What: DishDivvy gives you the ability to market and sell your home-cooked meals for pick-up, selecting and pricing the entree and sides
Expected pay: $20 + per hour
Commissions & fees: 15%
Where: Los Angeles (CA) area
Requirements:
- A California Food Handler’s license;
- a clean kitchen;
- a face-to-face interview and kitchen inspection;
- sample taste test;
- training
Review:
Like Josephine (which, sadly, shut down), DishDivvy gives you the ability to market your home-cooked meals to friends and neighbors. Your customers pick up the meals and pay you through the site, which reimburses you through PayPal. You set the price of your meal, figuring the cost of ingredients and what you want to earn for your time. The site takes 15% of the meal’s cost and charges customers a 99 cent fee for meal containers (which they provide to you before your scheduled meal).
A handful of factors set DishDivvy apart. First, while the site is young and only available in a few cities, that small scale has allowed the owners to be hands-on with their cooks. DishDivvy helps cooks price their meals, take professional photographs, shop effectively and market their service. In an effort to gain regular customers, DishDivvy has been giving out half-off coupons liberally, but it does not expect cooks to pay the price. Instead, the parent company eats the cost of providing the discount. Cooks get the payment they contracted for. Nice (and highly unusual).
Standardized meals
Additionally, by providing the containers to cooks, the site standardizes what it expects for meal size and presentation. That’s helpful for both cooks and customers. And, because the site charges a full cancellation fee for anyone who cancels an order with less than 48 hours notice, you know before you cook — before you shop — just how many people you’re feeding.
The service is young and has yet to generate a lot of feedback from cooks, so we called a few and interviewed CEO Ani Torosyan. Torosyan also cooks for the site and provides support to the site’s cooks. Cooks were positive about the experience and their ability to generate regular bookings through the site. Torosyan notes that DishDivvy has a 47% repeat purchase rate, which is excellent. The only short-coming of the site, in fact, is that its only available in a small geographic area.
Other sites to consider: EatWith, if you don’t mind serving strangers meals in your home; Feastly, if you have experience and want to create a pop-up restaurant; and Hello Cheffy for professional chefs looking to provide personal chef services in patron’s homes.
What their users say:
“They’re very supportive and provide a lot of information about how you can prepare meals in a more time and cost-effective way.”
“I don’t know if you can make a lot of money right now, but you can certainly make enough to be satisfied with the outcome.”
