PROJECTS - SHARED PERSONAL CHEF SERVICE
Personal chef quality. Local ingredients. Full transparency about everything, including where the dollars go.
A community-supported food service where a collaborative team of chef and baker partner-owners prepares locally sourced food for a committed community of members — twice weekly, in reusable containers, with complete transparency about ingredients, nutrition, and economics.
We're actively working to launch this service. This page describes what we're building and how you can help make it happen.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF FOOD SERVICE
What makes this different
Many prepared food services optimize for convenience and margin. Ingredients are chosen for cost and shelf life. Workers are paid as little as the market allows. Pricing is opaque by design.
This service is built around different priorities: genuinely excellent food, sourced locally and seasonally from the Santa Barbara region's extraordinary agricultural community. Compensation that reflects what food professionals actually deserve. And pricing that's transparent all the way down — so you can see exactly what you paid for and who it went to.
The model that makes this possible isn't a conventional restaurant or meal kit company. It's a collaborative team of chef and baker partner-owners — each with real ownership of their department — operating through shared infrastructure, coordinated by a pre-order system that eliminates the waste conventional food businesses build into every product. No idle staff. No speculative production. No disposable packaging that outlasts the meal.
It's designed to be genuinely good food, produced the right way, at prices that reflect honest costs rather than hidden compromises.
WHAT’S AVAILABLE
What you can order
Each week, the service offers a rotating selection across five categories, driven by what's in season and what members have ordered. You choose what you want, in the quantities you need, by the pre-order deadline.
Fully prepared meals Single-serving or family-style, ready to eat. Chefs use the best of what's available locally that week — simple preparations executed at the highest level, with a focus on quality over complexity.
Cooking kits Seasonal dishes professionally prepped and ready for you to finish at home. All the prep work done; you do the cooking. Ideal for people who want to be involved in the kitchen but don't have time to start from scratch.
Build-your-own meals The most customizable option — proteins, vegetables, starches, sauces, and components available individually, to combine however works for your household. Designed especially for people with specific dietary needs or preferences. Technology makes real-time customization and pricing possible.
Prepped ingredients Locally grown produce, washed, cut, and portioned to your specifications. Exactly the quantity you need, nothing more. This was the original idea that sparked the whole project — making local, seasonal eating accessible for busy households.
Condiments, staples, and baked goods Breads, sauces, dressings, marinades, and baked goods prepared by our baker partner-owners. Items that are hard to find at the quality level we're aiming for, made from ingredients you can actually trace.
MEMBERSHIP AND COMMITMENTS
How membership works
The service runs on a community-supported model: members commit to a minimum monthly spending level — as low as $50 — which they choose themselves. That commitment gives the chef partner-owners reliable, predictable revenue, which is what makes fair compensation and quality sourcing possible.
Pickup, not delivery. Orders are picked up at partner locations — locally owned businesses throughout the area that host pickups during their regular hours. You choose the location that fits your routine. This keeps distribution costs low and strengthens the local business community at the same time.
Flexibility. If you can't use your full monthly commitment, you can roll it over to the next month, share it with a friend, or designate it to a food access partner organization — a community group that can use the credit to acquire products for the people they serve.
Reusable containers. All products come in reusable glass jars and stainless steel containers. You return them at your next pickup. We handle sanitization. No disposable packaging, no persistent plastic waste.
Transparency at every step. Every product carries an Economic Facts label — a pricing breakdown showing the high-level categories that make up what you paid. Quarterly, you receive an impact report showing how your spending flowed — to chefs, to farmers, to partner businesses, to community organizations.
TRANSPARENCY AND VALUE
The Economic Facts Label
Every product in the service carries an Economic Facts label alongside the standard Nutrition Facts label. It shows, in plain terms, what you actually paid for: compensation, ingredients, facility use, infrastructure, and what's going toward the investment that makes the system possible.
This isn't a marketing gesture. It's the practical expression of value recoupment pricing — the principle that price should be the transparent sum of what it actually costs to produce something the right way, rather than whatever the market will bear.
If you want to understand exactly where your money goes, you can. If you just want excellent food in reusable containers, that works too.
CURRENT STATUS
Where things stand
We're actively building toward launch. Here's what exists, what we're working on, and what we need your help with.
WHAT’S IN PLACE
The foundation is ready. The commercial kitchen and warehouse facility are licensed and operational. The production management system — the technology that makes customized orders at scale possible — is developed and being refined. The operating frameworks, legal structures, and governance models for the Food Preparation Collaborative are drafted. The Economic Facts label infrastructure is ready.
WHAT WE’RE ACTIVELY BUILDING
Forming the team and the community. The most important things needed to launch are people: the chef and baker partner-owners who will form the Food Preparation Collaborative, and the community of committed clients whose pre-orders make the service viable. We're actively recruiting both.
A logistics partner to handle distribution and manage the reusable container program is also needed — either a new Logistics Collaborative or an existing local partner. Pickup partner locations throughout the community are being established.
FIND YOUR PLACE IN THIS
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Early members who pre-pay for a period of service provide the Food Preparation Collaborative with startup capital before the service goes live. Those payments are redeemed in the first year of operation. Pre-paying members receive priority access and acknowledgment as founding members of the service
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Fill out our client interest survey — it takes about five minutes and helps us understand what you're looking for, what dietary needs and preferences you have, and which potential pickup locations would work for your routine. This is a great way to make sure you hear about launch timing and have early access to membership.
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Not ready to commit to anything yet? Join our mailing list to stay informed about launch progress, community events, and ways to get involved.
How to get involved
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Funding a launch apprenticeship is one of the most direct ways to accelerate what we're building. Donated funds help subsidize facility costs and ensure apprentices earn a minimum hourly rate while their department is still getting started — making it possible for culinary, business, and communications professionals to commit real time to this project during the development phase.
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The apprenticeship program offers a structured, partially subsidized path into the collaborative for prospective partner-owners across all departments — culinary, business operations, and marketing and communications. You do real work, develop your offerings, and get direct experience of the people and systems that will form the core of the collaborative.
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We're looking for experienced professionals who can support apprentices as mentors or instructors — in culinary technique, cooperative governance, business systems, marketing, or other areas the project needs. Mentors may participate as volunteers or, depending on available funds, as compensated contributors.
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The single most valuable thing many community members can do is make introductions. Do you know a talented chef or baker who cares about doing food right? A local business that might be a great pickup partner? A community foundation or organization that works on food systems, worker wellbeing, or local economic development? We'd love to hear about it.
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We're developing a community investing club — a friendly lending model through which community members can make small loans to help fund the physical infrastructure the service needs: refrigerated distribution capacity, reusable container inventory, and related equipment. Loans are repaid over time as the service operates.
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We're looking for local farms, producers, and food businesses interested in supplying ingredients to the collaborative, and for locally owned businesses willing to host client pickups during their regular hours. Both are genuine partnerships that strengthen the local economy while supporting the service's operations.
