Door-to-door cooking service gets popular

In recent years, door-to-door cooking service, a new occupation, has appeared in China. This is mostly a part-time job. And the chefs are mainly young and middle-aged people. They are good at cooking so they provide door-to-door cooking service to those in need and can even cook family reunion dinner on the Spring Festival eve.

Family reunion dinner on the Spring Festival eve. (Photo by Xinhua)

"During Spring Festival, the demand for door-to-door cooking service increased,” said Liang, manager of a Beijing-based housekeeping company. “Many young people are too busy to go back home, but they still want to enjoy a good dinner.”

Liang has been engaged in housekeeping work in Beijing for nearly a decade. The main business of his company was to provide postpartum doulas and hourly workers for room cleaning. Then, in 2020, the door-to-door cooking service project has been launched. During this Spring Festival, more than thirty chefs of Liang’s company have been fully reserved.

Liang added that now the price of the chef has risen from 700 yuan to about 1,500 yuan. "Customers can order what they would like to eat,” said Liang, adding the price is mostly set by the chefs, and each service is between two and three hours.

Ms. Zhao, a 42-year-old from Jilin province, became a postpartum doula in 2021. On the 28th of the twelfth lunar month this year, she has just finished her service for a client’s family. Then, after a day off on the 29th of the month, she went to Mr. Sun's house in Heilongjiang province to work as a chef.

Ms. Zhao said she cooked 14 meals in 7 days, each meal made up of about 10 dishes. She roughly calculated her income, more than 4,000 yuan in 7 days.

Mr. Huang is 29 years old. He works in technology development industry in Beijing. During this Spring Festival, he hired a Hunan cuisine chef to cook for his family.

"The chef cooked dinner for my family. Each meal is of 8 dishes,” said Huang. “The service lasted 7 days. The expense on food materials and taxi for the chef is more than 7,000 yuan."

As Huang’s parents have been living a frugal live, he just wanted them to relax during the Spring Festival in this way.

Source: Beijing Youth Daily; Trans-editing by Wang Yunya