Customized Service
Unlike meal kit delivery, we customize our weekly meal prep service to your family's tastes and dietary needs. Our cooking service starts with a free, in-home consultation with one of our personal chefs, where you meet the chef and the chef learns your likes, dislikes and diet restrictions. There are no limited menus. You get meals customized every week to your unique tastes and requests, creating endless possibilities.
Professional Chefs
We use only local, professional chefs. All our personal chefs have several years experience in the city's best kitchens and a culinary degree, or have demonstrated comparable skill during our stringent testing. Personal chefs are all employees of Friend That Cooks and are background checked, bonded and insured through us.
Hourly Rates
Our pricing model is quite simply the fairest way possible to pay for a professional cooking service. Rather than locking you into a subscription or set price per meal, we charge you for the actual service time you use from our chefs, and you provide the shopping money for groceries. Visit the Services & Rates page for your city to see pricing information for weekly meal prep, cooking lessons or private parties in your home.
Our life is so much simpler...
"Our life is so much simpler having Laura fix our meals once a week. We always get a variety - and her tomato tart is amazing. This is the best investment we have made." - Val C.
Our chef is amazing!
"Our chef, Karie, is amazing! She creates wonderful meals for my elderly mother. It has changed my Mom's life - she is getting so much better nutrition that her health and memory have improved. And of course, she really enjoys the time with Karie too. Thanks so much to our chef and Friend That Cooks for offering this great service at an affordable price." - Terri G.
I'd recommend this to anyone!
"Our chef Tyler is fantastic. I absolutely love this service. I can cook, I just don't like to, and I hate to grocery shop. This service has been fantastic because it frees up lots of time for me to devote to work and other things. The food has been fantastic and I have been able to give him guidelines that he easily sticks to, but still gets creative with my meals. I'd recommend this to anyone!" - Melanie S.
From The Founder
Welcome Friend. I'm Brandon O'Dell, founder of Friend That Cooks Personal Chef Service. You've found something unique in our weekly meal prep service. I started Friend That Cooks in 2007 as a cooking service that improves not only the quality of life for our weekly meal prep clients, but also for our most important asset, our employees.
The restaurant and food service industry has a long history of chewing up employees and spitting them out. Restaurant workers toil nights, weekends and holidays while their family and friends are off work with the majority of society. They often work 12+ hour shifts, missing family get togethers, nights out, and holiday gatherings. For this, they're rewarded with low wages, little or no benefits and limited opportunity to advance.
When I started Friend That Cooks, I believed there was a better life waiting both for busy families and for talented cooks. I saw a way to improve the quality of life for both by bringing them together.
Friend That Cooks is a meal service that can alleviate one of the most taxing and time consuming activities any of us go through on a daily basis, figuring out what we're going to eat, planning for it, and spending the time cooking or eating out. It's a huge investment of your time, 10+ hours per week. Through solving this problem for families, we also solve some major problems for many talented cooks. For those that can prove their skill, we offer a wage beyond what the restaurant and food service industry can pay them, and benefits well beyond what any food industry company is willing to pay. More importantly, we offer them nights, weekends and holidays off. Something most cooks and chefs have never experienced in their career. We give them a better quality of life. By doing so, I hope to pressure the rest of the food service industry to do their part to improve their employees' quality of life too.
If you're up for it, and in need of some better quality of life yourself, you can help me in my mission. Let us alleviate the 10+ hours per week you spend planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning up. We can do it a LOT faster, and a lot better than you can, and we love to do it. Try our service with no commitment and no contracts. If we don't place you with a chef who you feel is a true Friend, we will find you a different one, or you're free to stop service with no further obligation.
I'm very proud of what my team and I have accomplished at Friend That Cooks, and we have many, many happy families who are now Friends and love being a part of what we do. Let me make you one of them.
No commitment.
No contracts.
No risk.
Ever.
