Tuesday 26 June 2007

Open-source restaurant

I had an idea for an "open-source" restaurant where buying an item from the menu also gets you the recipe. You could also run the restaurant by publishing all the recipes online, which would silence the criticism of making people pay for the recipes.

The reason such a restaurant doesn't immediately go under is that it's not the recipe information they're selling in food form. It's the skill of the cooks and the dining experience. Yes, you can try your hand at making their famous meatballs or whatever at home, but you probably won't do it as well as the restaurant chefs, you'll eat it at home and you'll have to do the dishes afterwards. Having the recipe does not negate the desire to eat at the restaurant.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course you'd have to call the restaurant "Open Sauce".
PPS - Nothing else makes sense.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOL, its still a pretty good idea though. I wouldn't mind trying some of the recipes, and as long as you got a dishwasher there's not much of a problem.
On the other hand, the restaurant won't lose business, coz the lazies will still go there instead of cooking for themselves.

John said...

Exactly my point: even without an exclusive menu, a restaurant sells a service that people are willing to pay for.

Maybe some of the recipes are pretty tricky or require equipment you don't have at home. Or maybe the taste depends on having really fresh ingredients that you'd need to spend all day gathering. Sometimes it just makes sense to outsource the cooking.

Erin Marie said...

It's amazing. You've even found a way to make food nerdy.

You're a special kind of wonderful.

John said...

You forgot to put quotes around "special". ;)

Erin Marie said...

I'm "sorry". I sometimes "forget" the use of the "inverted commas" and the way in which they "work" to "really" "make" a "sentence".

:P

John said...

I don't have any particular affinity for inverted commas. All I really meant there is that you missed a perfectly good opportunity to suggest that I'm a bit, you know, "special" in that politically-correct way.

Erin Marie said...

I'll politically correct you in a minute.