Question

Please answer in 250-350 words please.

One night, Ms. Joy Food had too much leftover food because her three children couldn’t make it for dinner at home. She murmured, “food should be served when it is hot. If I know someone around here, I would share the food with them.” She started to think of sharing food with others and tried to find ways to do. If she can do, people would enjoy authentic home-made food at a minimal cost. Do you think she can adopt the concept of the sharing economy for this case?

Here are her basic ideas of Authentic Home-made Food (AHaFood) sharing economy:
- she will have a website of AHaFood, only for dinner for the first time.
- Around 5:00 pm, she will post the recipe for the food and take only 2-3 orders by 6:30 pm.
- If anyone is interested in sharing the food, they can join the AHaFood platform.
- She will have UberEats connected with her AHaFood.

Given the scenario mentioned above, what would be potential good things about AHaFood, issues related to AHaFood, and any suggestions for Ms. Food?

Answer 1

Sharing economy is a peer to peer kind of economy in which sharing of assets or goods take place from one person to another without having any intermediaries. This is a potential economic model as most of the assets like vehicles, rooms etc. are not used up to their full potential during their lifetimes. Rooms will be vacant when people are not using them. Cars are not used when people are not driving. Likewise, food produced by a person can be sold to another without having the need for a third party to coordinate.

In this case, the potential goodies are that food wastage can be minimized. Ms. Food will have an additional income and the satisfaction derived from seeing her idea realized. People can have good homemade food. If successful, she may have more customers and a possible up scaling of her idea growing into a full-fledged business. But there are many pitfalls for this model. There are still uncertainties regarding such ideas because businesses are regulated by the state in all countries. For a peer to peer business model, licensing and such things will not be practical. The economic activity happening at such levels are not accounted and are not being taken into consideration while calculating GDP and other things. Imagine many people like Ms. Food working out such ideas. Another issue is that Ms. Food may invite risk if some fraudster shows up in the disguise that he come for taking food. Things like these are a main issue when economic model is concerned.

My suggestions for Ms. Food are to make a customer base from her known circle first and then proceed with caution. This business will be successful as it will be good for people who can have homely food. So chances of getting regular customers are also there. She can take the inputs of any one with previous experience in doing such business also.