After your Shef account is approved, you will have more features unlocked in your Shef Dashboard. If you see the "My Availability" section, your account has been approved. Once you select the days you want to be available on the calendar there and click "Save Your Availability", your menu will be live on shef.com.

If you are interested in becoming a shef, go to our "Become a shef" page and sign up to find out if we are currently onboarding shefs in your area. If we are accepting shefs in your area, you will be taken to your shef dashboard. During the onboarding process, you will build your menu, provide a valid food handlers certificate, write a short bio, provide a profile picture of yourself, setup your delivery information, and setup a Stripe account where you will connect a bank account to receive your payments.

If you can't find your menu listed on shef.com, make sure you have saved the days you want to be available in the "My Availability" section of your Shef Dashboard. Your menu will appear on shef.com in the cuisine categories you have selected in the "My Profile" section of your Shef Dashboard.

Note: In San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago and New York, shefs first enter a trial mode, where only customers that have placed at least one order on shef.com can order from them. After shefs receive a few good reviews, they will pass their trial.

If you don't see some of your menu items available to customers, some of your dishes may not be set to available on certain days. You can select which delivery days you want each dish to be available for order in the "Dish Availability" box within the "My Availability" section of your Shef Dashboard. A red checkmark means the dish will be offered on that day. This feature is used so you can offer different menus on different days of the week, or have dish specials on certain days.

To check what steps you have left to complete your shef application, visit the "Shef Application Checklist" article. Once each step listed there is completed, it typically takes our team 2-3 days to review and approve your account. We will send you a text and email to let you know that you've been approved.

New menu items you have submitted are usually reviewed and approved by our team within 5 days. During this process, it is our goal to help make your dish as successful as possible based on customer's buying behaviors. If you see a small speech bubble icon and "Changes Pending Review" on any of your dishes, our team has questions waiting for you. Click "Edit Dish", then "Comment" in the top right corner of the dish builder. A new window will pop up with the question(s) from our team. Please send us an answer back and adjust or update any information as necessary so our team can approve your dish.

If you see "Changes pending review" written on your menu items, your dish is still waiting for our team to review it. During this process, it is our goal to help make your dish as successful as possible based on customer's buying behaviors. If you see a small speech bubble icon and "Changes Pending Review" on any of your dishes, our team has questions waiting for you. Click "Edit Dish", then "Comment" in the top right corner of the dish builder. A new window will pop up with the question(s) from our team. Please send us an answer back and adjust or update any information as necessary so our team can approve your dish.

If you see a small speech bubble icon and "Changes Pending Review" on any of your dishes, our team has questions waiting for you. To see comments our menu team has asked you about your menu items, click the "Edit Dish" text next to the dish that has comments waiting for you, then click "Comment" in the top right corner of the dish builder. A new window will pop up with the question(s) from our team. Please send us an answer back and adjust or update any information as necessary so our team can approve your dish.

Shef is available in many places across the US. There are also locations where there are no shefs currently offering a menu yet. If you are interested in becoming a shef, go to our "Become a shef" page and sign up to find out if we are currently onboarding shefs in your area.

Shefs are required to follow all local laws and regulations. We have responsible cooking guidelines that generally outline a particular state's home cooking laws here. If you are in a location that has not yet implemented laws that permit home cooking, you would need to cook out of a commercial kitchen or other legal cooking facility until your county implements new laws or regulations. You will also want to provide an ANSI-accredited food handlers certificate during your onboarding process. You can find information on that here.

We use Stripe.com as our payment processor. As a shef, you will want to sign up for a free account with Stripe to provide your personal info and the bank account details where you want to receive payments from your orders on Shef. You get paid every day you have orders on Shef, we wait to confirm you have fulfilled your orders for the day and then send a direct deposit payment to your Stripe account. You can then transfer your funds to any of your connected bank accounts via Stripe. Payments can take around 1 to 5 days to reach your bank depending on your bank and other details.

To connect your Stripe and Shef account, go to your Shef Profile, scroll to the bottom, and click "Connect Your Bank Account". You can also edit your payment details here any time (if you want to change your connected bank account, for example). You can view step by step instructions on this in our article on setting up your Stripe account.

In some cities, shefs enter a trial phase when their shef application is approved. Only regular customers of shef.com will be able to order from trial shefs. We offer promos for these customers to order from trial shefs, as long as they leave a rating and review after ordering. We want to help new shefs gain momentum with growing their business by getting some good reviews posted to their menu. We also want to ensure shefs are meeting customer's expectations with their delicious, authentic food. When a shef receives 3-5 great reviews, they will pass the trial phase and their menu will be available for all customers to order from.

The following things cannot be offered on your menu:

Visit our article on planning your menu for our best tips on getting your menu started.

You will provide pictures of your dishes and our team will edit the photos for you, placing your dish on one of our food photo backgrounds.

Make sure to follow our food photography guidelines when taking your pictures so we are able to edit the photos and don't have to ask you to take another one. Place your food in a plate or in a bowl, make sure nothing is hanging over the edge of the plate or bowl and take your photo from directly above, looking down at your dish. Make sure to get the entire plate or bowl in the photo without cutting off any edges.

There are two forms of dish capacity.

From the main page of shef.com, click the menu button in the top left corner and then "Profile". Click "Delete your account" at the bottom of this page to delete all of your account data. If you know you don't want to be active on shef right now, but don't want all of the hard work you put into building your menu go to waste, you can also message us to pause your account. We will then deactivate your account and you can message us in the future if you ever decide to reactivate your account and your menu will still be there waiting for you.

Yes! You can make edits to any dishes on your menu, remove dishes, or add dishes at any time. As you are serving customers and learning more about your operation costs and what your customers enjoy, it is likely that you'll want to edit things on your menu like pricing, ingredient lists, etc. Some changes you make will still need to be reviewed and approved by our menu team, which usually happens within 2-3 days.

Yes, we have plenty of partners cooking together on our platform! Please ensure both shefs are included in your account name, profile photo, and bio. Both shefs must have a valid food handler’s certificate on file with us. Note that you must be located in the same market (city), and payments will only be issued to one bank account.

How your orders get delivered as a shef depends on your location. Go to the "My Profile" page in your Shef Dashboard to see what is available to you. You will either be able to select a hub to drop your orders off at, or provide an address where delivery drivers will pick orders up from you. If you have both options available, you can choose both. In this case, you will need to check your Orders breakdown page ahead of each day to see which delivery method will be used for each day.