Cookapp looks beyond restaurants to connect chefs with diners

Chefs Martin Arrojo, left, and Ezequiel De La Torre, second from left, prepare salad for a Cookapp gathering in Buenos Aires. Natacha Pisarenko / AP Photo

If the latest development in culinary social media catches on, the trendiest restaurants may no longer be restaurants.

A growing number of apps and websites are taking the traditional chef-diner relationship out of eateries and into homes. Cookapp, the latest to launch in the United States, connects diners with independent chefs and amateur cooks who are willing to host dinners at their homes and other offbeat locations.

Like its peers EatWith and Feastly, Cookapp takes a bite out of the "shared economy", where peer-to-peer businesses are disrupting established industries and causing headaches for municipal regulators and tax collectors. Other non-food apps in this realm include Uber and Lyft, which match private drivers with people needing rides, and VRBO and Airbnb, which help people turn their homes into holiday rentals.

Match and eat

Cookapp, which recently moved its headquarters from Buenos Aires to New York City, works like a matchmaker, arranging intimate gourmet dinners between strangers. Chefs list when and where they will prepare particular meals; diners book what interests them, pay upfront via the app, then just show up and enjoy.

For chefs, it offers a chance to experiment without the hassle, expense and risk of maintaining a restaurant. For diners, it can be the ultimate culinary adventure.

Tomas Bermudez came up with the idea for Cookapp while living in Rio de Janeiro, where he struggled to meet people. So he and his sister came up with the idea for Cookapp, set up a website and began knocking on the doors of cooks and chefs back home in Argentina.

Dinner clubs

More than 50,000 users and 650 cooks registered with Cookapp during its year-long tryout in Argentina’s capital and just six weeks after its New York City launch, 250 cooks and thousands of customers have signed up. The company hopes to expand to San Francisco, followed by Boston and other US cities.

“I hosted my own dinner club for years and while I absolutely loved it, the seamless logistics behind Cookapp are a dream. I don’t have to worry about anything and no money is exchanged the day of the event,” says Amber Shreiner, a vegetarian cook advertising a five-course tasting menu at her Manhattan flat.

Safe gastronomy

But whether and how to regulate these gatherings that exist on the periphery of the restaurant world is a challenge.

In New York City, the health department says home-based restaurants are illegal throughout the state and officials say they could shut down or fine cooks who turn the occasional dinner into a regular income stream. “These establishments don’t have a permit from the health department, nor are they inspected by city health inspectors,” said a health department spokesman.

Cookapp describes itself as a marketing service that simply matches chefs with customers who make “donations”. Its founders say they are eager to work with governments to create safe and legal spaces for these dinner parties to thrive.

Shared economy

“It is a murky line,” admits Pedro Rivas, Cookapp’s chief executive and co-founder. “What we do is allow chefs to host dinner parties. People are paying a donation to cover part of the cost of hosting a dinner party.”

How involved companies are in vetting hosts can vary. Rivas says Cookapp “offers a more curated experience”, by evaluating every would-be host beforehand. The company sends a freelance photographer to a dinner party to take pictures and judge the cook’s hosting ability, food quality and the setting’s comfort and cleanliness. Like other similar concepts, Cookapp also has insurance that covers chefs to some extent, in case a meal goes terribly wrong.

Participating cooks say they shouldn’t be regulated like restaurants, which have to get certificates, permits and licenses from multiple city and state agencies. New York food providers also must post letter grades from annual sanitary inspections.

But as millions of dollars move into this “shared economy”, regulatory oversight is inevitable.

Last month, Airbnb agreed to start charging hotel taxes on San Francisco customers and wants to do the same in New York, where opponents of the service say it fosters illegal nuisance rentals. And shared-ride services recently agreed to limit their drivers and require insurance in Portland, Oregon.

Cookapp’s Bermudez realises his concept could be next. “Of course there is a very grey area and we want to make it as white as we can.”