He argued that these kind of establishments were safe to eat at because their entire livelihood is dependent on their reputation among locals. Looking around at all the competition along the street we just walked down, it kind of made sense.
In my north american city if a shop fails inspection they are closed down for 48 hours, after which they can open back up and operate until next inspection. In Bangkok if a vendor makes some one sick the news spreads via word of mouth and their business is DONE.
I was able to enjoy an amazing meal after calming down.
(1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil
Also, the GI tracts of people in developed nations are more susceptible to some pathogens than people who have been exposed to those pathogens from an early age and have survived those pathogens in their foodsource.
At the end of the day, I think it always remains the case that "killing your customers is bad for business".
But one of them is that SF doesn't have the storage and refrigeration that a fixed establishment does. The other is throughput. Combined, food doesn't stick around long enough to go bad. I have gotten sick in Vietnam, and it was at the fanciest restaurant on the entire trip. Most likely it was something kept under bad refrigeration for way too long.
But I remember when I laughed similarly at AirBnB and Uber, because regulations, safety etc.
I remember when Uber riders, drivers, AirbnB hosts got screwed because the other party turned up to be a criminal (remember #uberdelhirape ?)
But, sharing economy is the new buzzword and regulations have been too much of a pain, so people are willing to take a risk.
There was a startup in Britain that was killing it with mom cooking and Dad doing the deliveries. But health authorities cracked down and the company cratered.
The customers loved the service but even with the help of an executive chef doing inspections the government wasn't satisfied.
Just think of a food truck business minus the food truck / cooking on sight, you deliver to parties and receptions instead with a-la-carte cooking ahead of time
A bodega on a corner is a software company?
A shoe shine guy is a software company?
> ..a software industry ( which based on profit margins is a toddler )
I thought software has higher margins than most industries.
A few counter-examples that illustrates my point:
1. Having a trade secret that allows only you to manufacture a good exclusively with high margins. The best known example is Coca Cola. They enjoy average gross margins of 60%.
https://ycharts.com/companies/KO/gross_profit_margin
2. Intel enjoys a near-monopoly in the hardware industry selling server CPUs. They enjoy 63% margins on ~$16b in quarterly revenue.
3. Professional services. I believe this one is self-evident because you can mostly get away with charging value-based prices instead of cost-based prices that is predominant in industries like manufacturing.
IBM Global Services contributes more than 60% of IBM's revenue which allows them to enjoy about 50% gross margins even though IBM GS has only been around since 1991. If industry maturity were truly a dominant factor, 26 years is more than enough time for their industry to "mature".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_formula#Current_ingr...
Very few foods can be processed outside of a licensed cannery. Usually only items that don't require refrigeration to stay fresh, for example dried foods or preserves that don't have large pieces of low-acid fruit.
And despite regulations to the contrary, for the entire 7 years I lived in Chicago, not a single cab driver ever accepted a credit card (this was a ways back).
Not to say that regulations are bad or that I’m against regulations. Just that they are not magic. Further, due to the centralized enforcement mechanism, most regulations are difficult and expensive to enforce. This can often result in being seldomly enforced.
If the uber-ization of food preparation comes with an uber like rating system, my guess is that the efficacy of that distributed rating system will rival or surpass centralized regulations in preventing food poisoning.
Did you wash your hands before you ate?
Usually if a restaurant is to blamed, there are multiple cases of illness outbreaks.
personally I find that to be a sad commentary on the state of "Free" societies when we are regulated to the point where you can not even cook for other people with out government permission.
Really highlights how much freedom has been lost and that most people view that as a good thing. Falsely putting their faith in government health inspections often which only occur once every several years and are often highly corrupt, as the reason eating in restaurants are "safe"
Preach it, brother, preach it! Can I get an "Amen" here???
We keep telling ourselves, and each other, that we are "Free" when we are so far from "free" that it's laughable.
To get a better idea of what the proper role for government should be limited to, I suggest everyone read "The Law"[1] by Bastiat.
As Bastiat says:
And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties — liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, of labor, of trade? In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism — including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?
LA County, for example, is very strict with enforcing these rules for kitchens, and publishes monthly lists of restaurants that have been shut down for violations.
I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. As if such things as hygiene regulations didn't exist and you can just open a restaurant by hanging a sign out and telling someone to deliver whatever you just produced in your kitchen.
Well, probably in some part of the world you can. In some part of the world people die of food poisoning all the time, in other parts we learned the hard way that sometimes you need this thing which bothers startups to no end called regulation.