I stumbled upon this ad. It looks like they are looking for private cooks who would cook food in their own house and then be able to sell it to their neighbors. For this matchmaking they will charge 22% of the meal price. So it looks to me like Uber for cooking. Sounds like an interesting idea. I would like to see it succeed. Especially in the age of home office.
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Interesting idea, no english page yet, or did I not find the language chooser?
A usual problem with such business concepts is that you need to get a critical mass together before you can even launch. I doubt they will have a lot of success w/o tons of marketing.
Update: Oh the service actually goes live on March 2nd…
Well, Batmaid suceeded. They should start in one location (they start in Zurich, Zug, Luzern) and focus on availability there. Learn from mistakes, expand from there. Let’s see how it goes.
another contender for the same kind of service. My wife is looking into it for homemade Indian food. Probably also extending it with a neighboor lunch package service. Still far away though since she is busy with the cashmere shop.
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I guess the biggest concern/issue might be food safety, I wonder how they plan on tackling that.
eatshomemade mentions “Food safety guaranteed by the feedback from the community of consumers like you” which isn’t very reassuring (aren’t people selling food supposed to follow some minimum amount of process or training?)
Edit: ok I see it is regulated and they mention it: https://eatshomemade.ch/become-a-cook/en
I was actually wondering about the legal side. We are so obsessed about regulating and taxing everything that I would not be surprised if you first needed to get verified by food inspection and fulfil countless rules “for your own good”. Remember Uber? Oh no, you are driven by a guy without a taxi license. Maybe he’s a bad driver? What if the car is in a poor condition?
The same applies to a restaurant. There are many cooks in a big restaurant, in the end there is probably a sense of anonymity when you’re cooking. In case of a private cook, one bad batch will result in bad ratings, and people will not order from you anymore (I hope they will have a rating system).
I’m somewhat convinced that cooks might even need a „Wirtenpatent“ which does include food and hygiene rules and costs about 2k CHF and a few hours of training and an exam.
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I look forward to the world where you can buy food, but with little certainty how much of a health hazard that is 
Maybe there could even be companies that go and vet those cooks (and do random inspections), then when you buy you’d be certain they follow certain standards. And then you could buy only from the places who have been vetted. 
(Or you know, we could have a public agency doing that and enforce a baseline minimum safety for things people are going to put in their body)
If you only want to eat food from certified cooks, then do it. If someone wants to take the risk then why do you want to forbid them? You can cook for your family, kids included, you can invite your friends for dinner, but if you take money for it then suddenly you need a license.
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If someone wants to take the risk then why do you want to forbid them?
That’s Switzerland, where there are loads of very detailed regulations for most things that can make you money, but a pandemic is not regulated…
Maybe because we like that people don’t get sick? You could apply the same reasoning to safety belts in cars.
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No, you can’t apply the same logic. No seatbelts = endangering other people. My health insurance might have something to say but I’d prefer you not to care for my wellbeing, thanks…
How do you endanger others by not wearing YOUR seatbelt?
That person getting sick might have been someone who you were about do do business with, your girlfriend, etc… I do not specifically care for the wellbeing of a specific person, but overall society works better if less people get sick.
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Just think, it’s not that hard… a passenger from behind might smash into the front seat. A front seater may fly out of the windshield to the other car. There are some videos.
Alright, helmet for bikers then! 
That’s a better example. I guess it makes sense to require things that would otherwise put you or others at risk, especially in the context of health insurance (bad accident = high treatment cost). But you should normally always wear a helmet, but you normally don’t need a certificate to be able to cook everyday. Balance is key. 2000 - ok, maybe, but I’m sure it will discourage many people who would like to try.
That was just an assumption, maybe they even talked to the local Health departments and came up with some agreeable light training. Iirc one of the pages in this post even mentions some online webinar.
Overall a good idea if the interest is big enough. I would certainly encourage my wife to offer her often praised Homemade Guacamole on one of the platforms.
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