Kitchensurfing

Mydish
I love Kitchensurfing.  I should, I invested in it.  So what is it that I love about Kitchensurfing?  Kitchensurfing is a marketplace for chefs.  The could be a home chef, a sous chef from a restaurant, a celebrity chef, a caterer.  You get the idea.  As a consumer, you go the site and hire a chef.  You could hire a chef to cook a dinner party for 30 people or an event for 200.  You could be a family with young children and want someone to create a variety of meals for the week to have in your refrigerator.  You could hire someone to come and teach you and a group of friends how to make dumplings.  You might want someone to just come and cook for you or your family or friends every Sunday and you could do that too.

Brisket
The cost?  As any marketplace works, it is finding the right person for the price you want to pay and that cost is relevant to the marketplace and where you are located.  Certainly a chef in Wisconsin who is looking to cook family meals is not going to be the same price as let's say in Boston.  What is genius is that the consumer now has access to really fantastic chefs to come in to their home.  The key to this business is that it can work everywhere.  Get on, sign up and give it a whirl.  If we don't have chefs in your area of the globe yet, we will eventually.  We even have chefs in Berlin.  What is interesting is anyone who uses it generally uses it again and so do their guests…and users and chefs are finding Kitchensurfing on their own. 

Ribs
I had a Kitchensurfing event the other night.  I hired Daniel Delaney, who is a BBQ master.  Check out his page on Kitchensurfing.  We discussed what I wanted, what I wanted to pay and what he could do for that.  The food was great and it was fun too.  Instead of having to go to a restaurant to have this kind of food, I had it in my own home with family and friends. 

Salads
The menu:  Brisket, Lamb Ribs, Pork Ribs, Cole Slaw, Potato Salad, Succotash, Guacamole and chips to start, Sour cherry pies and banana cream pies to end.  A real BBQ fest.  I particularly liked the addition of cheddar cheese that was served on the brisket. 

I love Kitchensurfing!

Comments (Archived):

  1. Jeff T.

    Did he cook all of that in your home? Looks like some serious bbq!

    1. Gotham Gal

      he cooked everything before he brought it. has a smoker all the way from austin texas.

  2. rachel

    Love the idea. Have been hiring chefs to do small meals as presents for people for years. Always so appreciated but hard to find the right chef. We now have a woman who is amazing and cooks a meal a week for us. Dropped off, organic, voila. So much better than gross Chinese food. Will check out kitchensurfing!

    1. Gotham Gal

      definitely try it and let me know

  3. William Mougayar

    Kitchensurfing is such a great idea for a business. Very impressed by the few minutes I spent on it. This could disrupt the traditional catering business!But I didn’t see client-user reviews for these chefs. Wouldn’t that be part of the value add/transparency offered?

    1. Gotham Gal

      They are there. My friend wrote a few. A work in progress

      1. William Mougayar

        Ok. Good to know. I didn’t see any on Daniel’s page- that’s why I asked.

    2. Abdallah Al-Hakim

      I saw a few for some of the Chefs. It would be good to also provide a star review system or something along those sorts.

  4. Ryan Drew

    Kitchensurfing is an amazing idea. I love how it can be utilized for everything from a dinner party to preparation of meals for the week. Also how it can launch aspiring chefs who currently work as sous chefs or chefs de partie.Great, great concept.

  5. falicon

    Brilliant on so many fronts…I wonder what other verticals this could extend too (cleaning? handymen? decorating?)…tons of potential for sure…

    1. Abdallah Al-Hakim

      I have met more than one person over the past couple of months who was trying to setup this sort of this for home repair guys. The problem is that the home repair guys really work with word of mouth and are so busy that they do not need to be online to find customers. It is really those in need of home repairs who would love this service.

      1. falicon

        good point…I think service magic also is a strong player in that space…but I still think if done well, a kitchensurfing approach could be disruptive to a lot of other industries. I wonder if they are building it out as an expandible platform or as a tightly integrated service for just this vertical…

        1. awaldstein

          I love this concept. I’m a marketplace fan.But I wonder whether it’s disruptive at all.You don’t have to disrupt a segment to build one and in this case I’m thinking that this is creating even more so than aggregating.

      2. Cecelia Feld

        Try Angie’s List if in your city. I have had good luck with repair/construction people in the Dallas area when I could not get personal (friends) recommendations.

  6. Abdallah Al-Hakim

    This is a very cool concept. I just checked their website and there is a wide range of prices and pictures looks pretty good. My one preliminary complaint is that I can only search NY chefs. Is it not available in other cities or do I have to provide email address to do that search.

    1. Gotham Gal

      More cities coming!!

      1. Abdallah Al-Hakim

        I just signed up to be notified when they come to Toronto. I would love to try them out with a group of friends

        1. christmasgorilla

          Abdallah, can’t wait until we come to Toronto. If you have friends in the food world or friends that love to cook, please help spread the world.

  7. helene rosenthal

    i’ve used kitchensurfing twice and they are awesome. i am a huge fan and can hardly wait to use them again

  8. awaldstein

    I’m a marketplace junkie. Each one is different.Some disrupt. Some aggregate and build something new.This one to me is building a new market. Somewhat more challenging on the marketing front but is tapping into something significant I think.I especially like that you can hire someone to teach you as well. Lot’s of people get driven to diet changes because of beliefs or more so, health issues. It’s really hard to do something like moving to a non allergenic based food diet or gluten free, and still eat well and enjoy it. This service is really perfect for a chef with specialties. Very marketable vertical actually.Thnx for the share.

  9. awaldstein

    One suggestion for them. I just signed up.Super easy to share a chef with friends.Really non intuitive if possible at all to share the service with friends. I wan’t to send it around with a ‘try this!’ note.How do I do this? Was equally curious to see how they addressed sharing for a sign in only service.I just addressed all these issues for a personal marketplace project so sensitive to easy social loops.

    1. christmasgorilla

      We’re definitely working on some things like this, but in the interim there’s nothing stopping you from a little copy + paste love.

      1. awaldstein

        I will do that Chris but this is simple critical stuff.Especially how you deal with shares for non logged in users.Just designed and am launching in early early beta a marketplace that I addressed these issues: http://www.thelocalsip,com.If you are in NYC, glad to have a coffee sometime and brainstorm.

  10. BB

    we’ve been using these guys to book chefs to make office lunches. they have been great!

    1. Gotham Gal

      perfect way to use this site.

  11. Cecelia Feld

    This would be good for Dallas even though there are many good caterers here. I signed up to be notified. Hope they add Dallas soon.

    1. Gotham Gal

      great!!

  12. Mark Gavagan

    Definitely an interesting idea that should help talented-but-undiscovered chefs move up in the world. I’m sure it will put a few of them on a path to finding investors to back new restaurants.FYI, an Atlanta-based company in the same market: http://www.mychefstable.com/