Do You Want To Eat With Strangers? This Company Depends On It

If there’s one thing Millennial entrepreneurs have proven to the market it’s this: Businesses don’t have to stick to the long-held rules to succeed. From taxis to hotels, young minds are recalibrating what success looks like. One such individual is 34-year-old Washington, D.C. native Noah Karesh, founder of Feastly, a community dining site.

Eschewing the restaurant itself—the decor, the rent, the paperwork—Feastly is an online marketplace that allows any chef to showcase and offer dinners, pop-ups, supper clubs and other food experiences. With events in 75 cities under his belt, Karesh is focusing on building Feastly in San Francisco, with an eye toward global market domination. In his mind, everyone should have access to a fantastic meal with a new community, no matter where you are. And chefs, whether they have the funds for brick-and-mortar locations or not, should be able to share their art with eager diners.

I called Karesh to learn more about his journey from pop-up taco hawker to community-dinner facilitator.

Eve Turow Paul: What was your first foray into the food industry?

Noah Karesh: My buddy and I were living in the Middle East and started a pop-up taco stand. There was no good Mexican food there, so we started hawking tacos on the street in Tel Aviv. We made everything from scratch. The hardest thing to find was the masa and some other ingredients we had to bring over from the States, like dried ancho chilies and poblano peppers.

When I moved back home I realized that there were no good coffee shops in D.C., so I decided to open something with a friend. Instead of going the traditional route of renting the space, getting permits, putting money down before you even know if the concept is going to work, we had a very different philosophy about it, which was, "Let’s see what we can do if we don’t do those things."

We went to a bar and said, "Hey, you’re not open during the day; we’re going to put a coffee shop in here when you’re not open"—thinking about utilizing underutilized space. In a month and a half we completed the concept and opened up the Blind Dog Cafe. We were open from 7am to 4pm, and then the bar was open from 5pm on. We bypassed all the traditional hurdles that most people face when starting a brick-and-mortar business.

Turow Paul: What was the benefit of shirking the traditional route to opening a café?

Karesh: My background is in tech and that world is all about testing—quick, iterative testing and failing fast. Before you put a lot of money into something you want to be sure it really works. I think most of the restaurant industry invests a lot of money and time before they even know if the concept is sound. Sixty percent of restaurants fail within the first few years. I said, "Why are people doing it like this? It doesn’t seem to make much sense. It’s costly, time-intensive and most likely not going to work. So why follow that model?"

Turow Paul: How did the concept for Feastly come about?

Karesh: Feastly began on a trip to Guatemala with my girlfriend. While traveling, eating is a huge part of understanding culture. But we couldn’t seem to find any Guatemalan food in Guatemala. We went on a search through the market and asked a young avocado seller where we could find Guatemalan food. He said, "I know where some good Guatemalan food is—at my mom’s house."

We followed him back to his mom’s house, he swung open the door and there she was, cooking. When those smells hit my nose, it was magic. I was very happy we found it but didn’t understand why it was so hard to find. I also wondered why his mom couldn’t do what she loved to do and make a bit of extra income doing it. So that was the inspiration.

Turow Paul: What ultimately made the idea attractive to you? Was it the foodie perspective, the community aspect, the adventure?

Karesh: There was a genuineness, a bit of an adventure and exploration to it. And I think a lot of people want that in their lives. Also, these chefs are not service workers; they’re artists, creators. We should treat them like that.

Turow Paul:So what were the next steps, after you had the idea?

Karesh: I pitched the concept at a Startup Weekend, and then hosted the first meal a bit after, in the home of a North African woman who cooked a home-style meal for about 30 people.

At the time, Feastly didn’t even have a full, functioning website. We only had social media, which is how we garnered our audience. I was also working as an international consultant on mobile money, working on the cafe and had no money to invest in Feastly.

How do you get somewhere when you don’t have any money? There are lots of other things to exchange. Ask yourself, where’s value, what is value and what else can you exchange? That was a really great lesson: Money is never a reason to say you can’t do something.

So I found some developers who wanted to get better at certain developer languages and needed a project—it was an exchange for all of us.

From there, I got into an accelerator in San Francisco called Boost VC.

Turow Paul: Why do you think a concept like Feastly works among techie Millennials?

Karesh: We look at the dining table as the original social network.  Regardless of socioeconomic status, age or gender, everyone who comes to a Feastly meal shares a mutual interest and that becomes a foundation for relationships to form around the table. We’ve seen a suburban grandmother hit it off with a Millennial urbanite—two people who likely wouldn’t have interacted otherwise. You can also more easily establish a relationship with the artists behind the meal.

The Internet has allowed us to break down the hurdles to allow those without the business acumen or status to become the catalyst to their own futures. People don’t even have to choose between being a producer or a consumer. They can be both. It’s the power of choice, autonomy and control. People are gravitating toward having projects and gigs instead of “secure” jobs that most of us don’t feel are all that secure anyway.

Turow Paul: How does Feastly serve a generation that spends huge amounts of time online?

Karesh: Food is a human experience. It always has been. It’s not if we want to eat but how we want to eat. It’s such a fundamental piece of what makes us human. Eating has always been a communal experience and that’s never going to go away. Today, food is seen as either fuel and utility or as experience. Feastly sits on the experiential side. Live to eat instead of eat to live.

From all the studies I’ve read—and I feel this myself—Millennials want to feel connected, connected to the food, where it comes from and who’s making it. And that’s a big part of what we’re providing. I always found it very strange that when you’re sitting in a restaurant a few inches from someone, sharing that experience, that all you’re trying to do is not share that experience with them, not overhear their conversation, not interact with them. It’s a really awkward thing.

Something that’s a natural function—sharing a meal—that you’re trying to separate yourself from. At Feastly, we’re embracing and giving space to that communal aspect of eating. It’s beautiful to see the freedom of it.

This interview has been edited for brevity.