Why We Built Cook4Me
Cook4Me exists to connect verified African chefs with people who miss home. The story behind the marketplace — and why we think handmade food still matters.
There is a woman in Peckham who has been cooking egusi for twenty years.
Her church congregation knows her name. Her friends order from her every Christmas. Her daughter’s classmates’ parents text her in March to book her for August birthdays. She has been running a quiet, brilliant catering operation for two decades — without a single piece of paper to show for it. No bank record of the income. No insurance. No structure. No protection. And no recognition that what she does is a business, not a favour.
She is not alone. She is the rule, not the exception.
There are thousands of African chefs in the UK living exactly this way — cooking incredible food for their communities, getting paid in cash and goodwill, holding down second jobs because the cooking has never quite been allowed to become “the job,” and chasing money from clients who decided last-minute they couldn’t afford the agreed price. We built Cook4Me for them.
The food has been here for a generation
African cuisine has been part of British food culture for at least fifty years. Caribbean before that. West African food markets have been operating in Brixton and Peckham since the 1980s. Ghanaian aunties have been catering naming ceremonies in Tottenham since the 1990s. Senegalese restaurants opened in Hackney in the 2000s. Ethiopian coffee ceremonies have been happening in Camden longer than most coffee chains have existed.
What has changed in the last five years is the demand. London is finally — finally — paying for African food the way it has always paid for Italian, Japanese, and Thai. Diaspora-led restaurants are getting Time Out features. Jollof debates are mainstream. Vittles runs essays on Yoruba pepper soup. The wedding planner in Croydon, the corporate diversity-and-inclusion lead in Canary Wharf, the dinner-party host in Hackney — they’re all looking for African chefs.
What hasn’t changed is the infrastructure underneath. The chefs cooking the food are still being paid cash. Still chasing late payments. Still working without insurance. Still saying yes to bookings that fall through with no recourse. Still discounting themselves because they don’t know what else to do.
That gap — between the demand the culture has built and the protection the chefs deserve — is what Cook4Me fills
Cook4Me is a marketplace. Customers find chefs. Customers book chefs. Chefs cook. Customers pay through the platform. The platform releases the money to the chef once the food is delivered.
The mechanics matter, so we’ll spell them out.
When a customer books a chef on Cook4Me, the customer pays Cook4Me — not the chef directly. We hold the money safely. The chef sees the booking, confirms the details, cooks the food, and delivers it. The customer confirms delivery. Then — and only then — Stripe transfers the chef’s portion to the chef’s bank account.
It’s called escrow. Restaurants don’t have it. Cash bookings don’t have it. Most catering arrangements don’t have it. Cook4Me does, because it changes everything about the chef’s working life.
The chef on Cook4Me is no longer asking, will this person actually pay me? The money is already there. The chef cooks knowing the money is safe. If the customer disputes, there’s a process. If the chef doesn’t deliver, the money goes back to the customer. Nobody loses out except the side that didn’t keep their word.
That’s not glamorous. That’s not exciting marketing. That’s the boring, structural thing that turns “cooking for people” into a real business
What we won’t do
Cook4Me is not Deliveroo. We are not building an algorithm that fights chefs against each other for the lowest possible booking price. We are not racing to the bottom. We are not promising “thousands of customers” in your first month. We are not telling chefs to drop their prices to compete.
Chefs set their own prices on Cook4Me. That’s not a marketing line. That’s a structural choice. If you charge £450 for a private chef dinner, that’s £450 on the platform. We take 10% commission. The customer pays an additional 5% service fee. You keep £405. Stripe transfers your money to your bank within two days.
The agent model — that’s the legal term — means you are self-employed on Cook4Me. We don’t deduct tax. You declare your own income to HMRC, the same way any private caterer does. You are independent. You are protected by the platform. You are not employed by it.
The trade-off is honest. We make money when you make money. We have no incentive to undercut you. We have every incentive to bring you good customers, smooth payments, and structured agreements — because that’s what makes you stay.
Why now
Three things are happening simultaneously, and we believe they make this the right moment to build Cook4Me.
First, the food. African cuisine has reached a cultural inflection point in the UK. The diaspora is more confident, more visible, and more publicly proud of its cooking than at any point in the last fifty years. The audience is here. The food is here. The chefs are here.
Second, the technology. Stripe Connect Express, which we use to process payments and pay chefs, only became fully available in the UK in the last few years. Before that, building a marketplace like Cook4Me would have meant either taking on enormous regulatory risk or building everything in-house. Now we can offer escrow protection, structured payouts, and tax-clean payments out of the box.
Third, the chefs. The pandemic broke a lot of careers and reshaped a lot of others. We met chefs in 2023 and 2024 who had decided, after years of working in restaurants, to set up on their own. They didn’t want to manage 50-cover dinner services any more. They wanted to cook the food they grew up with, for the people who would value it most, on their own terms.
That’s the chef Cook4Me is built for.
What we promise
We promise three things. They are not slogans. They are the operational commitments that govern how Cook4Me runs.
One: every chef on the platform is verified. Photo ID. Food Hygiene Level 2. Allergen Awareness. Public Liability Insurance. We check every document. We don’t take anyone’s word for it. The verification badge means something.
Two: every booking is protected by escrow. Customer pays first. Money is held safely. Chef delivers. Money is released. Disputes are mediated. No chef on Cook4Me cooks for free. No customer on Cook4Me pays for food that doesn’t arrive.
Three: every chef sets their own prices. Cook4Me does not tell you what to charge. We give you the tools to charge well — and the platform to protect that price once it’s set.
The first 1,000 chefs are joining now. They are in London. They are in Manchester. They are in Kent and Essex. They are cooking Nigerian, Ghanaian, Senegalese, Moroccan, Ethiopian, South African — the full breadth of what African food actually is.
If you cook for your community, if you’ve been waiting for the right structure to turn cooking into a business, if you’ve been working without protection for years — Cook4Me is your place.
Visit www.cook4me.io/chef . Build your profile in 10 minutes. Upload your documents. Get verified. Set your prices. Start receiving bookings.
The food has always been here. Now it’s your turn to be paid properly for it.
“The food has been here for a generation. What hasn’t been here is the infrastructure to protect the chefs cooking it. Cook4Me fills that gap.”
“The chef on Cook4Me is no longer asking, ‘will this person actually pay me?’ The money is already there. The chef cooks knowing the money is safe.”
“Cook4Me is not Deliveroo. We are not racing to the bottom. Chefs set their own prices. That’s not a marketing line — that’s a structural choice.”
Cook with Cook4Me
Are you a chef? Make your cooking your work.
Join Cook4Me as a verified African chef. List your menu, set your prices, and cook for the people who've been waiting for your food.
Sign up to cook →