Every chef, without exception
These five are required of every Cook4Me chef, whatever kind of work they do. A chef with one of them outstanding or expired cannot take bookings — the platform blocks it, it is not a matter of someone remembering to check.
Government-issued ID
Passport or driving licence. The photo page, readable, with all four corners visible.
Proof of address
A bank statement or utility bill from the last three months showing your name and address.
Food Hygiene Level 2
A recognised certificate — CIEH, RSPH or equivalent. Include the expiry date if it has one.
Allergen Awareness
Allergen training certificate. Required because you are cooking for people who tell you what they cannot eat.
Public Liability Insurance
Your certificate of insurance, cover of £1m or more. Add the renewal date so we can remind you.
And then, depending on the kitchen
Where a chef cooks changes what the law asks of them, so it changes what we ask of them.
Cooking in your home or venue
Private chef bookings, cooking at the customer’s home or venue. The five above are the whole requirement — the kitchen being used is yours, not theirs.
Food prepared in the chef’s own kitchen
Also selling food prepared in your own registered home kitchen. Also requires:
- Council Food Business Registration — Your registration from the local council. This is a legal requirement for preparing food from home.
Commercial kitchen, bulk and corporate
Also commercial kitchen, bulk and corporate orders. Also requires:
- Commercial Kitchen Agreement — A lease, hire agreement or proof of registered premises for the kitchen you cook in.
Checked by a person, and checked again later
Every document is reviewed by someone at Cook4Me. We look at the name on the ID against the name on the certificate against the name on the bank statement. We reject blurred photographs, screenshots of screenshots, and certificates from bodies we do not recognise, and we tell the chef what was wrong so they can send the right thing.
Certificates expire. We record the expiry date when we approve one, remind the chef before it lapses, and if it lapses anyway their bookings stop until it is replaced. “Verified” on this site means verified today, not verified once.
Your documents are not public
A chef’s ID and certificates are visible to our review team and nobody else. They are stored as private objects that require an authenticated, time-limited link to open — there is no URL that shows a passport page to whoever has it.
We ask for the minimum: we do not take copies of bank cards, we do not run credit checks, and a DBS check is optional rather than required. The privacy notice sets out how long we keep each of these and how to have them deleted.
Where you live is not handed out
Chefs do not get your address because they asked. What they can see depends on the stage of the booking and on whether they actually need it to do the job.
- Before you pay— the outward half of your postcode only. “RM16”, never “RM16 8LD”. That is a district: enough for a chef to work out travel time and quote you, and nothing more. A full UK postcode covers about fifteen households, which with a name is enough to find someone’s front door.
- After you pay, if the chef is cooking at your home — the full address. They are travelling to you; they cannot do the job without it.
- After you pay, if the food is being delivered — still nothing. A courier collects and delivers, so the chef never needs to know where you live.
Messages stay on the platform for the same reason. There is a written record of what was agreed, nobody needs to hand out a personal phone number, and if a booking goes wrong our support team can read the thread rather than take one side’s word for it.
Your money is held, not forwarded
Verification covers who is cooking. Escrow covers what happens if the cooking does not arrive.
Every payment on Cook4Me is held by Livora Limited until the customer confirms the meal. Not a deposit, not most of it — all of it.
The chef sees that a booking is funded and can start shopping. They cannot draw the money. When you confirm the meal arrived and was what you ordered, the funds release to them; until then the balance is ours to refund rather than theirs to return. Card payments are processed by Stripe, and we never see or store your card number.
If a chef cancels, you are refunded in full, whenever it happens. If you cancel, what you get back depends on how much notice you give — the exact windows are in the refund policy.
If something still goes wrong
Raise it instead of confirming the order. That one action keeps the money where it is and puts the booking in front of our support team, who can see the message thread, the agreed menu and the payment. Nothing about the dispute depends on the chef choosing to co-operate.
For anything urgent or anything involving illness or injury, contact us directly — do not wait for a message to be read.
Verified, or not listed
There is no middle tier and no “pending” chef taking bookings while we get round to the paperwork.