Ask HN: Would you pay $25 a day for dinner, laundry, and cleaning?

[douglascludlow]

My company, The Happy Home Company, is considering rolling out a service that takes care of each night's dinner, weekly house cleaning, and all of your laundry, and doing it for $25 a day.

Does this sound crazy, or interesting?

Update: If you'd like to try this for free for a week, and live in the Bay Area, send me an email at doug (at) thehappyhome.co

[Justsignedup]

That sounds expensive. My dinner is usually $15/day for 2, my laundry is usually $20/week for 2, and done by my local laundromat door-to-door pick-up / drop-off, and I don't get my appt. cleaned, but I can get rates of about $20-30 per hr.

I feel this is highly overpriced. Maybe if $10/day or $15/day.

I feel like spending ~ 400/week on this (2 people) is excessive. $200/week could be something I'd consider.

[ponyous]

But you are not doing this everyday, right?

I don't imagine using service like this everyday.

[douglascludlow]

Thats a great price on laundry! Where are you based out of?

[aarmenante]

I use an overpriced laundry service, and have food delivered though an app 3+ times a week. Not sure if I would want a service like this unless it was all contracted through the same company. Ordering these services is already pretty convenient. Why pay for homejoy and washio to be booked for me?

When I lived overseas I had a maid that would come and do my laundry in my apartment. She knew that I liked to have milk/OJ/coffee in the fridge at all times. She also did light cleaning. I would pay for something like this in a heartbeat.

Someone I trusted, knew their name, but didn't have to pay them directly. Kept shit shit order so I don't have to wear a wrinkled shirt to the office and eat breakfast at Starbucks...

I would probably pay somewhere around $100+ a week. They wouldn't have to come every day. Just stop in every once and a while when I was at work. Through a load of laundry in. Put some eggs in the fridge. Make the bed then leave.

[Someone1234]

Maybe.

I have a few questions/concerns:

- Privacy/security/trust: Who are the people on the ground who enter your home? What assurances do we have that they are trustworthy?

- What does "doing laundry" entail? Do they fold it? Put it away? Move it to the room with the equipment? Is it laundered at your home or externally? Who pays for cleaning products?

- What is "dinner?" A take-out meal? Something you have to microwave? What kind of variety/choice/etc do you get?

- Will the price increase? Is this for solo people or for a family? How does it scale with the household?

[douglascludlow]

My thoughts on your questions:

-The people on the ground would be "Home Managers" - background checked, trained, W2 employees.

-Laundry includes wash and fold, done off site.

-Dinner - You can choose if you want delivery, or if you'd like to cook.

-You can scale up the price, or scale down in the future. This can be done for the whole family - we're thinking an additional $15 for kids, and $20 for another adult.

If you'd like to give this a try for free for a week, send me a note at doug (at) thehappyhome.co

[mistermoon]

I would really have to know what my dinner is going to be before I'd consider something like this - since Sprig and Munchery are $12 / meal, this would be a premium offering!

Also, if dinner was prepared for me I'd probably only opt for it 2 days a week since I would prefer to meet friends, cook, etc. on other days and not feel obligated to go eat the prepared food at home.

[xkcd-sucks]

That sounds about as expensive as a live-in maid, without the extra services and sense of personal connection that a maid could provide.

[Bedon292]

Not in the Bay Area, but that seems extremely high to me. For a couple it would be $18,250 for the year? Just for dinner and weekly cleaning / laundry? Why is it an additional $25 for the second person when the cleaning / laundry will mostly be overlapped. I think I would be more interested in just a laundry / cleaning service anyways.

[zo1]

How do you work out the logistics for the laundry? I.e. do you pick up daily/weekly. Do you give the customers one of those large laundry duffel bags that they fill up? Do the cleaners that come once a week pick up the laundry if they find it lying around? Those sorts of questions pop up for me when thinking about this...

[tobylane]

What area are you working in, what variety of foods do you offer, who is your chef, what allergies do you cater for, do you do dry cleaning. Could you walk my dog, feed my cat, clean my fish tank. Mow my lawn, clean my pool?

In cities as a part time housekeeper that sounds plausible.

[calbear81]

How is this different than Alfred Club, the startup that won at Disrupt that coordinates all your on-demand services? What makes the Happy Home Company different than scheduling a Munchery every night, a wash.io weekly and a Homejoy once a week?

[tete]

Next to being expensive it also feels a bit invasive. Not to be the paranoid one, but a company basically controlling laundry, food, has access to my house or apartment sounds a bit creepy.

[benologist]

How many people are covered by that ~$750/month? What is the advantage over doing those three things through any existing on demand or scheduled service?

[douglascludlow]

$25 per person, $15 for kids. You could certainly do this all yourself - however, using us, all you'd have to do is approve / edit a plan we'll send you for the week, and we handle it all from there.

The economic impact would be exactly the same - however, you'd save a lot of time and hassle with us.

[benologist]

I think you have a problem with bundling house cleaning and washing - you need to get a lot of value from all three services for the economic impact to be identical, and single people or people with no kids can be pretty low maintenance in those areas.

[johnatwork]

Who provides the food ingredients and the supplies? If it's the home owners, then how will the ingredients purchase be arranged?

[douglascludlow]

We'd learn your food preferences, allergies, etc. We'd also ask the days you'd like to get food delivered, days you'd like to cook, and then days you'd like to go out.

We'd then present a menu for the week for your approval / edit.

[aerialcombat]

Let us take care of dinner on our own, doing laundry isn't that hard. I would pay $50 per cleaning session, twice a month.

[douglascludlow]

I can arrange that, and give you your first cleaning for free. Drop me a note at doug (at) thehappyhome.co

[coreyp_1]

It's a good idea, but too expensive for my area. That's a (nice) car payment!

[douglascludlow]

What area do you live in?

[coreyp_1]

southeast of Chicago

[JohnHaugeland]

This sounds good to me. I'd want to know more about the meals first.

[douglascludlow]

Drop me a note at Doug (at) thehappyhome.co - I'll set you up with a free week, and answer any questions that you might have.

[jebuslebus]

Do this in New York and I'm in.

[bartozone]

I would pay for this 5 days a week.

[douglascludlow]

If you'd like to try this out for a week for free, email me at [e-mail].