can be spoiled in less obvious ways than driving.