At my shop in Raleigh, NC, we order lunch delivery once a week from a local, home-based cook for <i>$8/person</i> (sandwich, side, drink). It's our favorite day of the week now, and one of our most productive because everyone eats together in the office or the park next door.<p>Its so much healthier, cheaper, and easier than any other option. She just emails us the menu on Monday morning and we all pick what we want and email it back. Couldn't be easier.<p>Point being: I think a lot of people want to buy this, and would if only it was easy to connect with local cooks (a friend referred us to Thao, or we'd have never known about her). ZeroCater is a great idea as well, but I really like the aspect of buying home cooked food from a local person vs. a restaurant because its cheaper, usually healthier, and its the closest thing to getting a home-cooked meal from my Mom.<p>(Sidebar: anyone in Raleigh, do yourself a favor and check out Thao Beck at <a href="http://www.lunchboxnmore.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lunchboxnmore.com/</a>. Just shoot her an email and say you'd like to get the menu next week and she'll take it from there [or email me and I'll be happy to introduce you]. I can't recommend her highly enough, especially for companies. Here's a couple favs I had to photograph: <a href="http://imgur.com/a/v80kd" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/a/v80kd</a>)
the sort of casual home-based cooking for others as a small enterprise works well in india (any big city where people flock for work has tons of people working to keep them fed). however, in the usa i believe commercial kitchen requirements would make it a very high-overhead enterprise.
This is awesome, I can't believe it took me this long to hear about it. Too bad, since I'm moving away from SF in two weeks. Gah.<p>There is a <i>gigantic</i> market for "tasty, healthy, delivery" that is almost entirely untapped right now. I've been trying to pull it off myself (mostly ordering LOTS of veggie dishes and mixing in with the stereotypically absurdly-sized meat dishes that delivery is known for, and spreading over multiple meals).<p>Best of luck to these folks.
For anyone else wondering what "mofo" is (see the article's screenshot of the daily push notification), its full name, Mofongo, shows up here: <a href="https://www.munchery.com/menus/mofo-with-shrimp-marinara-sauce" rel="nofollow">https://www.munchery.com/menus/mofo-with-shrimp-marinara-sau...</a><p>It sounds pretty good, too. The abbreviation caught me off guard though.<p>Edit: Mofo is actually a spin on Mofongo, not necessarily the same.
This looks great, and while I feel the market for local, healthy dinner is large, the price points are too high. $18 - $20 is very expensive. I don't think I've ever paid over $15/person for takeout and even those times are infrequent.<p>It's a well-executed idea, just really expensive right now.