What you keep
You set your own prices. We take 10% of your food price, so you keep 90%. There is no listing fee, no monthly subscription, and nothing to pay to join. If you do not cook, you do not pay us anything.
We only earn when you earn, which is the only arrangement that keeps us honest about sending you work.
Payouts go to your own bank account through Stripe. The customer’s money sits in escrow from the moment they book until they confirm the meal — which means a booking that is confirmed is a booking that is already funded. You are not invoicing anyone and you are not chasing anyone. Full fee breakdown.
Getting listed
Create an account
Email and password, or sign in with Google. Two minutes. You are not committing to anything yet and nothing is public.
Build your profile — six steps
Your details and service area; your experience; the cuisines and dishes you cook; photos of your food; and how you want to work — minimum order, whether you cook at your place or the customer’s, how much notice you need.
You choose the cuisines and the dishes. If what you cook is not on our list yet, you propose it and we add it — we do not hand chefs a fixed menu to pick from.
Send us your documents
From your dashboard, upload the certificates and ID. This is the step that takes real effort, and it is the step that makes the platform worth being on — here is exactly what we ask for and why.
If you do not have your Level 2 Food Hygiene certificate yet, start the profile anyway. It is an online course, it costs around £20, and it takes an afternoon.
We review you
A person at Cook4Me checks every document — not an automated scan. If something is missing or expired we tell you what it is and you send a replacement. We would rather go back and forth with you than list a chef we cannot stand behind.
You go live and take bookings
Your profile appears to customers, requests start arriving, and you decide which to accept. You are never obliged to take a booking, and turning one down costs you nothing.
What we expect of you
Three things. Turn up. A chef who cancels on a customer gets them a full refund and costs us a relationship we cannot easily replace, so repeat cancellations end the arrangement. Answer messages. Most of what goes wrong on a booking goes wrong because nobody confirmed the details in writing. Keep your documents current. Certificates expire; we will remind you before they do, but the obligation is yours.
You are self-employed. Cook4Me does not employ you, does not set your prices and does not own your customers — you are responsible for your own tax, and we give you the records you need for it.
Getting your first booking
Three things decide this, and none of them is luck. Photographs of your actual food — a customer choosing between strangers is choosing between photographs, and a phone picture of a real plate you cooked beats a stock image every time. Named dishes rather than categories— “egusi with pounded yam” finds the person looking for it in a way “Nigerian food” does not. Replying quickly. Most first bookings go to whoever answered first.
Write your experience as a story rather than a CV. The thing that convinces someone to let you cook for their family is usually where you learned, not where you have worked.
What we will never do to you
We will not undercut you. Cook4Me does not run its own kitchen, does not sell its own food, and has no house menu competing with yours for the same customer.
We will not quietly change your prices, run a discount using your margin, or auction your availability to the cheapest bidder. We will not make you exclusive — cook for whoever you like, here and elsewhere. And we will not ask you to cook a toned-down version of your food for an imagined palate.
The commission is how we earn. Nothing else about your business is ours to adjust.
Not sure yet?
We wrote a free guide — The UK Home Chef Starter Pack — covering food hygiene registration, what your local council actually asks for, insurance, pricing and the legal basics of cooking for money from home. It is useful whether or not you ever list with us.
Start your profile
It is free to join, free to list, and nothing is public until you have been verified and you are ready.