you did the work. you keep the price you set.
Real ChefLynk bookings, priced by the same code that prices a live one. ChefLynk takes 0% commission from your menu price on a completed booking, and payment processing is not deducted from it either — the full chef price is what transfers to you.
Plated dinner
Buffet
Meal prep
These are booking revenue, not profit — ingredients, labour, travel, insurance and tax stay yours, as they do in any independent business. Your client pays a separate ChefLynk service fee on top; it never comes out of your price. The 20% figure is illustrative of commission platforms generally, not any named company, and real rates vary.
stop paying to work.
Keep 100%. Get paid on a fixed date.
Other platforms take 18–25% of every event. We take nothing from your fee. The client pays a transparent service fee — you keep your full quote. Their payment sits in escrow the moment they book and releases to you 24 hours after the event — 48 hours for your first three, while you’re new — so you’re never chasing an invoice or eating a no-pay.
Your leads are yours. Full stop.
Pay-per-lead sites charge you for introductions that ghost — you pay whether or not anyone books. ChefLynk never sells, resells, or shares your inquiries. The only thing you ever pay us is a flat monthly subscription, and there’s a free tier that costs nothing at all.
The tools to run the business, not just book it.
Most platforms hand you a lead and disappear. We give you a recipe box, a menu builder that calculates true food cost per dish, and a net-profit dashboard that shows what you actually keep after ingredients. Price with confidence, quote in minutes, and know your margin before you commit.
Say yes to the 20-guest events you used to turn down.
A big dinner shouldn’t slip away because you can’t staff it. Price an assistant straight into your quote and see what the night really leaves you before you send the number — then pay them directly, with no cut taken. Every plan can take the parties one chef can cook for; Pro is what lets you price them properly.
three steps to your next booking.
Build your profile.
Get matched to real occasions.
Cook and get paid.
desserts are not a side dish here.
Most platforms treat dessert as something the dinner chef also does. On ChefLynk a pastry chef is its own kind of chef, with its own profile, its own calendar and its own place in search — so clients looking for a celebration cake find you instead of scrolling past you.
What ChefLynk does for pastry chefs- Set yourself up as desserts-only and your profile says so up front — clients stop asking you to cook a dinner.
- Your calendar drops the breakfast/lunch/dinner slots for a plain daily view, because a dessert table isn’t a lunch.
- Clients can filter for a pastry chef, and for celebration cakes, dessert tables or dessert buffets specifically.
- When someone wants a pastry chef where none covers them, we record it — that gap is how we know where to recruit.
- Same terms as every chef here: 0% commission on your quote, escrow-protected payout, your leads stay yours.
I’ve cooked private events for eight years — more than 90 of them booked through a commission platform — and I still cook them. I love the work. What I hated was watching a fifth of every check disappear before it reached me, and paying other sites for “leads” that never wrote back. So I built the platform I wanted as a chef: keep everything you earn, own your clients, get paid on a date you can count on, and finally have the tools to price and run it like a real business. That’s the whole idea. If a claim isn’t real, it isn’t on this page — and anything still being built says so.
— The founder, a working private chef
free to start. founding rate for the first 100.
A full profile, real bookings, 0% commission, escrow payouts, the recipe box and the menu builder all cost nothing — and always will, for tables up to 25. What a paid plan buys is bigger rooms and the tools to price them: parties up to 60 with helper pay inside your quote, Insights, and the cost calculator. Annual billing is two months free on any paid plan.
Your profile, real bookings, 0% commission, escrow payouts, your full earnings breakdown, the recipe box and the menu builder — all of it, at no cost, with no trial clock. Cook for tables up to 25.
Price an assistant into your quote and see what the night really leaves you, then let Insights and the cost calculator tell you what to charge next time. You pay your helper directly and we never take a cut of it.
Past what one kitchen can do alone: build a crew for a single event, and pay them through the platform instead of settling up yourself — same escrow, routed automatically.
Teams is in build and not on sale yet.
the things chefs actually ask.
What’s the catch if it’s really 0%?
There isn’t one hidden in your pocket. Clients pay a transparent service fee on top of your quote — that, plus optional chef subscriptions, is how we keep the lights on. Your event fee is yours, every dollar.
Do I need my own insurance or license?
Yes. ChefLynk is a booking platform, not your employer. You’re responsible for your own licensing, food-handler certification, and liability insurance, per your local rules — just as you would be running your own private-chef business.
How do I get paid?
The client’s payment is held in escrow when they book. It releases to your connected account automatically 24 hours after your event’s scheduled start — 48 hours for each of your first three bookings, while you’re building a track record. No invoicing, no chasing, no platform cut.
What happens if a client cancels?
Every booking follows a clear cancellation policy you agree to up front, so a late cancellation doesn’t leave you with nothing. Because the money is already in escrow, any cancellation fee owed to you is protected — not something you have to fight for.
the three questions everyone asks first.
Written straight, with the source and the date beside every number, and honest about what the data does not say.