Thanks for featuring us on your blog. This is a very thoughtful and well written piece. I wanted to take a moment to add my two cents/contribute to your point about the revenue streams.

I think you’ve done a tremendous job capturing our concept so I will keep it short and sweet

Book of Cooks will always be free, both for cooks and for “eaters”. The whole idea was inspired in part by Craig’s List. It’s our role model! We want the platform to remain as fun and hassle-free as it can be

It was suggested to me that we should use a booking engine to connect users ; but I am philosophically opposed to it for the reasons I mentioned above: user experience is first. I am sure you would agree.

In addition, I think it may make sense for certain products and services that are highly standardized (e.g. packaged foods)- but not for local crafts, and particularly, not for freshly-prepared foods.

Meeting and befriending the cook, baker, or food artisan, or “adopting a grandma” (borrowing the metaphor from Thrillist: http://www.thrillist.com/washington-dc/book-cooks) is a big part of the experience!

We will try to keep the site lean & mean, and come up with ways to pay the bills that add value to the community: adding certain premium services, partnerships, affiliations, and some advertising as you can already find on some of our pages.

Again, thanks for writing this. I enjoyed reading it!

Julian
Founder | Book of Cooks