Viva Chefs: A Hot Side Hustle For Good Cooks

When you’ve got a ardour for cooking, you might make nice cash plying your cooking abilities by way of Viva Cooks.

What’s Viva Cooks?

Viva Cooks is a web-based market the place individuals who need meals cooked for them at dwelling can rent a chef to come back in and do the cooking. Usually, cooks are employed for a number of hours and make each meals for that night time and to get pleasure from later.

The way it works

You join by downloading the app on a wise telephone, plugging in your title, tackle, cooking expertise and the forms of meals you prepare dinner.

You’ll then go extra granular. This includes checking off — or including — particular dishes in that class (i.e. Italian, Chinese language, Indian, and many others.) which you could make. You’ll then be requested so as to add a profile picture of you and a number of photographs of the dishes you prepare dinner. Lastly, you’ll set your hourly charges and availability.

The positioning will ship a hyperlink to KarmaCheck to confirm your work and felony historical past. If all goes properly, your profile will seem on the positioning and Viva Cooks will begin connecting you with potential purchasers.

Viva Cooks assessment:

Viva Cooks is tough to not like. The positioning lets cooks set their very own pay, resolve the dishes they need to prepare dinner and decide their very own schedules. Cooks don’t want skilled expertise. However they might want to have set recipes and images of a few of their dishes. After all, some cooks on the positioning do have skilled expertise. So, for those who don’t, it’s value taking time to make a compelling case about why you’re an incredible possibility for somebody on the lookout for a house prepare dinner.

From the client aspect, the positioning goals to make having a house chef inexpensive by encouraging prospects to do a full week’s meal planning with one chef go to. So although it’s possible you’ll pay $200 or extra to the chef, you might financial institution a number of days value of meals for about the price of a single night time out.

Benefit for cooks

Viva Cooks additionally displays what number of cooks can be found in any given space, limiting the quantity on the platform till they’ll guarantee the present cooks have sufficient enterprise to make providing companies right here worthwhile. That’s an enormous plus, since many platforms take all comers. And taking all comers tends to saturate {the marketplace}, typically with also-ran high quality. And that results in fewer bookings for everybody.

However, this coverage additionally signifies that the positioning might put new cooks on a waitlist, moderately than instantly publish their profiles. When shopper demand in your market rises sufficient to accommodate extra cooks, they’ll contact you.

Viva Cooks CEO Ravi Yatnalkar, says the positioning’s administration is high-touch, working with each cooks and purchasers to create a compelling worth proposition on either side.

The method

As soon as your profile is printed on the positioning, purchasers can contact you to request meals. Sometimes, the consumer will choose a recipe out of your checklist of dishes. You present them with a buying checklist that may assist you to prepare dinner 4 servings of that dish at their dwelling. The consumer can select to eat the meal that night time or reserve it for later.

Usually, nonetheless, purchasers will selected a number of dishes out of your checklist. The consumer will get a grocery checklist and outlets prematurely. You’ll prepare dinner every part while you arrive and pack up many of the meals for later use.

This permits the chef to cost for extra hours of cooking and permits the consumer to get a number of days value of meal planning achieved in a single go to. That makes it extra inexpensive for the consumer and extra rewarding for the chef.

Cooks and purchasers are inspired to talk previous to the cooking session to be sure that the client has every part the chef will want, from pots and pans to knives and storage containers.

Purchasing

The default mode is that the client does all the grocery buying.

Nonetheless, cooks can select to supply a buying service for an extra price. If the chef does the buying, the client can be charged for the chef’s common go to, plus the price of groceries (the chef supplies a receipt), plus a buying price that’s set by the chef.

Charges and commissions

Viva Cooks prices a ten% fee in your last pay, minus any suggestions. So that you earn 90% of the pay you set, plus gratuities.

Pay

Cooks select their very own hourly charge, however most set that between $30 and $60 per hour, says Viva Chef’s Yatnalkar.

Typically talking, you’ll be paid for a number of hours of labor, relying largely on what number of dishes the client desires you to make and whether or not you’re doing the buying or if they’re.

Funds are made through Stripe about two days following a accomplished gig.

The problem

Viva Cooks is a comparatively new entrant into a troublesome market. The positioning launched in late 2024.

And though it has grown quickly, providing cooks in lots of main markets throughout the nation, it has but to turn out to be a family title. Higher model recognition is required in an effort to discover sufficient prospects to maintain dwelling cooks busy.

Proper now, some cooks are cooking many meals every week, says Yatnalkar. Others solely get one or two bookings.

Suggestions

Nonetheless, we like this website so much and hope that it succeeds. You may sign up with Viva Chefs here.

If you wish to book a chef, you can do that here.

Nonetheless, if you wish to make cooking an everyday aspect gig, you may additionally need to additionally join with different cooking platforms, equivalent to EatWith, Shef and Hotplate.

What their customers say (from Apple App Store)

The platform makes it extremely straightforward for me to showcase my dishes, join with native meals lovers, and develop my buyer base — all from my very own kitchen. The app is simple to make use of, from organising menus to managing orders and speaking with prospects.

Help may be very attentive and managing purchasers is a breeze.