Din — Ingredient delivery for restaurant recipes

@emilylafave I like the product positioning and it opens partnership/marketing/lead-gen opportunities with restaurants. We've seen similar recipe-delivery services like Plated and Hatchery (my friends, @nayafia and @DavidSpinks' Feast started off in this space, too). Other than the "recipes from restaurants," how does Forage compare?

Congrats on launch! I love this space having worked on Foodtree up in Vancouver, trying to get great food into people's lives. Couldn't be a better team to tackle this well. How have you gone about sourcing, and planning for scale? Along the way, did Forage throw away certain business models? How'd you arrive at the one you have now? I still remember @joshfraser's post-mortem on his first startup, before the post-mortem was cool:)

As someone who makes the same meals* week in and week out, I really wish things like this were available in Wisconsin. Forage looks awesome. * frozen pizzas, sandwiches, hot pockets, etc.

Couldn't imagine a better team doing this. I've had the pleasure of watching this product evolve for a year and so excited that Rob, Emily, and Josh are sharing it with the world!

@emilylafave How do you guys decide on recipes? What's that process like? I'm sure you have 1000 things you want to put on Forage's menu right now.

I think that average person has come to accept cooking as something that just sucks: picking recipes from literally 1000's, hard to take risks with a meal because you need to eat something & can't cook again and all of the supply chain logistics (how much basil will I need on Friday?). We default to picking safe recipes that we know we can make, that don't require us to learn new skills or new ingredients, only take recipe suggestions from friends and buy staple ingredients that go into recipes we know we can make thereby reinforcing the cycle. This is a market that has many customer segments. High end foodies (I hate that word), food adventurers, hobbyist cooks, price sensitive customers, time sensitive customers, young professionals, families, etc. Who is Forage targeting, @emilylafave ?

@EAWharton we designed this for ourselves first. We realized building Foodzie that we had no time to cook. We're busy people, but with a high bar for taste. We designed the product for food enthusiasts, people who love to cook, but have a hard time fitting it in. People that get excited about restaurant culture and the techniques that the best chefs are using to learn from. That's who we designed it for. But what we've found with our early customers is even if you're not into all that food culture, our dishes are just damn good and fast, and that has broad appeal.

I've used Forage a couple times now, they deliver all the ingredients and instructions -- the meals are famous dishes from local chefs. A great way to learn and cook amazing food.

This is awesome @emilylafave, Rob. What's the pricing like? I didn’t see much on the site. As a South Indian, I couldn’t be happier. Dosa is my staple food and I miss doing the original batter in SF.

Forage is the best. As someone who tends to cook the same things over and over, having great meals pre-measured and delivered to cook with straightforward instructions is a really great way to try new recipes. Congrats Rob, Emily and Josh!

Great service, wonder how they manage the logistics end, would they use something ordr.in or self managed

@rrhoover We kept hearing from our early users that they didn't have an hour to spend cooking every night.  We knew that restaurants could fire any dish in 20 min, so we really focused on how to use the same techniques they do to make a 20-min dinner possible for home cooks without compromising on flavor.  We're the only service that offers delicious, home-cooked meals in 20 mins or less.

Can't wait to try this. In addition to your subscription model, will you also offer an a la carte option for the commitment-phobes?

@Emilylafave brilliant. I agree that as a hard-core, world-traveling, salt-tasting foodie this is a great service not only for time-saving tasty home-cooked meals but also for idea generation and a peek into recipes you would not normally try.

Huge fan of Rob & Emily. They have real experience with great food and can't wait to cook with Forage.

Hey everyone! I'm one of the founders of Forage. Previously founded Foodzie and back at it. Happy to answer any questions you have.

We have been using forage since the alpha launch, having used many of the other preparation and delivery services. I love forage for one simple reason: It makes me and my wife feel like heroes. I’ll ’splain. I’m an accomplished cook and my wife is an intermediate cook, we both work full time and while we have time during the weekdays to bang out a meal, we don’t typically have enough time to develop serious flavor. Forage works so well for this on both skill levels. For me I get restaurant dishes with the most time consuming part of the flavor development already done, for instance the stock from Hapa Ramen which takes hours to get right. I get to deliver that dish and in the process deconstruct the way it’s put together which educates my own cooking. For my wife, she is thrilled to be cooking restaurant quality meals in 20 minutes with intermediate skills. We’re hooked.

@zackshapiro ha, yes too many. We seek out the best dishes and we get suggestions from our community. We test everything. Each week we'll be focusing on a specific theme. Once we find dishes we love they get scheduled for that week. One week we'll dive into Eastern European, the next Greek, South Indian, etc.

Congrats Rob, Emily, and Josh!

Congrats on launching guys! Excited to see it all finally come to fruition.