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Chris Muscarella
Co-Founder & CEO
Kitchensurfing
February 14, 2012

Photo Courtesy of Amanda Pastenkos http://amandapastenkos.com

The best part about people coming together for dinner (or breakfast or lunch or an afternoon snack) is how each individual contribution creates a uniquely whole experience, beyond the food that's literally brought to the table. Chris is just one of the brainiacs behind the online company Kitchensurfing, and his focus on community as an essential component of eating is the real driving force behind this online tool. It's not just for chefs, seasoned and amateur, but also for those with empty refrigerators who may have nothing more than an unoccupied kitchen space and want to contribute. Essentially, Kitchensurfing is making more great meals happen, and you can too.
When did you know that you wanted to work in food?

Kitchensurfing is our answer to the question, "How do we get more people having better meals more often with other people?" For me, that impulse came from owning a restaurant and getting a clearer picture of the joys of eating in vs. eating out. Home dinner parties were always a highlight of my week and Kitchensurfing is a way of trying to democratize that experience for everyone.

How did you get your current good food job?

The short answer: I invented it. I've been working on the web for almost fifteen years, but about a year ago I opened a Northern Italian farm to table restaurant with some friends: Rucola in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. At the time, I was really interested in ways to extend the CSA model so that more people could have access to local produce and built a little online service that ran out of the back of Rucola. It worked reasonably well, but I decided to hand the project off to someone else when I realized that making it work would require trucks and operational logistics-not my bag. So I handed the project off to someone else and started looking for something else to do.

I actually found my two co-founders through the friend that sold them our domain! Fast-forward a bit and we're working together. Domain friends. Pretty awesome.


How did your previous work or life experience prepare you for a good food job?

The restaurant helped me realize how much happiness you can get from giving people a real-life great experience-and how it's rewarding in a very different way than something that's purely on the web. The restaurant also helped give me a macro-view of the food world: how people are paid, how things are shipped around, and what works. When you do a lot of things on the web, you start thinking about how to start small but end up with something that's web scale. We think a lot of what we're doing, at web scale, will be tremendously helpful to people that love to make and grow good food. The food community, from schools, to chefs, to restaurateurs, have been extremely supportive of what we're doing, which has made the Kitchensurfing experience a true pleasure.

What was the greatest obstacle you had to overcome in pursuing your Good Food Job dream?

I wouldn't call any of this an "obstacle" just yet, but there's a lot of real work that goes into building our business every day: finding unique chefs and spaces, website development, customer outreach, etc etc. And quitting? Not a chance. We're in it for the long haul!

What can you identify as the greatest opportunities in food right now?

There are amazing things happening in food: the production of it all the way to the consumption of it - there's so much love going into what people eat. The part that really seems to be missing to me are effective ways to connect more everyday consumers to amazing food to really switch food production away from big, subsidized factory farms to methods that don't deplete the Earth. We really believe that the web is a great way to do that, and there are people working on that problem from multiple angles.

I'm particularly interested in areas where a little monkey-wrenching gets major results. Think about the effect that Etsy had on buying and living handmade, or that Kickstarter has had on fundraising for projects that previously didn't have access to monetary support. We think that's set to happen for food-where various kinds of peer-to-peer models disrupt the status quo.

Disruption happens most effectively when there's an engaged, vocal community that cares deeply about the way things are changed. We hope we will find those people with Kitchensurfing and are able to extend that community to everyone that loves to eat.

If you could be compensated for your work with something other than money, what would it be?

I think the obvious answer to your question is food, and the deep satisfaction that comes from eating a great meal, with great friends. Kitchensurfing has never been about the money-it's about change. I think that every single one of us would be doing this work even if we didn't stand a chance to make a dime from it.

Are you an aspiring chef / cook / caterer? Kitchensurfing takes care of the venue, but what other resources do you need to get your side / main business up and running?
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