Josephine is closing its doors

&gt; We will also be sending our cooks off with a transition packet, which will include their business data, customer contact info (for those who opt-in), alternative business proposals and recommendations, tool&#x2F;service recommendations for replacing our platform functionality, and other general resources. We hope that these personalized packets, along with community-run versions of our cook community forums and groups, will be a stepping stone for folks who would like to continue making income through their cooking skills.<p>That is actually really impressive. I hope other companies have the forethought and compassion to remember that their responsibilities lie with everyone who comes to depend on them -- not just those to whom they have a legal duty.

Two sided market business are burn barrels for cash until you hit crazy scale. The ambition and idea was great, but actually pulling this off at some sustainable model would be incredibly difficult with all the moving pieces. Loved what they did around the brand, but the idea is so high on the difficulty of execution scale, how this played out is unsurprising.

I like the idea but I think the food safety&#x2F;perishabiliy&#x2F;logistics challenge is too much.<p>Personally I would like something like a “social buying” restaurant delivery app, where you can vote on what you’d like made in a centralized kitchen and then place an order to be delivered if whatever you voted on was chosen by popular vote.<p>Recipe holders could submit recipes to be voted on and make a commission from sales if their recipe is chosen.

It was good until it lasted.<p>Although it was a bit inconvenient, I had a chance to try out a few homemade ethnic meals that I have no chance of finding in a restaurant. Eating strangers’ meals was strange, but I bet it will become a thing in increasing sharing economy.

Ouch. And they had just had a big win with their microkitchen bill passing the California State Legislature:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leginfo.legislature.ca.gov&#x2F;faces&#x2F;billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB626" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;leginfo.legislature.ca.gov&#x2F;faces&#x2F;billNavClient.xhtml...</a>

This is pretty shocking and sad. I really loved the idea of this company. I don&#x27;t see this as the &#x27;end&#x27; of this idea.

The site doesnt really explain what they did....

I had never heard of them before, the idea is really interesting to me. I went to their website to see if there were any cooks in my area to see if it was worth trying out. It looks like I have to sign up before I can even see any of that :( I am skittish about giving out my contact information, I don&#x27;t want to deal with throwaway accounts either. I wonder how much growth they missed because of that.

Huh, interesting. I wonder what happened, after reading this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@steve.yegge&#x2F;why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc0be84" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@steve.yegge&#x2F;why-i-left-google-to-join-gr...</a> (Steve Yegge talking about joining Grab, and the meal-delivery boom)

What was Josephine? I&#x27;ve looked at their homepage but I still have no idea what they did. Was it a restaurant? That served home made food?

I don&#x27;t know what the final outcome was, but there was a charity that would provide food for the homeless by having volunteers bring home-cooked casseroles. After operating for over a decade, the county health board shut it down because publicly serving food not made in a certified kitchen was illegal.<p>I moved away from there, so never found out if they were able to resolve it, but that wasn&#x27;t that long ago and was a push in the opposite direction of what Josephine would need.

Equally sad for this.. but Josephine is doing a great job handling the transition. My company just launched in this space (DishDivvy) and are truly appreciative of the work they&#x27;ve done on the legislative front, for bringing opportunities to homecooks. We are working with their COOK alliance and making sure AB 626 gets through the senate as successfully as it did the CA Assembly.

My wife visited Israel and told me about the concept of Kibbutz. Since then I have been thinking about it and it is such a great concept. May be someone can borrow some aspects of the kibbutz and invent a business model. A big communal kitchen for the neighborhood where professional chefs make food for the community, but costs are kept low by households volunteering in prep work and clean-up. Everyone subscribes to the communal kitchen like an HOA. Would be great for the neighborhood community to better know each other and also access healthy &quot;home cooked&quot; meals.

I coached two startup founders looking at this exact model (there were about five founders plus one Startup Weekend team that attempted this all around the same time). Josephine became my go-to &quot;this appears to be working, let&#x27;s try and work out why...&quot; model. I never could work it out.<p>Shame they couldn&#x27;t get it to work. As far as I can see, the whole niche&#x2F;model is fubar&#x27;d. Good try, though, and great community attitude :)

Here&#x27;s a take from the CEO of a competitor of Josephine: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@ashleycolpaart&#x2F;saying-farewell-to-josephine-7fbab778b2a3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@ashleycolpaart&#x2F;saying-farewell-to-joseph...</a><p>(full disclosure, I&#x27;m her co-founder.)

Dang. It seemed like a great thing, never became available in my neighborhood. I know there are informal unpermitted food sellers all over the place, but this seemed like a nice balance between getting ceviche from a random person off Facebook (real example) and a full-up restaurant.

Nooooooooo! I never managed to try the service but their team and mission was awesome.