Cookening is a platform where locals can meet travellers looking for new, more authentic ways to eat and discover local food. Belgian Curator Marco Torregrossa had a chat with Cedric to understand the appeal of bringing people from other cultures together around home cooked food.
Meal sharing is nothing new. For centuries people have been sitting down to eat together. But now, technology provides us with the tools to connect with people known and unknown, from all over the world, over food. In the last 10 years we have seen the emergences of underground supper clubs and now meal sharing platforms. Where did the idea of Cookening come from? What makes Cookening different from the other collaborative networks? What is a unique fact/statistic that surprises people about Cookening?
The idea of Cookening came to my mind at the end of 2011. I was travelling with my wife and we stayed at one Airbnb place, which we enjoyed a lot but we thought the connection with the host was really limited. Hence, I had the idea of a platform through which one can book a dinner with a local and meet new people. It was at the beginning of 2012 when we decided to go full time with this project.
Struggling for differentiation is not an urgency for us and meal sharing is still a small market. We are not necessarily trying to be leaders in this sector, but instead we focus on evangelising and making this marketplace as known as possible. The “meal” is probably the first social media we have ever had, you can consider it as a platform made for sharing because that’s where you meet people, connect and exchange. As to our added value, we are trying to improve users’ experience, ease the connection between hosts and guests, strengthen our brand and build a community around our platform.
As to a surprising statistic, people often see us as “made in France” but ignore that we are already in 30 countries, including Hawaii and Chile. In addition, people usually think that finding hosts is the most difficult part, whereas it’s actually finding guests that is more difficult and it is where we are concentrating our efforts as a platform.
Food sharing promotes cultural exchange and encourages people to cook at home, socialise and enable a healthy lifestyle. You are at the intersection of food, community, creativity and technology. Is there one of these components that was responsible for your success or all of them are on equal level? How is the sharing community of foodies expanding in the world? Do people generally feel comfortable going to strangers’ homes?
I think we are at the intersection of building a strong internal company culture and an external community of users as an extension of our culture. The two things go hand in hand. Although we are too young to claim we have an established community, we are working towards that end and already see some positive signals with users speaking on our behalf.
At Cookening we are proud to improve social connections among people, build relationships and drive cooking creativity. Technology has helped us to reinforce the trust mechanisms behind the connections our platform provides, but for us it has always been a means and not an end in itself. I think the reason why people do not join meal platforms yet, is not because of lack of trust, but because they have not heard enough of the concept.
Besides the unique experience and social dining dimension, consumers on collaborative marketplaces have generally quoted “convenience” as their main driver for participation. What is the convenience of a platform of meal sharers, are meals cheaper than in a restaurant? Do you think the food industry could be disrupted as people turn to shared meals rather than take-out and restaurants? Do you expect restaurants small or big will become more and more active on these platforms, also considering the recent tendency towards “professionalism” in sharing services?
On many collaborative consumption marketplaces, monetisation is one of the most important driver, if not the most important. On meal sharing platforms instead, money is not the main objective. When you cook for guests, even for large quantities, the money you’ll make it’s always little. It is good money on the side, but it does not earn you a living and it’s not easy money. And on the guests’ side, joining a meal sharing platform and regularly attend dinners is not expensive but it’s not cheap either.
Running a restaurant is by definition a collaborative optimisation of resources, it’s always more convenient and efficient to cook for 30 people than for 3 people. On our platform we ask the hosts to eat with their guests. Just because the experience we provide to our users is so much different than what restaurants offer, we do not see ourselves as competing with them. There are several types of meal sharing platforms which are more direct competitors to restaurants and takeaways, like for instance platforms where you can buy food from your neighbour or where you can simply and quickly go for lunch in someone else place, just having good food for a cheap price without the need to meet other people.
I have heard some time ago of an app that let users share their food left overs, which caused some indignation. Depending on local regulations, meal sharing platforms may conflict with health, safety and sanitation laws and perhaps even licensing. How do you ensure good, clean food in a safe environment? Besides internal vetting processes, user ratings and your own guidelines, how do you make sure local laws are respected? Is there a need for targeted insurance products such as the ones that the largest collcons (airbnb, uber etc) have recently decided to offer? Have you ever been in contact or worked in partnership with some local authorities or consumer groups?
Most important of all, our hosts provide a welcoming experience, more than a food experience. The money they are asking is for their time and the food they are going to buy so it’s not strictly speaking a food business which they are running. Guests are paying for sharing some time with the locals and part of this experience is to be invited in someone’s home and have some local food served. This also helps to make sure people are cooking what they are serving and eating what they are cooking. In itself the system is as safe as it could get. It’s not about selling take away food where there is no way people could find out who made the food.
This is why a platform like ours is not coming under the radar of law makers. We are trying to be proactive on the side of regulations and we are in contact with local policy makers, above all at city level in France. We do this just to make sure the collaborative economy is on the government’s agenda.
Guests receive one general review and that’s all. The hosts receive 3 reviews based on criteria such as hospitality, food and place and then the general review. We also have options to upload pictures and other tools. This increases the appeal of our listings and helps to make sure the experience stays safe and healthy. So far, we have not had the need to work out specific insurance products.
The diversity of meal sharing platforms is also reflected in the various funding models. Some are based on peer-to-peer exchange, some are non-profits, some have seed funding and others take a fee from each transaction. Some other platforms only work out of donations and often the wording is a means of getting around some regulations, which does not condone selling meals to the public out of one’s home. What is the success factor behind your business model? How do you ensure sustainability in your operations? How do you deal with disintermediation in sharing services?
We don’t see ourselves as a fully successful company yet, as we need time to build something much bigger and become truly sustainable. We take a fee out of each transaction but it’s a small amount, around 16 % that sums up to between 6 and 12 euro per transaction and per meal. On the other hand we hope to work more closely with food brands. We already notice some of them are starting to be interested in the community we are building made of people hosting and cooking regularly.
At Cookening we did not raise any funds from investors because the market of meal sharing is rather unquantified. We believe it will be big but we don’t have means to prove it now and for some investors it is difficult to bet on an emerging market. Instead of committing to something where we have no idea how it will evolve, we decided not to raise any funds and instead focus on our core and side activities to scale and accelerate market readiness.
As to disintermediation, if people go eat at someone’s place, meet new friends and want to keep connecting with them offline, we cannot do anything against it. Our hosts will think that thanks to our platform they made new connections and if they keep on being there they could create even more. On the guest side, we believe that if they have had a first good experience, when they travel again and want to discover new experiences, they will go through us again. It has happened that some users tried to bypass our service, but usually our hosts decline because our platform facilitates the whole trust and payment issues. For them to become long term hosts, they also need reviews and to build a reputation which is something we can ultimately provide.
