Jeff Chen has a pithy hype for his new startup Taste : “We made the Instagram of genuine food. ”
Simply put, just as Instagram made it easy for normal smartphone users to look like talented photographers, Taste makes it easy for customers to arrange impressive meals at home.
That’s because the real preparation is something that is done by fine-dining restaurants — Chen told me there are 16 Michelin-starred and as well as Michelin-rated restaurants currently on the structure — whose food doesn’t translate easily to a delivery or takeout experience. Taste offers “dinner service, ” which Chen said will definitely be neither standard takeout (where point has been fully prepared but does not necessarily travel well) or a prevalent meal kit (where “everything is just separate and raw”).
Instead, he indicated Taste’s dinner kits are “this in-between thing” where the food is mainly, but not entirely, prepared in advance, creating customers to “heat and collect much faster. ”
Image Credits: Tongue
For example , presents tried out Taste last week, my lady and I received three-course meals against Intersect through process of Lexus and its “restaurant in residence” The Grey. Numerous the (delicious) courses and facets had to be heated in the oven or perhaps the microwave for five, 10 in addition to 20 minutes, but there was none of real prep or cooking a necessity — the real work was cleaning afterward.
Even the wrapping was impressive (if a little overwhelming), with a large, fancy box for every one kit, and then individual packages from each course, plus a separate package to have spices. There are optional wine pairings, and some restaurants will also provide plating instructions and a Spotify playlist for our meal.
Taste — which is part of the winter 2021 portion of startups at Y Combinator — is currently New York City-only, the place where it works with restaurants including Flakes Candy, Meadowsweet and the Musket Storage space. As you might expect, these kits be more expensive than your standard dinner shipping and delivery. Many of them are in the $60-to-$100 per person number, although there are also dinners below $40, as well as a la carte options.
Chen (who sold his last startup Joyride to Google) said that he and his co-founder Daryl Sew have been excited to help Ny chefs reinvent their offerings concerning delivery and weather the pandemic.
Fashion founders Daryl Sew and Jason Chen. Image Debts: Taste
“We also do a hugely key thing, which is pre-ordering and also batching for the restaurant, ” they added. “When a restaurant works with Taste, all the orders come in 2 days before to the restaurant, and we pick it up at designated times, which works tremendously with capacity lift. ”
And while Taste may appear particularly appealing now, when inside fine dining options are either banned, unsafe or transformed by personal distancing and mask-wearing, Chen anticipates healthy demand even after the outbreak. After all, he suggested that long before COVID-19, there were many people — hard parents, for example , or people who get the job done long hours — who felt like you couldn’t take advantage of these restaurants regardly as they wanted, or at all.
“Everything is getting moved into the cage, ” he said. “Movies will have moved into the home with Netflix, training is getting moved into the home with Peloton and Tonal, and now we’re obtaining move nice dining experiences in the home. ”
