Shef connects home cooks with customers interested in buying meals for home delivery

Expected pay: you set it

Husl$core: $$$$

Commissions & fees: 15%

Where: San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Chicago, Houston, Boston, and Seattle

Requirements: Any licenses (such as food handling and business) required in your jurisdiction. Pass food safety certification.

Shef Review:

Shef is a commercial home-cooking site that 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.

There is no cost to upload meals. However, the site takes a 15% fee from the cook’s revenue when meals sell. That pays for Shef’s marketing, payment processing and customer support.

Things we like

Customers must order in advance so that chefs know how many people they need to cook for with enough time to purchase the appropriate amount of ingredients. Cooks also are instructed to make the meals with enough advance preparation time so that they cool them before they’re packed up for delivery. 

Cooks are paid within hours of the customers receiving their food.

One catch

The only downside to this advance ordering process is that it eliminates the chance for spontaneous orders that you might not mind accommodating, since you’re cooking anyway.

Recommendations

Shef competitor, DishDivvy, operates similarly but does allow for those spontaneous buys. Instead of requiring advance orders, DishDivvy simply sets its order cut-off times using your prep-time estimates for each dish. This could result in additional orders, but might be less convenient if you don’t have enough food on hand. If you like the idea of accommodating later orders, you may also want to sign up with DishDivvy.

Other sites that can help you sell your food or cooking classes include ChefsFeed, CozyMeal and EatWith.

6/27/2021