As a shef, you are in control of your own cooking schedule. You select which days of the week you would like to be available to fulfill orders, and you have flexibility around how much notice your customers need to give you when placing their orders. You can also change your schedule and take breaks as needed using the 'My Availability' calendar in your account.

Every city has a different number of delivery days available. You can cook and sell on all of the delivery days or just some of them. It's your business, feel free to choose the schedule that works the best for you!

When your account gets approved to start cooking, you will see a new section has been added to your Shef Dashboard, called 'My Availability'. You will find a calendar there where you can select the days you are available to fulfill orders. You are responsible for managing your calendar and ensuring it is always accurate.

The 'My Profile' section of your shef dash will show when orders need to be ready or dropped off on delivery days, so please double check this to help you plan your availability. If your time windows are in the morning, you will usually need to cook, cool, and package your food the day before your delivery days.

Orders are always placed ahead of time on the Shef platform, giving you time to source your ingredients, then prepare, cool and package your orders. You can select how much notice you would like before delivery days by selecting your preferred order cutoff time in your Profile. Choosing a shorter cutoff time gives your customers more time to order and typically results in getting more orders.

You can select any individual date on your calendar to set yourself as available for delivery on those days. At the top of your calendar, you'll see a box for each day of the week, Sunday through Saturday. You can select any of these days to set yourself as always available for those days. For example, selecting Monday here would make it so your customers can place orders to be delivered any upcoming Monday.

Using ongoing availability makes it easy to keep your menu available for customers! Remember to always click the Save button any time you make changes to your calendar!

A day that is red means you have selected to be available on those days. Any days that are greyed out cannot be selected, these are days where delivery is not available in your area.

We recommend starting with 2-3 delivery days per week and then adding more days to your schedule as you become more comfortable.

You are welcome to make changes to your availability calendar at any time. If you are trying to remove an available day that already has orders placed for it, you will still need to prepare those orders for your customers. Remember to click save after making any changes!

Use Unavailability to remove a range of dates from your calendar. Customers will not be able to place orders for these days. This can be helpful if you are out of town, you are taking some time off, or if you are still collecting supplies.

For example, if a shef has marked the date range of May 12-20 as unavailable, customers cannot place orders for dates that fall in this unavailable time range. However, customers can still browse the shef's menu and place upcoming orders for any available dates before or after this range. Customers can place orders up to 3 weeks ahead of time, so it is always a great idea to have your availability set for as long into the future as possible.

Dish Availability allows you to offer different menu items by day of the week. For example, maybe you have a special dish that you only want to offer on Fridays. This is completely optional!

Most shefs do not need to use this setting when they are first getting started, we recommend keeping all menu items checked (in red) while you learn how availability works. If you have

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The Order Cutoff Time setting is located on the 'My Profile' page of your Shef Dashboard. It allows you to choose the latest time you will allow customers to place an order before your next delivery day. After your order cutoff time passes, your orders are finalized and customers are not able to place new orders. You will then receive a summary email with all of your orders to help you prepare for your next delivery day. Customers will receive a full refund if they cancel their order before the shef's cutoff time, the shef will not be paid for these orders cancelled before cutoff time.

As a new shef, your order cutoff time is automatically set to 1 day before each delivery day at 12:00pm. For an upcoming Thursday delivery day, this means your orders will be finalized on Wednesday (1 day before) at 12:00pm.

We recommend using the shortest cutoff time option you can accommodate for orders. We have seen in our data that shefs who choose shorter cutoff times (day before delivery day at noon, 6pm, or 9pm) tend to receive more orders than shefs who choose longer cutoff times (2 days before delivery day or longer).

This is because using a shorter cutoff time can bring more customers to your menu every day! Any customer who wants to order food for next-day delivery will be ordering from shefs who use shorter cutoff times. Shefs with longer cutoff times are not an option for next-day orders, because their order cutoff time has already passed.

Remember to click the Save button anytime you make changes to your Profile!