Aashi Vel was wandering by means of Playa Del Carmen determined to attempt some real native meals after a trip week consuming touristy choices. She handed a house, peered by means of a window and noticed a girl making ready a meal in her kitchen — and Aashi thought “wouldn’t or not it’s nice if I might simply sit down at her desk for dinner.” That have impressed Aashi and her co-founder, Stephanie Lawrence to create Touring Spoon, an Airbnb-type platform for meals experiences that now operates in 65 international locations.
The co-founders met on the Berkeley-Haas Faculty of Enterprise and embraced the idea after realizing that Stephanie had an identical journey expertise in China the place she had wished she might make dumplings with a neighborhood grandmother. They determined to deal with this two-sided market to attach curious vacationers with folks in fascinating locations who favored to cook dinner and meet new folks. Airbnb constructed a $100B firm by enabling genuine journey experiences so this appeared like an thought value creating.
Aashi and Stephanie shortly realized that they have been tackling a basic two-sided market drawback. Not solely did they need to fulfill adventurous vacationers, however additionally they needed to supply an equally compelling worth proposition to the native residents that have been doing the cooking. It didn’t take lengthy to find what the locals needed. One “host” in Lima informed Aashi, “I’m on this house alone with my husband… he can’t be the one one I communicate with!” One other host, Keiko who lives in a Tokyo dwelling, mentioned, “I grew up with three siblings and we by no means met a single foreigner; I would like my kids to be uncovered to new cultures.” A number in Vietnam needed to enhance her English expertise. Most of the hosts wanted the additional earnings. Aashi and Stephanie had found the narrative for the opposite aspect of the market as nicely.
A “two-sided market” innovation story is a sort of “Love Story.” Fixing a two-sided market drawback requires the innovator to attach two events, every of whom wants one thing that the opposite supplies. Utilizing the Airbnb instance, vacationers have been in search of a cool place to remain that felt prefer it was a part of a neighborhood; whereas owners or renters needed to make just a few additional bucks from unused rooms. Get together A wants occasion B and vice versa. To get what they need, they need to come collectively ultimately. It’s a love story. To totally notice the facility of the concept, the innovator should establish who the 2 units of consumers are, what they each need, and the way the brand new service goes to by some means discover a strategy to put them collectively.
Aashi and Stephanie got down to clear up this two-sided market drawback for foodies and in-home cooks and raised $2M pre-pandemic to launch their enterprise. They ultimately provided non-public, genuine meals experiences in 200 cities all through 65 international locations. They expanded into market excursions, backyard excursions and different experiences hosted by locals. Then COVID occurred. Journey stopped and enterprise dried up in a single day. Might this love story evolve?
By 2020, many hosts have been depending on Touring Spoon for earnings (and cultural connection!); in the meantime the vacationers have been caught of their properties and affected by wanderlust. Impressed by an earlier dialog with an investor, Aashi and Stephanie determined to supply digital one-on-one cooking courses led by their hosts. Now, a bunch in Ulaanbaatar teaches how one can make noodle soup in a cup from his Ger (Mongolian yurt), and a bunch in Addis Ababa demonstrates how one can make injera (Ethiopian flatbread) in actual time. These and 165 different courses are democratizing meals journey by enabling larger entry to those experiences. Now, a digital “meals traveler” can take a personalised lesson and get to know the “native host” from the opposite aspect of the world with out having to depart their very own kitchen.
As folks start to journey once more, Touring Spoon will supply each the unique in-person experiences all around the world together with the brand new digital courses. The enterprise mannequin works greatest with the standard journey experiences, however by pivoting to a brand new sort of expertise throughout the world journey shut down, Aashi and Stephanie continued to satisfy the wants of each units of consumers. It’s the identical primary premise, however an entire new love story.