Through the Picobelly platform, students can cook for other students, or join any other dinner table for a home-cooked meal for a fair price. ‘At the moment we are still figuring out whether we are going to focus completely on take-away, an actual dinner experience or have both elements on the same platform,’ states co-founder Wesley Lam (22), student Human Media Interaction.
The start of something new
Setting up a working platform is no easy task, but it all started on a trip to Athens, Lam explains: ‘While we were there, we basically made use of platforms such as Uber and AirBnB. This was a rather pleasant experience for us, which is what made us think about setting up something similar. While we were on the plane back home, the Picobelly co-founder Floris Veldhuizen said to me “Hey Wesley, why is there nothing like that for food? It works for things such as transport so why wouldn’t it work for food?”. At first we just looked at each other in silence but after realizing that it was a good idea we spent the rest of the flight brainstorming for ideas on how to set up such a platform. Thus Picobelly came into existence!’
Innofoodtion
Although the food industry has several big companies which currently dominate the market, such as former UT start-up Thuisbezorgd.nl, Picobelly serves a unique group of customers. ‘Whereas most food platforms focus primarily on the experience of the people who eat, we want to put the most emphasis on the experience of the chef. In the end, the chef is the one who provides the value of our platform, which is food, so we would like to offer them the opportunity to either host a dining session or just provide food as a take-away option,’ says Veldhuizen. ‘Imagine that you like cooking a lot or just want to share what you have made with others but don’t want the social experience of dinner, then that is also a possibility on our platform.’
