Prep sheet 005 — the other side of the pass
You cook in somebody’s kitchen in Plymouth, teach them as you go, and eat what you made with them. Your menu, your pace, your diary. Everything from scratch, because for once there is time to — no prep list written by someone else, no section, no pass.
Self-employed, never staff. No premises, no lease, and nothing stored at yours — you shop on the way and it goes straight to their kitchen.
Why bother
Most chefs did not leave restaurants because the hours were long. They left because the hours were long and the food still came out of a bag, on somebody else’s menu, forty covers at a time.
The problem
Prep time is the first thing a kitchen cuts and the last thing it admits to. You know exactly which three things on the menu you would make from scratch if the morning allowed it, and you know precisely why they do not. That is not a skill problem. It is a clock problem, and it does not get better.
The fix
Eight to fourteen covers, once, all at the same time, with the people eating it stood next to you. You write the menu, you agree it with them, and then you have the afternoon and the evening to make it the way it should be made. Stock from bones. Pasta rolled in front of them. The bread.
The limit
No salary, no rota, no holiday pay, no guaranteed nights. You are self-employed, you hold your own diary, and a quiet February is yours. What we do is find the bookings, take the payment, carry the insurance and have the awkward money conversation. What we do not do is give you a wage.
The evening
The same evening the customer reads about on the landing page, from the other side of the hob — theirs is here.
16:30
The list is yours and you buy it the same day, on the way over. Nothing goes home with you and nothing comes from home — no cold store to manage, no stock to rotate, no Tuesday spent counting what went off. Ingredients are billed to the household at cost, so you are not funding the menu out of your own pocket either.
19:00
Six knives, an apron, and a household who are pleased you are there. You get ten minutes to work out where the sharp bit of the hob is and which drawer has the sieve. That is the job and, once you have done it twice, it stops being the hard part.
19:15
Stock, pasta, the sauce, the bread if the menu has bread. No prep list written by somebody else at four in the afternoon, no forty-minute window, nothing out of a bag because the section is behind. You cook it the way you would cook it if anybody let you.
20:45
You stand next to them and let them. It is their dinner and the teaching is the point — watching somebody get the sear right on the second attempt is most of why chefs who try this keep doing it.
21:00
At the table, with a glass of what they bought, in a kitchen that smells of what you just made. Nobody is calling away. Nobody is shouting. There is no next table.
22:15
Washing up is part of every session and it is quicker than a section deep clean by a wide margin. Kit back in the car, paid without asking, and home by eleven with no shift tomorrow unless you put one in your own diary.
The money
One cut, taken once, off the session fee. No listing fee, no subscription, no charge for a month you did not work.
We find the booking, answer the questions, take the payment, chase it when it is late, and carry the cover. You drive over, you cook, you go home. If a session does not happen, we do not charge you for it having been offered.
Yours
Your diary, your menus, your extras. Say no to anything.
18%
Our cut. That’s the whole commercial model, no listing fees.
£5m
Public liability cover on every session, included.
£1,400
What eight sessions a month bill at our standard rates. Our 18% comes off that.
Ingredients are billed to the household at cost and are not part of our cut, so shopping well costs you nothing and is not quietly taxed. Tips are yours and we never touch them.
Every figure on this page is a placeholder awaiting commercial sign-off, like every price on the rest of the site. Nobody has cooked a paid session yet.
What you need
Five things, and we pay for one of them and help with two. None of it is a test of how good a cook you are — the trial service is that.
Level 2 Food Safety. Yours to hold, because you are the one cooking. It is around thirty pounds online and takes an afternoon. If you have one from a previous kitchen and it is still valid, that is fine.
A Basic DBS check. We pay for it and we apply for it with you. Basic is the right level for this work and the only one the law allows us to ask for, so it is what we ask for and what the site says we ask for.
Food business registration with Plymouth City Council. Free, it cannot be refused, and it needs doing at least 28 days before your first paid session. What you are registering is a business with no premises: you shop on the way, it all goes straight to the customer’s kitchen, and nothing is ever stored or prepped at yours. Your address goes on the form because every business has to give one, not because anybody is coming to look in your fridge. We will walk you through it — and we are putting the question of exactly what the council wants from a business that works this way to them before launch, rather than guessing at it here.
A way of getting there, with the shopping. Most chefs drive, and a car used for this needs business use on the policy — you are going to a different kitchen every time with a boot full of shopping. Most insurers want telling; it is usually a small change and occasionally a free one, but it has to be done. A taxi or an Uber is equally fine and needs none of that, as long as your knives and the shopping fit in it. Worth knowing before you decide which: the £20 travel charge on a PL10–PL21 booking passes to you whole, because it reimburses the journey rather than paying you for it — and inside PL1–PL9 there is no travel charge at all, so a fare there comes out of your own share.
A trial service with one of our leads. One session, cooked properly, with somebody who has done a few. It is the only part of this that is about the cooking, and it is the only part we will not shorten.
You will also want to be within about twenty minutes of the city, because the coverage is PL1–PL21 and the drive has to stay sensible at the end of a long evening. Knives are yours. Everything else about the kitchen is theirs.
Questions
Anything not answered here, email chefs@forkingchefing.com and a person writes back.
Next
There are 6 chefs on the site and none of them has cooked a paid session yet, so this is early rather than a waiting list. If the applications page is not open when you get there, it will say so and give you the address below — which reaches the same person either way.
Apply to cook Email chefs@forkingchefing.com
Already cooking with us? Sign in to your diary to see offers, take or turn down work, and read the brief for a session.