Everything people ask us

You send us a recipe: yours, your family's, your dietitian's, one you found online. We buy the ingredients, cook the dish from scratch in our San Jose kitchen, portion it, and deliver it chilled to your door. There is no set menu; every order starts with a recipe you chose.

No. Paste your recipe into the order now page and you'll have a full costed estimate in under a minute, before you give us an email address or a card. Talking to us is optional and free.

We read your recipe and price every ingredient at the wholesale rate our suppliers charge us, for the exact quantity your recipe uses. Then we estimate the cost of the hands-on cooking time, cost of packing and delivery, and that's your quote.

It's a close estimate, and it's what we work from. Before we start cooking we confirm the order with you in writing. If something has changed or we can't honor the quoted price, we'll tell you first and you decide if you want to go forward with the order. We never charge more than the online quote without asking.

Three business days is comfortable for most orders. Anything unusual (hard-to-source ingredients, a stock that needs a day, orders above about forty servings) may need a week. We'll tell you the lead time when you order.

No. You order when you want food. Plenty of customers do set up a standing weekly or fortnightly order because it's convenient, but it's a scheduling arrangement, not a contract. You can pause or stop it at any time with no fee.

Not to get a quote. You'll create one at checkout so we can save your recipes, delivery details and dietary notes for next time, which makes repeat orders about a thirty-second job.

Yes. Dinner parties, new-baby meal trains, post-surgery care packages, holiday dishes and office lunches are all normal for us. Larger events need more notice. Get in touch and we'll work out timing.

We encourage you to check out some free online recipe sites like Allrecipes, Smitten Kitchen, or NYT Cooking.

Yes. You're allowed to have somebody cook a published recipe for your own consumption; recipes themselves aren't protected, only the way they're written. We cook it for you privately; we don't republish it or put it on any menu.

Yes, and we do it often. Some dishes don't survive four days in a fridge: anything crisp-fried, delicate seafood, dressed salad, soufflé. The automated pricing engine often catches it, and if not, all recipes are reviewed by a human before going to the kitchen. We won't make it if we don't think it will work.

Yes. The quote page shows what one, two, three or four batches cost. Scaling up drops the price per serving because shopping, setup and cleanup only happen once. We'll flag it if a recipe doesn't scale cleanly; a few (custards, some emulsions) genuinely don't.

Almost always. Unfamiliar cuisines are a normal part of the job and we research properly. The rare exceptions are dishes needing equipment we don't have (a tandoor, a whole-hog pit) or ingredients we can't legally or safely source.

Unfortunately not. Health regulations require us to control the cold chain and provenance of what we cook.

Yes. Your recipes are stored against your account so repeat orders are easy, and they are not shared, sold or served to anyone else. To work out a price we send the recipe text to Anthropic, the company behind the model that reads it and estimates the ingredients and cooking time. They do not train on it. If you'd like a recipe deleted from our system, ask and we'll remove it.

Because a lot of the work doesn't shrink with the order. Sourcing, receiving, mise en place, and breaking down and sanitising a station take the same time whether we cook four servings or forty. The $40 floor covers that. If your quote lands under it, ordering a bigger batch gets you substantially more food for the same money.

Every quote comes with three specific ways to make that dish cheaper: a different cut, a seasonal substitution, a simpler component. Each one shows what it saves per serving and honestly states what you give up. Tick the ones you're happy with and the price updates instantly. We never suggest shrinking your portions or skipping a food safety step.

Yes. Delivery is a flat $8 per order, and the per-serving figure on the quote page already includes it. We charge it at cost and don't mark it up. It's the same $8 whether you order one batch or six, so it works out cheaper per serving the more you order.

Ingredient markets move, so yes. A quote reflects wholesale prices on the day you generated it. Re-run the same recipe a few months later and the number may differ. We always confirm the current price before cooking.

After you confirm the order and before we shop for it, since the ingredients are bought specifically for you. For standing orders we charge per delivery, not up front for the whole run.

Major credit and debit cards through our payment processor. We never see or store your full card number. For recurring corporate or care-agency accounts we can arrange invoicing.

Some plans do reimburse medically necessary meals with a letter of medical necessity from your doctor. We'll happily provide an itemised receipt showing ingredients and preparation, but whether it's eligible is between you and your plan administrator. Please check before ordering.

Nearly all of them, because we cook to your recipe rather than adapting a fixed menu. Common ones: gluten-free, dairy-free, low-sodium, low-FODMAP, renal and cardiac diets, diabetic-friendly, low-residue, soft and puréed textures, vegan and vegetarian, whole30, keto, and post-operative diets.

On request we provide a calculated nutrition estimate per serving from standard ingredient databases. It's an estimate, not a laboratory analysis, and we say so, but it's accurate enough for tracking and for most clinical purposes.

Tell us every allergen at order time and we'll build the dish around it, source substitutes carefully and read every supplier label. See the cross-contamination answer below, which matters a great deal if the allergy is severe.

No. We are a shared kitchen that handles wheat, dairy, eggs, soy, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish and sesame. We use dedicated boards, separate equipment, sanitised surfaces and scheduling to reduce cross-contact, and we take it very seriously, but we cannot guarantee an allergen-free environment. If a trace exposure would be dangerous, please talk to us before ordering so you can make an informed decision.

Unfortunately, we are not able to accommodate halal or kosher cooking requirements.

Yes. Purées, soft and minced-and-moist textures, low-choking-risk preparations and appropriately gentle seasoning are all things we do regularly, often for families and care arrangements. Tell us the texture level required and we'll match it.

Yes, simply specify them on your recipe and we'll source organic over conventional.

No, chilled. Everything is cooked the morning it delivers, blast-chilled through the temperature danger zone, and delivered cold in insulated boxes. You can freeze it yourself the day it arrives if you'd like to spread it out; most dishes freeze well.

Most dishes are good for four days in the fridge. Every container is labelled with the date it was cooked and its use-by date. Some dishes (anything with raw fish or delicate dairy) carry a shorter window and are labelled accordingly. If your dish freezes well, and most do, it will keep for considerably longer than four days: freeze it the day it arrives and it is good for around three months. The label tells you whether yours is one that freezes.

Every order includes reheating instructions written for that specific dish, on the label and in your confirmation email. As a rule, reheat to 165°F throughout, and use a pan or oven rather than a microwave for anything you'd like to keep its texture.

Two sizes. A single-serving tray measures 8½ × 6 × 1¾ inches (21.5 × 15 × 4.5 cm) and holds about 32 fl oz, which is one portion with room for sauce. A family-size tray measures 10½ × 8¼ × 2¾ inches (27 × 21 × 7 cm), holds about 100 fl oz, and takes four servings. Both stack flat and fit a standard fridge shelf. Which one you get follows the packing choice on your quote: "Portioned equally" uses the single-serving tray, one per serving, and "Packed in bulk" uses the family-size tray, one per four servings.

Both sizes are moulded plant fibre: microwave-safe, oven-safe up to 250°F, and fully compostable. The outer packaging, liner and labels are compostable too, so everything we deliver can go into your green bin rather than the trash.

The insulated boxes hold safe temperature for around six hours. If a delivery sat longer than that, don't eat it. Tell us and we'll replace the order. Food safety is not something we ask customers to gamble on.

We can cook proteins to a requested doneness where it's safe to do so, and we'll note the standard consumer advisory about undercooked foods. Raw preparations like tartare or ceviche we generally decline for delivery, because we can't control what happens to them after they leave us.

We're a small kitchen and our delivery area is still growing outward from downtown San Jose. Enter your ZIP code at the bottom of a quote and we'll tell you straight away whether we've reached you, and take your details so we can let you know when we do.

You'll see a note saying we're not shipping to your location yet. Your quote and ZIP code are saved, and we prioritise expansion by where demand is actually coming from, so entering it genuinely helps. We'll email you the moment your area opens.

Not yet. Everything is cooked fresh and delivered chilled by our own drivers, which is a big part of why the food arrives the way it left the kitchen. Long-haul shipping would mean freezing, and we're not willing to make that trade yet.

Tuesday to Saturday, in a morning or afternoon window you pick at checkout. We text you when your driver is roughly thirty minutes out.

Preferably, but not necessarily. If you can't be there, tell us where to leave it; the insulated box holds temperature for about six hours. For apartment buildings, please give us gate or lobby instructions.

Yes, provided somebody can receive it. Care facilities sometimes have their own rules about outside food, worth checking with them first, and we're happy to supply ingredient and allergen documentation if they need it.

Unfortunately, we aren't able to do local pickup yet, but we're working on it!

Free of charge until we shop for it, normally 48 hours before delivery. After that the ingredients are bought and we can only refund partially. Once cooking has started we can't cancel, though we'll always try to help if something has genuinely gone wrong.

Tell us within 24 hours, ideally with a photo. If we got it wrong (the seasoning is off, a requirement was missed, the portions are short) we remake it or refund it.

Honestly, that happens, and it's usually the recipe rather than the cooking. We'll talk through what was off and adjust it for next time; often it's a seasoning or texture tweak. We can't refund a dish that was made correctly to your specification, but we will get it right on the next round.

Yes, within our delivery area and with enough notice. Office lunches, team dinners and small events are all workable. Use the contact form with headcount, date and any dietary requirements and we'll come back with a plan and a quote.

We keep what we need to cook and deliver your order: contact details, address, recipes and dietary notes. We never sell it. It is shared only with the services we need to run the business: our payment processor, and Tawk.to, which powers the chat window on the home and order pages. If you open that chat, Tawk.to records your messages, your IP address and which pages you looked at, on their servers rather than ours. You never have to use it. The contact form, the phone number and email reach us just as well. Ask us and we'll export or delete your data.

A small team of professional cooks in our own kitchen in downtown San Jose. Not a network of home cooks, not a contracted third-party facility. The same few people cook your food every time, which is a large part of why it comes out consistent.

Comfortably up to around two hundred servings a week across all customers, and we'll tell you honestly if a large order would crowd out our capacity. If we can't do it well, we'd rather say no than do it badly.

We cook to order rather than to forecast, which removes most of it. Trim and bones become stock, surplus produce goes to staff meal, and what's left goes to commercial composting. Our container return credit keeps packaging in circulation too.

Occasionally, for cooks and drivers. Send us a note through the contact form and we'll keep it on file.