[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Taste (YC W21) - Recreate nice restaurant...
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Launch HN: Taste (YC W21) - Recreate nice restaurant experiences at
home
Author : dealmak3r
Score : 61 points
Date : 2021-02-10 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gettaste.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gettaste.com)
| gk1 wrote:
| What do "finishing instructions" mean exactly? There's a big
| difference between something like "now sprinkle this spice
| packet" and "now cook this raw steak."
| dealmak3r wrote:
| All the dishes are pre-cooked. So it's just oven or microwave.
| It really feels like the instagram of food, where it's super
| easy to put together but gives you a nice result.
| blastbking wrote:
| Daryl here - I write a lot of our software, would appreciate any
| feedback or suggestions for the site, and would love to hear
| about your nice dinner needs :)
| ericabiz wrote:
| I filled out the request form for Austin, TX. I definitely
| think this would be popular here. Best of luck!
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Interesting concept - I've thought much on this, and really as
| with all meal things, it's a cultural phenomenon, not a
| convenience phenomenon. You have the opportunity to make that
| shift if you so choose and buck the delivery/minimal prep/...
| trend.
|
| Too many have tried to make luxury experiences 'easy' - which is
| antithetical to the experience. Don't succumb to that
| 'scalability' urge if you can.
| btown wrote:
| I love this! As someone who recently left NYC for NJ to
| quarantine and who regrets not taking advantage of these
| restaurant experiences while in the city - have you thought about
| "pickup tourism?" Assuming things can be chilled for long enough,
| someone within a reasonable distance could drive into NYC to a
| distribution center near one of the tunnels, you hand off a bag
| at a scheduled time, they drive home, and enjoy their meal! I
| don't know what the parking logistics would be, and I personally
| might be a bit far to viably benefit (sadly!), but you could
| rapidly expand your range with minimal driver coordination, for
| everyone in the larger metropolitan area who would be willing to
| drive a bit for a one-of-a-kind experience. No other model could
| do this, because you need really unique inventory and a
| reputation for the same, but it's incredible that you've done
| that sourcing and negotiation!
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Hum interesting! We certainly want to serve folks just like
| you. We're actually thinking about hiring refrigerated vans and
| driving out on a route - with sufficient density it might work.
| Or maybe UPS the food?
| lazerpants wrote:
| Once you start overnighting the food you're competing with
| Goldbelly, which already has considerable scale but lacks
| focus and doesn't really have a defined "indulgent tasting
| menu experience" category (the dinners are there but you sort
| of have to find them yourself). You might be able to compete
| pretty well but I imagine the logistics get expensive quick
| with shipping and packaging. Plus you almost certainly will
| run into problems with shipping laws for alcohol pairings
| (same problem with driving into NJ, unfortunately), which in
| my mind is a key purchase driver that sets you apart from
| competitors.
|
| This is a cool idea and something my wife and I will almost
| certainly use. DMing you some ideas about scalability that
| you're welcome to take or leave.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Cool thanks! I've tried Goldbelly and the issue is it's not
| 'fun' nor is it really nice. Seems there is a big focus on
| nostalgia, which is not what I'm after... it'll be
| interesting to see how things unfold
| chris11 wrote:
| How do meals compare with eating in an actual restaurant? I've
| been ordering takeout a little more since the pandemic began, and
| I've had disappointing meals. Bad estimates mean that I might
| pick up the meal late, and it didn't always microwave well.
|
| The food photographs really well, and I'd like to try it. But I'm
| assuming that it's priced high enough that I would not want there
| to be a hit in quality.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Generally we've gotten rave reviews on the quality and people
| have fun doing the finishing instructions. We have a
| satisfaction guarantee so if you're not happy we will make it
| right.
| chris11 wrote:
| That's cool, I'll have to try it out when it's in the bay
| area.
| benkoller wrote:
| I wish you the best of luck and see a short-term need, but as
| someone deeply entangled into gastronomic subculture I would hate
| to see the experience of being hosted by a gastronomer and
| gastronomic team fade away. Going to your favourite restaurant or
| to a new, "fancy" place is just as much an experience in
| hospitality as it is in culinary.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Thanks! And yeah we totally agree nothing will replace the
| restaurant. But what about all the folks who are busy and find
| it hard to access the food. We're making it for them so access
| to nice food can be democratized.
| moftz wrote:
| I would love a "lite" version of this service that delivers
| menus and some basic recipes for the featured items on the
| menu to either my email or SMS.
| jedgardyson wrote:
| I've used Taste before and it worked really well. The quality of
| the food was high (we ordered from a NY restaurant we really
| liked) and putting together the "finishing touches" was the right
| amount of work. Made for a great date night at a price pt that
| was much lower than actually going to one of the restaurants.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| This is great to hear! So happy you liked it.
| jiofih wrote:
| I'm curious why would VC fund this. It will only be as scalable
| as restaurants are in terms of developing a special menu,
| instructions and packaging. What is the 100x business model here?
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Well, we currently have the special menus because it's a high
| end product. But the demand for nice dinners should be way
| higher so we can launch our own 'model 3' as we scale.
| jiofih wrote:
| Does that mean you would take food production in-house to be
| able to scale your "model 3"? My comment was from the
| perspective of partnering with existing restaurants as a
| service. If you do that, what will be your advantage and
| scalability over existing delivery kitchens?
| dealmak3r wrote:
| We intend to stay a marketplace and partner with
| restaurants - right now the pool of restaurants is small
| because we are looking at high end 'tasting menu' type
| restaurants. But as we scale up, standard 1 app - 2 entrees
| - 1 dessert options will be added.
| defterGoose wrote:
| I said the same thing when Quibi started their ad blitz months
| and months before launching. Quibi had the problem that their
| business model was completely unproven (who TF actually has the
| stones to not just identify, but try to _create_ a market
| between Netflix and YouTube?) This has a similar problem; they
| are launching just as the pandemic is starting to ratchet down,
| meaning their whole raison d 'etre is in question.
|
| But hey, sweet sweet VC money.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Yeah - our core thesis is that the demand has always been
| there, this is why people travel into cities on weekends for
| food. And if we can make it way easier to access then people
| would have nice dinners more. There was a study that 40% of
| Americans would like to eat out more than they do now.
| alex-wallish wrote:
| What is the limiting factor though? Do they not eat out
| more because they don't have time to travel to the
| restaurant, or because they can't/don't want to pay for it?
| Seems to me like the bigger chunk of that 40% would fall
| into the second category, especially when talking about
| higher end experiences.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Well - at a high level the farther out we go and the
| busier the people (parents for example) the stronger the
| thesis is and the more convenient we seem.
| 0xferruccio wrote:
| Love the concept - would love to try this out once you launch in
| europe
| sshumaker wrote:
| Love the idea! Is there a place to signup yo get notified when
| you arrive in SF?
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Hi there! Yup there is a request Taste link on the homepage,
| also here for convenience:
| https://form.jotform.com/201998377891172
| lewisgodowski wrote:
| Had something similar back in December from Los Angeles
| restaurant, Vespertine. We got the separate components for all
| the dishes and then heated and plated them ourselves. It was a
| great experience!
|
| This is a different package than what we had, but should serve as
| an example of what to expect from Vespertine
| (https://www.exploretock.com/vespertine/experience/261739/men...)
| sizzle wrote:
| Vespertine is simply magical, highly recommend it to anyoen who
| wants to push the boundaries of experiential dining/molecular
| gastronomy (in-person).
|
| You didn't mention the best part in my experience... each dish
| had a QR code sticker that you scanned and it pulled up an
| evocative image and story of how they meticulously chose those
| ingredients and the story behind the dish and why they chose
| it/ties into the theme of the overall 8+ course meal.
|
| Please scan the QR codes, it makes the experience feel way more
| intimate and connected like you are talking to the head chef
| and team directly!
| dealmak3r wrote:
| This is a really good idea.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Yeah right now you get a sporadic one here and there and we're
| trying to make it a consistent experience all in one place.
| Reminds me of early days when I started using airbnb - I was
| also randomly doing this on craigslist...
| plif wrote:
| Great idea. Could you explain what differentiates it from Tock?
| https://www.exploretock.com/ -- not that there isn't room for two
| solutions here, but just curious.
|
| We've used Tock a few times in the way you described (recreate
| resto exp at home) and it's been awesome.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| We compete. But Tock started as a reservations platform and
| shifted to delivery. We think nice dinners at home is a pretty
| different category so the solution may look very different -
| for example we have a Dining Notes feature that hosts
| playlists, finishing instructions, and plating photos.
|
| Another core difference is we handle the customer support and
| offer the Taste Guarantee. Diners really love this because the
| experiences are higher priced so they want high touch service
| as well.
|
| As the category expands we think there will be more and more
| nuanced but critical differences.
| jefb wrote:
| Congrats on your launch! I do believe that there exists some
| space between Blue Apron and Tock for this, however for me
| personally, the ease of the restaurant experience is a huge
| part of it's appeal. I can access high quality food via Tock
| & competitors but the added friction of being the sous-chef,
| garnisher, dishwasher, front of house, etc. makes this not
| really appeal to me once going to a restaurant becomes
| possible again.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Though I personally like the idea I don't really see the value in
| the long term.
|
| In general, food services are in 5 categories.
|
| 1. Make it yourself, e.g. go to the grocery store, buy
| ingredients and prepare it yourself.
|
| 2. Buy prepared food, e.g. snacks, microwave meals, etc.
|
| 3. Buy service in which they prepare the food for you, e.g.
| restaurants.
|
| Two new categories have been tried and failed throughout the
| years.
|
| 4. Buy service in which someone makes the food, at a specified
| location (2) + (3).
|
| 5. Buy unprepared and prepared food and make it yourself with
| instructions (1) + (2).
|
| Generally (4) only makes sense and is cost effective in the
| catering context. (5) has failed spectacularly multiple times,
| most recently with Blue Apron. Unless this is somehow more cost
| effective than going to a restaurant (3) of similar quality
| because the chef doesn't have the overhead of a restaurant and
| passes the savings over I can't see this being successful long
| term or anything other than a very, _very_ small niche. I can 't
| imagine this ever being cheaper than a restaurant of the same
| quality (traveling is time that the chef will have to charge for
| or otherwise make up for in lower quality foods, it's a no-win
| situation).
|
| The other issue is that something like this is going to be
| popular in an urban area, but urban areas are the same areas in
| which prospective customers will not have space, limiting the
| number of people they can host (+ the chef) meaning they would
| gravitate more and more towards just going to a restaurant
| inherently (the dining experience generally is more fun with more
| participants, to a point).
|
| Personally, though (5) has never been done successfully, I think
| that's the next big thing. If someone can figure out the food
| distribution and partner with grocery stores and get some famous
| chefs at pre-scheduled times to cook food with people live (the
| same foods that have been distributed to the customers) it could
| work.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Yeah (5) is where we are exploring. There's basically a
| spectrum between groceries and cooking to sitting at a
| restaurant.
|
| Taste is 'precooked and de-constructed' so all the condiments,
| and crunchy stuff is separate. Finishing instructions include
| oven for 3-5 mins and plating. We found this hits the quality
| vs. effort tradeoffs best for busy people just outside of
| cities.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| 5 has also succeeded in the supermarket - just not as a
| separate business. Take & bake is in most grocery stores these
| days.
| kkapelon wrote:
| what is your long term plan? Assuming that we are finished with
| Covid in 1-2 years, will people still be interested in this?
| dealmak3r wrote:
| we think the demand has always been there, because busy people
| who are just out of reach of food hubs have to do a lot of work
| to access the great restaurants. (reservation, babysitter,
| train/uber cost, travel time, worried about getting home, etc)
|
| at a society level, everything is moving into the home (movies,
| workouts) so we think diners would want to move nice dinners
| into the home too.
| dyeje wrote:
| I've used Taste a handful of times over the past year in NYC.
| Sometimes the dishes do not translate well to the at home
| experience (mostly crunchy things getting soggy). Sometimes it
| wasn't clear what dish was what or how things should be enjoyed.
| It feels a bit wasteful when you get the big bag of disposable
| containers. Overall though, it's a nice service for these
| pandemic times but I definitely prefer the in restaurant
| experience.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Would love to talk to you about the different dishes - can you
| email us hi@gettaste.com We can change a lot of the dish
| experiences.
| kappabot wrote:
| Cool!
|
| I do get an error when I try to change the zipcode to 19103 fyi.
| blastbking wrote:
| Just pushed up the fix! Let me know if it works? Although we're
| not yet operating in 19103 - so it won't be particularly
| exciting - but thanks! Excited to expand to your ZIP soon.
| blastbking wrote:
| Ooo, seems we have a caching issue. Working on a fix...
| abhishekbasu wrote:
| Looks promising! I was hoping you could shed some light on "using
| some of the latest NLP techniques". Wish you success!
| dealmak3r wrote:
| So the menus rotate about once per month for most restaurants.
| And all of a sudden diners have to scroll through a ton of
| menus to find something they want. We can't use item-to-item
| collaborative filter because we always have a sparse data
| problem on the new menus.
|
| So instead we are trying to create NLP embeddings on the menus
| and then ranking new menus based on similarity to old menus the
| diner liked.
| ahstilde wrote:
| This seems to be more in the vein of "add soup to ramen noodles"
| that I get from my local ramen spot rather than a fully blown
| meal-kit experience. Am I understanding that correctly?
|
| I think "finishing notes" is what throws me off. I'm not sure
| what that actually means, which leads me to question how much
| effort I want to put into this vs Doordash.
|
| I'm surprised there's no Valentine's Day promo, either.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Yup, we aim to get the finishing component to be less than 5
| minutes. That's the best tradeoff we've found - minimal work
| and way better quality.
|
| We're open to new ideas on the word too!
| moftz wrote:
| Finishing is what separates a nicely cooked meal from the
| version you would find in a Michelin star restaurant. The way
| it's sliced, the way it's placed on the plate, whatever else is
| on the plate, and how it's finally served to the diner is all
| of the final details that go into gourmet service. I tried
| signing up for this service but it's not in my area yet.
|
| It looks like its just an upscale version of delivery. But
| instead of eating out of a takeout container, it's meant to go
| onto real plates with ingredients and instructions on how to
| serve it like they would at the restaurant. Many upscale places
| never did takeout simply because you cannot 100% recreate the
| experience when the food has been traveling in a bag for
| 30mins. I'm not sure what they are doing different but there is
| probably some reheating involved (like cook a steak halfway at
| the restaurant and then you sear it at home). Neat idea I guess
| for those that are too lazy to cook but want upscale dining at
| home. I don't see this lasting very long once things return to
| normal.
|
| Something I'd rather see is a daily SMS service that sends out
| recipes for these kinds of menus. I don't mind spending a
| little extra money to have a gourmet experience at home but I'd
| rather be the one cooking everything fresh.
| JacobDotVI wrote:
| Purple Pig offers this nation-wide from their Chicago location:
|
| https://purplepigshop.squarespace.com/shop/purple-piggy-box
|
| I have ordered it before and it's incredible. At the time I had
| the thought of "I wish someone would curate these so that I
| could do more during lockdown".
| sanj wrote:
| I'm about to attempt:
|
| https://www.exploretock.com/alinea/experience/253381/alineas...
|
| Feel free to reach out and I'll provide feedback.
| ddek wrote:
| A local restaurant to my parents (UK) has been doing similar
| things. Not Michelin starred, but close. It helps that their food
| has always typically been slow cooked, which always keeps better.
|
| It's a reasonable experience, but a way off eating at the
| restaurant. As a consumer, my motivation would be to support the
| restaurant, rather than to fully recreate the experience.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Yeah - I guess our audience is really people who find going to
| the restaurant challenging. Busy parents and people who are
| sick of the scene are our main diners.
| dealmak3r wrote:
| Hi HN!
|
| Jeff and Daryl here. We're founders of Taste
| (https://gettaste.com), a marketplace where you can order multi-
| course dinners from nicer restaurants.
|
| Daryl and I became friends because we both loved to hack on
| projects. In fact, when COVID hit Daryl had just flown back to
| San Francisco after spending a week in my apartment hacking (we
| were building a neural net to be our fashion advisor...ahem
| anyways). We immediately saw how devastating the pandemic was for
| restaurants that didn't have a delivery business and we wanted to
| help them.
|
| Thankfully Daryl and I were also bad cooks and we were both tired
| of our own cooking, so we thought maybe we can ask restaurants to
| bring those nice dining experiences to people's homes. Our idea
| of 'nice' was to start with a cool bag with the restaurant's
| logo, pull out a restaurant menu card, and then eat a multi-
| course meal complete with wine pairings - this is like what you'd
| have for a 'nice' night out. And thus, Taste was born.
|
| At first, we just hung out in my living room and texted customers
| and restaurants from our personal cell phones on delivery nights
| (aka the 'ops team'). We didn't have a way to track drivers, so
| we asked drivers to add us on WhatsApp to share their location.
| We were frequently up late because we hadn't yet automated simple
| stuff like asking diners for feedback and computing payouts to
| restaurants. But we loved it all because we felt like we were
| making a real difference.
|
| The coolest thing was the diner feedback was amazing - people
| LOVED the tasting menu experience at home and consistently texted
| us photos of their meals and their 'date night at home', and many
| wrote that it was the best meal they've had in their life.
| Restaurant or no restaurant.
|
| Fast forward to today, we're helping 15 restaurants in NYC
| deliver experiences weekly and have delivered thousands of dinner
| kits. We were really happy recently when one of our partners told
| us that they were able to pay their staff and squeeze out a tiny
| profit because of our help. We're also astaying afloat by taking
| a small cut of every transaction.
|
| There's a dream too! We have big plans for Taste's future as
| these popular restaurants were so difficult to access before the
| pandemic. Especially for busy professionals and people with kids,
| it was a struggle to book reservations weeks in advance, get home
| early, dress up, go out, and finally stumble home. We want to
| democratize access to these restaurants by bringing them to you
| and making the menus cheaper!
|
| Finally, as nerds who are interested in hardcore technology this
| project surprised us with a number of interesting technical
| challenges. Routing cars to do multiple deliveries is basically
| an intense version of the Traveling Salesman Problem.
| Personalizing menu recommendations for diners where menus are
| changing every week requires using some of the latest NLP
| techniques. And building a reliable money transaction system with
| bells and whistles (refunds, cancelations, edits, disputes) is
| also quite tricky.
|
| Taste is now in NYC and we're coming to SF soon. You can check
| out all the restaurants and menus directly at
| https://gettaste.com/eat?z=10014&s=direct we have a ton of
| features in mind and would love to hear your ideas, experiences,
| feedback and any feature requests!
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