[vkou]

Because any food business already has insanely tight margins, and operates incredibly efficiently.

The scenario proposed by the grandparent poster adds so much waste and slack and overhead in the system that the family-owned-and-operated Thai kitchen on Main St. will eat Uber's lunch, and the Dominos franchise two doors down from it will pick through its bones.

[barkingcat]

the family operated kitchen on Main St. has rent, fire codes, safety equipment needs, some form of sanitation code/inspection to pass with the city.

Uber Chef ignores all of that and bypasses all overhead - you don't need a restaurant or even the physical location of a building to employ chefs to cook food. No need for health inspections or expensive fire suppression equipment. (you use people who want to rent their home kitchens out for cooking)

That's Uber's raison-d'etre - to bypass all legal restrictions and externalize all overhead in the way of getting the items to you.

This isn't a joke, this is what Uber did with their taxi service at the beginning as MVP so why not do it to food services as well?

[vkou]

The reason a restaurant wants the physical location of a building to cook food is because you can't make industrial quantities of food in your kitchen. Well, you can try, but it's going to be slow, inefficient, and your kitchen will become unusable quite quickly.

[Psyonic]

If you use your home kitchen commercially, you'll still need to get health inspections, etc. Even camp kitchens at Burning Man (https://burningman.org/event/preparation/health-safety/permi...) get visits from health inspectors.

[ithinkinstereo]

I recall some East-Bay based startup a few years ago that basically tried this model.

They allowed individuals to sell food / operate as a pop-up restaurant.

IIRC, it got closed down because of health and food-safety related regulations.

A more sustainable version of this business model is basically a food truck / cart.