By MATT LINDNER
For Sun-Times Media
One Chicago company wants so badly for every traveler to have a home-cooked meal, money doesn’t matter. Yet.
Meal Sharing is a website that connects potential dinner guests with amateur chefs looking to host them.
“We created an international network of hosts around the world,” says founder Jay Savsani (left). “People have been requesting meals from our hosts saying things like, ‘I can’t go home for the holidays’ or ‘My family lives abroad, can I do Thanksgiving with you?’ We’re adding more hosts every day.”
The year-old startup, based out of the 1871 tech incubator in the Merchandise Mart, bills itself as an Airbnb for home-cooked meals. The company claims more than 5,000 users in 425 cities.
On the Meal Sharing site, hosts can offer up a home-cooked meal, specifying the kind of food and alcohol they’ll offer: vegan, carnivore, wine, beer, etc. Diners — typically travelers — type in their location and a list of hosts pops up. Hosts are responsible for gathering the ingredients and cooking the meals; diners are responsible for showing up and being on their best behavior.
Inspiration for the concept struck Savsani during a trip to Cambodia. He asked the hotel concierge how he could dine at home with the locals. “At a certain point everyone was fighting to have me over for a meal,” he says. “It kind of dawned on me that there’s a reciprocal curiosity. An hour later, I found myself having a home-cooked meal in the countryside.”
It’s that cultural exchange that’s helped Meal Sharing expand to every continent except Antarctica — despite having spent only $25 on marketing, in the form of a Facebook ad that ran last week. The rest has been word of mouth.
The company has one full-time employee — Savsani — and three part-timers, including a community manager in Berlin who is responsible for facilitating the concept’s European expansion. Meal Sharing has raised $25,000 in funding from OpenTable founder Chuck Templeton. Savsani says he’s working with Templeton to raise more.
Though Meal Sharing’s mission may be noble, Savsani says he’s not sure how he’s going to turn his home-cooked meal exchange into a money-making business. As it stands, diners don’t pay for the meal, though in Chicago he’s testing a “chip-in” fee that hosts can set to offset the cost of ingredients. Savsani says he’s not sure if the company will take a cut.
So how does he ensure that people are safe when having complete strangers over for dinner, and vice versa?
The short answer is Meal Sharing relies on social media and the honor system. The long answer is that it’s putting an insurance policy in place to protect itself.
“We have phone-number verification, Facebook Connect and the most important component of the website is our reviews,” he says, noting that hosts and guests review each other. “We’re also working with an insurance firm to build in a $1 million guarantee host-guest protection program.”
Though Meal Sharing isn’t offered in Antarctica yet, Savsani isn’t ruling out an expansion, even if it means marketing to an unusual set of clientele.
“One day there will be some scientists or penguins who want to have a meal out there,” he says.
