It definitely takes more than twenty minutes.īut I will tell you that my Josephine pickups have been utterly reliable generators of smiles and warm feelings. Carry it home in a bag dangling from your handlebars. You announce yourself, say hello, receive your meal. Maybe another customer-also your neighbor-is lingering. In the kitchen, the cook-your neighbor-is working. You step inside the feeling is both clandestine and transgressive. You ride over on your bicycle and spot a Josephine sign taped to the front door, which is ajar. On the day of your order, a text message arrives bearing a street address. Meals from Josephine are not available for delivery. What would it be like if you didn’t have to hide the system? They build these complicated systems and then they have to hide them, because the way they treat humans is at best mildly depressing and at worst burn-it-down dystopian. I feel bad, truly, for Amazon and Sprig and their many peers-SpoonRocket, Postmates, Munchery, and the rest. The experience for a Sprig customer is super convenient, almost magical the experience for a chef or courier…? We don’t know. This is the Amazon move: absolute obfuscation of labor and logistics behind a friendly buy button. I can see them: the drones dropping lamb kofta from the sky.īut there’s more to any cafeteria than the serving line, and Sprig’s app offers no photograph of that other part. The ambition is clear: Sprig in every city, with longer menus, better ingredients, faster delivery. “Gotta eat” is a rumble in the belly, a business opportunity, and a public-health crisis all rolled into one, and to address it, Sprig is building the biggest, nicest cafeteria ever. The Quick Therapy That Actually Works Olga Khazan The menu extends out two weeks Josephine is less “I’m hungry now” and more “I expect to be hungry on Thursday, so I’d better line something up.” The photography is rough-and-ready, Etsy-caliber, and the dishes are described by the cooks themselves. Tomorrow, there’s chicken and dumplings ($11) from Suzie in Albany or veggie enchiladas ($8) from Afiba in Fruitvale. On the day I’m writing this, I can get carrot soup ($11) from Lisa in Oakland or pho ($13) from Hai in Emeryville. Instead, it screens home cooks and takes orders on their behalf. Josephine doesn’t prepare any meals itself. The first time I encountered Josephine, its website was a bare page that instructed you to enter your phone number and “join our SMS list.” The design is only slightly more elaborate today there’s still no iPhone app. Two or three times a month, I obtain lunch or dinner from a network called Josephine. I work some days from my apartment in Berkeley, and every day, I gotta eat.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |