Of course there is. This Sharing Economy thing — which is hotter than, like, food trucks right now — continues to turn every empty guest bedroom, unoccupied car seat and idle hand into something actually worth money. Now we've got AirBnB for turning homes into hotels, we've got SideCar and Lyft for turning Hondas into cabs, and we've got TaskRabbit for turning unemployed people into useful members of society. (Just kidding, TaskRabbits! Thanks for letting me pay you to bring a hamburger that one time.) So it was only a matter of time before someone made an app to connect smartphone-bound urbanites with home-cooked meals.
SupperKing is an iPhone app that aims to "enable peer to peer in-home dining experience," which used to just be called "inviting people over for dinner." As Fast Company puts it, the app's purpose is "to help people fill that void of loneliness with dinner parties." Or, less depressingly: it lets kitchen-savvy foodies or bored line cooks or your pierogi-folding grandmother fill their kitchen tables with hungry strangers.
Aspiring cooks set the time, date, location and suggested donation for the meal and people who don't like eating alone can search for upcoming meals. When SFist checked this afternoon, there were three meals listed for a couple days in the future. (One allegedly planned by a "4-star chef of the Michelin chef [sic]" whose name didn't turn up any Google results.) Diners can rate their hosts and vice-versa, so we assume terrible dinner party guests will eventually stop getting invited things, just like at traditional get-togethers. Down the road, the app plans to include an photo-uploading feature and the ability to livestream video from dinner. Because the only thing better than sharing a homecooked meal is sharing it over the Internet.
To be correct: SupperKing is actual one of a few foodie-centric apps to come out of this new Sharing Economy thing. There is also: Grubwithus — which eliminates awkward dinner conversation by arranging restaurant dinners with likeminded people. Kitchit — sort of the Uber of the food world, which allows users to hire professional chefs. And Feastly — which is very similar to Supperking in that it allows any cook to invite people into their home.
At the time of this writing at least one meal looked exciting: a Sunday afternoon dungeness crab boil for a mere $10 bucks. We'll be sure to let you know how it goes.
