Over the weekend, Philadelphia welcomed a new start-up, MealTik. The city hosted a local edition of a national program, called Startup Weekend, which connects entrepreneurs for a entire weekend to build, tweak and demo new business ventures. According to a philly.com summary of the event, 16 teams presented demonstrations of their weekend work on Sunday afternoon.
From the MealTik website, "Mealtik is the home-made food social network that connects local cooks with their hungry healthy neighbors, promoting a stronger and tastier community." This idea is simple, easy to execute (it was established over the weekend), encourages closer communities, and redistributes an unequally allocated asset (cooking skills) to the larger community. MealTik can build more resilient and interconnected communities while helping residents eat healthier (or at least home-cooked) meals more often.
Established by founders Brad, Nabih, and Adam, MealTik strives to make this process as straightforward as possible. Searching for meals in Philadelphia uses GoogleMaps. To list a meal, a basic form is provided that asks users to provide an address, description of the meal, and a price (if applicable). For example, the image below shows one of the current offerings, Spicy Fish Tacos for $3.50 per person.
I would love to see this company expand functionality, like chef ratings, invitations for diners, and chef profiles with upcoming menus. An integration with Facebook presents a huge opportunity to add security and trust, in a model that asks users to invite people into their homes. There could be a lot of opportunity to expand on this idea and make a small operating profit from service or listing fees. With an established reputation and a reasonable dining space, an at-home chef could pocket some extra cash and make a few new friends.
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