For personal & private chefs

The place to run your private chef business

The tools, community, and proven systems to handle the business side so you can get paid to cook.

Meet the software that runs the business side

Clients, menus, prep, and recipes — handled in one place, so your time goes to cooking
Get a one week free trial when you join

What you get when you join Startup Chef

Tools
Run your whole business from one place with the tools to generate menus, save recipes, and manage clients.
Clients
Get found and booked by real clients on our marketplace where families are already searching for someone to cook for them.
Community
Build your business alongside other chefs in our private community of members doing the exact same thing.
founder story

Why a tech product designer became a private chef

I built and scaled startups for years, then left to pursue my passion for cooking. Startup Chef is everything I learned about business — rebuilt for chefs.
Interactive calculator

Do the math on your own income

Adjust the numbers to your situation. Part-time or full-time. Illustrative estimate based on your inputs. Not a guarantee; results vary.
See what you could earn
Weekly clients on a recurring service fee. This is the meal-prep model our members use to build toward six figures.

$

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Your annual income

$100,000

🚀 That clears six figures!
$8,333
per month
$2,083
per client / mo
~40 hours
per week

No food cost. Groceries pass through to the client at cost. Your profit margins stay high.

No storefront, no staff. You cook in their kitchen. Gas and insurance are your main expenses.

Recurring by design. Weekly clients are a subscription — land a handful of good ones and your year is booked.

More features

Automate everything except the cooking

Menus in minutes, not hours
Generate client-ready menus from your recipes with AI — tailored to allergies, preferences, and what's in season.
Prep days that run themselves (soon)
Auto-built prep timelines tell you what to do and when, so cook days stay calm and nothing gets missed.
Every client in one place
A CRM made for chefs — track clients, menus, and schedules, a spreadsheet in sight.
Get found by paying clients
Your membership lists you on Local Chef, where families are already searching for someone to cook for them.
Your recipes, saved and reusable
Build a library once, then pull from it for any client — no more rewriting the same dish from scratch.
Approval before you cook
Share a menu link with your client to collect approvals and feedback dish by dish — no more guessing what they'll love.
Unlike the other platforms,  we proudly have
0% fees
on what you bill your clients.
How it works

From a new client to a finished cook day

Add a new client and use our intake questions
Send them the link to complete themselves, or walk through it together — capturing their preferences, allergies, household size, and schedule in one place.
We train our model on what they like, so we can create menus
We create tailored menus for each client based on their preferences — and draw on the food blogs you've saved for inspiration. You can always add dishes manually or pull from your recipe book.
Send your menus to your client with one click for approval
Once the menu's in a good place, share it with your client — they approve or reject each dish, and anything they pass on, you can swap or replace in seconds.
Once finalized, you go cook the menu for the client
We pull in the recipe for every menu item so you've got everything you need on cook day. At the end of the week, your client rates each dish — which trains the AI to make the next menu even better. (Cook-day planning feature coming soon.)

One monthly price gets you everything

"I went from random catering gigs to four recurring meal-prep clients in eight weeks. The pricing module alone paid for itself ten times over."
David H.
Personal chef · Austin, TX
"I always undercharged because I felt guilty. Startup Chef gave me the confidence and the numbers to double my rates — and clients said yes."
Sarah L.
Private chef · Denver, CO
"The meal-prep-first approach just clicked. Predictable income, one cook day per client, and a community that actually answers your questions."
Sofia G.
Home cook → chef · Miami, FL

Startup Chef Membership

$99 / month

Founding member pricing — locked in as long as you stay. Cancel anytime. No contracts.

Platform to run your business

Private chef community

Listing on Local Chef to get you clients

1:1 support from Benjamin

Live group calls with Q&A

Useful guides, scripts, and resources

Proven sales process that isn't uncomfortable

A shot at monthly cooking giveaways

Questions, answered

The honest answers to what most cooks want to know before getting started.
Do I need professional experience to start?

No. If you can cook food people love, you're our person. The whole point is teaching the business side — many of our members started as home cooks.

Is $100k really realistic?

It's a target, not a promise. The model is built around recurring weekly clients and may vary based on the hours you want to work and your skill level. We show you exactly how the math works — and because groceries are billed directly to the client, your service fee is close to true take-home.

Can I do this part-time?

Absolutely. Plenty of members start as a side hustle around a day job and scale up as their client base grows. Part-time or full-time, the systems are the same.

What's the difference between Startup Chef and Local Chef?

Startup Chef is the community, training, and tools that teach you to build your business. Local Chef is the client-facing marketplace where members get listed and booked. They're separate brands that work together. Your clients only ever see the Local Chef brand.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes — no contracts, cancel in a couple of clicks. As a founding member, your lower rate stays locked in for as long as your membership is active.

Why talented cooks stay stuck

You can already cook. What's missing is everything that turns cooking into a business.
01
Underpaid
No idea what to charge, so you undercharge and burn out.
02
Overworked
Menus and prep eat the hours you don't have.
03
Feast or famine
One-off gigs instead of steady recurring income.
04
Selling, not cooking
Finding clients feels like cold-calling into the void.