The new app TastePlease is a combination of a dating site and Airbnb for foodies.
TastePlease brings together food lovers to test unique menus in small settings—basically, paid dinner parties for random guests in a host’s home.
I had it during a conversation with friends. One night we had a huge dinner with 12 friends and we just got this idea about it was nice sharing food with good (like-minded) people,” explained founder Frank Lutz, a chef from Denmark.
“I thought, ‘Oh, that could be nice to do it like an app, there’s a lot of sharing economy out there, so I could do an app doing things like this,’” he said.
TastePlease starts like many other sharing apps: hosts and guests create profiles. Then a host creates a menu and chooses a price—TastePlease gets a small percentage. Interested guests apply.
“This TastePlease social dining platform, it’s just the perfect time for entertaining new people, meeting new people,” said host Morgan Thomas.
TastePlease is a free download available for either iOS or Android, in 190 countries and 14 different languages.
“I think from a host’s point of view, it gives me a chance to test out my new, crazy recipes, meet new, hopefully like-minded people, but also learn from other people,” Thomas said.
“At the end of day, food smashes down all barriers and brings people back down to the basics, human interaction. No matter if you can’t speak each other’s languages, you can get together through food,” he said.
Lutz thought TastePlease would be boon to travelers who wanted to sample authentic regional dishes and meet friendly local people.
“I’m this kind of person who really likes to go out and meet new people, I’m not scared to meet new people and I think when people go to this kind of event—if you can call it that—it’s because they’re actually open to meet new people,” said Julie Silverstein Markussen, a guest at Morgan Thomas’s dinner party.
“I like eating everything, so for me, to go to this kind of place and I don’t know what I’m going to eat, I just enjoy it because we can sit and talk; ‘How did you do this? How did you make these courses?’ Yeah, I love it,” she said.
