If you love to cook for others, but don’t want to work in a restaurant or have people to your home, you can make money cooking for take-out. However, there are precious few national platforms that can help you market this service. That’s partly due to state laws that restrict food service operations, largely for health reasons. But it’s worth searching locally — and signing up for the one national platform that does support cooking for take-out.
Nationwide cooking for take-out
TaskRabbit, which allows freelancers to determine what services they offer and what they charge, is the one national platform that supports home cooks, hoping to sell their services on an hourly or for-delivery basis. The site is freelancer-friendly, only charging site fees to customers. Learn more about TaskRabbit here. Sign up for TaskRabbit here.
Local options
Shef is a commercial home-cooking site enlists both professional and amateur chefs to make meals for local clients. Cooks determine their own meals, prices and schedules. But they must pass a food safety certification course before uploading menus to the site. The site operates in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston and Seattle. There is no cost to upload meals. However, the site takes a 15% fee from the cook’s revenue when meals sell. Learn more about Shef here.
In Southern California, a site called DishDivvy gives home cooks the ability to market meals that can be picked up, or delivered by DoorDash. Cooks say what they’re making, what it costs and when it’s available for pickup. Learn more about DishDivvy here.
People in cities and states where local home cooking sites are unavailable can market their home-cooked meals through neighborhood website Nextdoor. Nextdoor has both free peer-to-peer discussions and neighborhood advertising. Ad rates vary based on geographic reach.
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