Who we are, and exactly how the process works — for the people booking a chef, and for the chefs themselves.
Hiring a private chef should be as simple as booking a table, and for most people it is not. Chefs are scattered across directories and social media, availability is impossible to check, and nobody wants to send the same message to eleven strangers to find out who is free on a Saturday in February. Meanwhile, excellent chefs spend evenings marketing themselves instead of cooking.
BookedChef.com sits between the two. You tell us the occasion, the date, how many people and roughly what you want to spend. We pass it to chefs who actually cover your area and can take the work, and one of them calls you to talk it through. It takes about a minute at your end.
The form takes about a minute. Your first name, phone and email, then the area you are in, the occasion, the date, how many people and a budget range. The budget question is not there to price you — it tells the chef roughly how much food is involved, which is what actually shapes a menu. If you would rather not use a form, call us and a person or our assistant will take the same details.
Within minutes of your request we call to confirm what you have told us and fill in anything missing — cuisine you love or want to avoid, allergies and dietary needs, whether you want courses or something relaxed, kitchen and equipment, timing on the night. Some of these calls are handled by an automated assistant so you are not waiting on office hours; it says so at the start, and you can ask for a person at any point. Calls are recorded, and we tell you before that starts, because Florida law requires everyone on the call to agree. Our AI Calling and Recording Notice covers this in full.
This is the part that saves you the running around. We match on the things that decide whether a booking is possible at all: does the chef cover your specific area, are they free on your date, can they handle your guest count, do they cook the style you want, and does your budget band fit how they price. A chef who cannot do your event never sees your enquiry.
Your matched chef calls or messages you directly, usually the same day, to talk through the menu and give you a price. You are talking to the person who will cook, not a call centre. If the fit is not right, tell us and we will look again.
You agree the menu, the price and the timing directly with your chef, and the booking is between the two of you. On the day, your chef shops, arrives with what they need, cooks in your kitchen, serves, and cleans up. You stay with your guests.
You tell us which cities you cover, how far you will travel, what you cook, the event sizes you take and your typical price band. When an enquiry matches, we send it to you with the customer's occasion, date, guest count and budget already confirmed — not a name and a shrug. You decide whether to take it and you quote your own price.
There is no monthly fee, no exclusivity and no commission on what you charge. You pay a flat fee per lead, priced by the size of the job, and you keep everything you bill the customer. If a lead turns out to be junk — wrong number, someone who never enquired, an area you do not cover — tell us and we credit it back. We would rather lose a fee than send you rubbish, because a chef who stops trusting the leads stops answering them.
We want to be straight with you about this, because plenty of sites are not. We do not vet chefs. We do not verify their qualifications, licensing, insurance, food-safety certification or references. We are an introduction service: we find chefs who cover your area and can take your booking, and we put you in touch.
What we do watch is what happens next. If a chef does not turn up, cancels late or leaves a customer unhappy, they stop receiving enquiries from us. That is an outcome check, not a credentials check, and it only works because customers tell us.
So the useful thing you can do is ask. Your chef speaks to you before anything is booked — ask about their experience, whether they carry liability insurance, and whether they hold the food-handling certification required where you live. Our Terms of Service and Disclaimer set this out in full.
Nothing. Requesting a chef through BookedChef.com is free. Chefs pay us for the introduction, which means we only do well when the enquiries we send are real and worth their time — a much better incentive than being paid per click. You are never obliged to accept a quote.
We are live across Palm Beach County, Florida — West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Palm Beach, Jupiter, Wellington and Delray Beach — and we are expanding along the coast. If you are just outside our area, ask anyway; we would rather tell you honestly than have you wonder.
Use the form on any page, email hello@bookedchef.com, or call (000) 000-0000. Our Contact page has everything in one place, including how to join the network if you are a chef.