We can’t think of anything that could go wrong with this plan, right? Besides the unregulated dinners happening all over your city, right?
Reuters broke the story that Airbnb is quietly testing a “not so secret” supper club vibe, or group dinners, in San Francisco. While there’s not a ton of details about the program just yet, Airbnb has said that “prospective hosts” could host the dinners by their own price and dates. Sounds cool, right? Oh, except one tiny problem: this shit is totally not kosher. And by kosher, we mean legal. SF Weekly has the scoop:
Richard Lee, who directs food safety programs for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, says it’s “completely illegal” for individual Airbnb hosts to act as commercial food service operators without a permit. If health department officials found out an Airbnb user was hawking dinner at a specific address, he says, they could cite that user up to $3,000 — three times the annual permit fee for opening a restaurant.
Despite the fact that some “supper sharing” apps and subscriptions have had some success in the past, this is, uh, a pretty big undertaking for a company like Airbnb and its users. So, unless you want to charge your guests $1,000 a pop, this may not be your smartest idea ever. Or Airbnb’s smartest idea.
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