All About The Cooks: the future of catering is local produce

What is All About The Cooks? All About The Cooks is an online marketplace, which enables talented home cooks to sell their food to local people. The plan was to launch earlier than 2020 but we got delayed because of the pandemic. As of now, we have 70 cooks and 150 more in the pipeline. The vision behind the platform is that one day it will be possible to buy home cooked food from local people, wherever you are. So that might mean that you could go buy home-cooked meals from someone living next to you, or when you go on holiday in Cornwall you’ll be able to buy home-cooked food locally too. Do you think the pandemic had a positive influence on your platform? I think in some ways it was positive and that first lockdown really made people value local products. So for instance there were a lot of people who went into making pizzas in their back garden or baking and then selling products on Facebook. So I think from an awareness point of view it did draw attention to the fact that we were interested in hyperlocal ways of buying things, including food. But what was difficult for us was that the rules were constantly changing. The restaurants would be shut, and then we'd have furloughed chefs who were cooking and selling on the platform but then they'd be back in the restaurant as soon as they could reopen. What we were looking for at that time was proof of concept and it was really hard to be consistent with people joining and leaving soon after. How does someone apply to become a chef? Whoever wants to join ends up filling out a form on the website, which just expresses their interest in joining us as a cook. Then we’ll have a conversation with our community manager, who explains everything that's involved to the person as well as trying to understand how much support they might need. After that, anyone has to register with their local council and once registered, they can start trading within a few weeks. We also expect all our cooks to pass the level two Standard entry hygiene certification for obvious food safety reasons. Whilst we're a commercial business, we are very much we have this big social impact at our heart. So we're doing quite a lot of work, for instance, with refugee organisations where they’re trying to help raise money and share their culture. And food is intrinsically linked to culture. Are the cooks all trained chefs? So we use the term home cooks, and that refers to both people who are trained chefs and those who aren’t. We have all sorts of different people. Some used to be chefs, or received some type of culinary training in the past. We also got a couple of people who are on maternity leave at the moment and do this while staying at home. More importantly, we have people from really diverse cultures, making food that they grew up with and now want to share with their communities. And I think this big emotional connection through food is what makes the platform work. Also because the customers are curious and interested in local authentic food, and not anglicised versions of it. Does the platform become a full-time job for the home cooks? The majority of the people do it part-time. For example, we have new mums or carers who do this as a side hustle. We also have other people who do other jobs regularly and are now trying to pursue a part-time career in catering. Some of them do it as a hobby. But yes, we also have some people doing it full-time, although it’s not common. Why do you think people are more attracted to your platform than working in a restaurant, for instance? I think that working in professional kitchens is not an easy thing to do. It’s very heavy and quite hierarchical, so if you were to go and work in a restaurant, you have to work your way through the different stages before reaching your desired job. All About The Cooks gives much more flexibility in comparison. In addition, the platform is more frequently being used by our cooks as a way to test launching a food product. And so they start producing it via the platform and see what the customers' responses are. Other people use the platform to see whether they want to make a full-time career out of making food or not. Overall I think All About The Cooks is not a caring business either, in terms of doing events. Because, as I said, the majority of our cooks do this because they are interested in spreading their culture and cooking for their community. Do you think All About The Cooks will make more people rethink about the role of the catering industry? I think that people are certainly going to keep doing this, that’s a trend and we recognised it. Also as a side hustle, people are constantly trying to find ways to make extra money and All About The Cooks allows them to do so. I also do think that the concept of buying food from local people, and cooking food to sell to your neighbours, will be more commonplace.