Been watching so much Food Network lately, and was thinking about a place (preferably near college or yuppies) where you have a bunch of ingredients and people can customize how they want their meal. i.e. chicken + brocolli + onions + jalapeno + bacon over pasta. limit # of meats and veggies you can choose and additional costs for more. have items that are simple to make but pretty easy to make delicious like pastas, sandwiches, rices, omelettes, fried foods, etc. kind of a ripoff on the rutgers fat sandwich origin, except you can now do it with pastas and other things.

interact with the students through facebook/twitter/skype (important part imho) and keep it a friendly atmosphere where you jokingly cannot guarantee their weird combinations will be delicious.

every now and then post up most innovative/popular "student concoctions" (in quotes because it doesn't have to be -- you can make up your own high profit margin item and pass it as a student created one). eventually you'll want to develop a menu of "crazy" creations that you'll be pushing and hoping people order because of higher profit margins and easier cookability, but always keep the customized orders as an option.

might be hectic in the beginning, but a basic template of seasonings and sauces should be enough to make everything taste decently similar but appear different in students' eyes hopefully. combination of fast food chinese + rutgers fat sandwiches!

@mmbt0ne,

i'm intrigued. what do you have in mind to improve recipes? what do your sketches look like?

Here's my idea. Company A in Country A wants to export to Country B. Country B requires joint venture, or partnership with a citizen of Country B. I am a citizen of Country B and for the sake of arguement have contacts a-plenty in Country B. I negotiate the exclusive rights to sell Company A's product to Country B. They gain entry to the market for very little cost despite having little control. I then find someone who actually wants to sell this product in Country B and sell the exclusive rights for a price.

Before I share my doubts and concerns over the quality of this idea because I do have my own, I'd rather see your own.

Also, I'm a fresh business graduate with very little experience so let's not be killing my entire morale with 2p2 harshness, although as I've said I expect there are many flaws with this.

As my previous scan may have made clear, I am not a good drawer. So I don't really want to hurt anyone's eyes by putting more of that crap up here. Give me a couple days to try and make some proper (however basic) mockups in GIMP and I'll throw them up.

In short though, I think recipes need to be less about lists (of ingredients, of steps) and more about what's needed for each step and what's being done.

The best way I can try to explain it is, imagine the difference between a standard set of instruction for putting something together, and the IKEA set of instructions. I want to be closer to the IKEA set. Each step is clearly laid out, you know exactly what you need, you know where you are in the entire process, you know what few things are coming up next, hopefully you can know what else can be done concurrently, stuff like that.

ah, ok. i think i understand better what you are getting at now and, yeah, i can see how that could be cool. looking forward to your mockup.

Are you a frequent follower of recipes and find them inadequate now? Or are you just hypothesizing that what people have been using for ages without any trouble is somehow deficient? It seems obvious to me that list of ingredients is far more important than the steps, and most recipes tell you when you need to do stuff concurrently, etc.

I use recipes a lot. I've got a handful of physical cookbooks, use all 3 of the major recipe search engines I listed, and have recipe files at all of them.

I also set a goal to make 1 new recipe per week this year, so I've been ratcheting up my intake of different recipes and am sick of consistently having to go back and forth in them.

If "we've always done it this way" is the only argument against a change, then I'm pretty comfortable with my idea.

I'd like to see your idea tied in with a smart phone app like "what the **** should I make for dinner" (f word in teh profanity filter- google it if you have never seen it). Something that knows what you have in the house, how much time you have, and randomizes. I'd buy that.

The problem with those is that it's a pain in the dick to keep an inventory of your foodstuffs up to date. Until there are smart refrigerators/cabinets/stoves/etc all connected it's going to be a special kind of OCD person who keeps something like that up to date at all times.

Or someone on a medically restricted diet that has to track everything anyways, and anyone who lives in a house with that person.

Everyone should print this out and hang it up.

paperkarma.com is something similar...
The cold start problem can probably leverage mechanical turk stuff.

I feel like I saw an article in the nytimes about this (the recipe format) a few months ago, but about a book? Seems like a good idea. Lots of people use iPads for recipes, and there are probably lots of possibilities (beyond just static formatting) for using that fact in a helpful way.

Golf course idea is excellent.

Plan:
Find a course that badly needs the revenue
Negotiate a deal with them, where you bring in last minute holders, and get a cut....

how about a service that takes all your tailoring measurements and standardizes it with clothing websites/producers so you can order clothing online and be confident it is the correct fit.

Could synch up with some of the bespoke tailoring shops that have sprung up...
Maybe a webcam or the computer monitor could scan a body for complete 3D dimensions, for mass measuring...