Cooking at an appointment
You're providing a unique, personal, and meaningful service to your customers. Impress them with exceptional service.
Arrival
- Arrive on time - Customers rate you based on your punctuality.
- Park on the street - Allow your customer easy access to/from their driveway.
- Remove shoes - Bring all grocery bags and equipment to the door before knocking, and remove your shoes upon entry.
- Don't take keys - Do not take keep a customer’s key, as this presents a liability risk to you and a substitute Elf won’t have a way access to the home.
- Impress - For new customers, get a brief tour of their kitchen and explain the service. You are their first impression of Dinner Elf, so aim to impress.
- Only you - Never bring a friend, family member, or anyone with you on an appointment. This is unprofessional and a liability.
If no home access
Sometimes you'll arrive at the customer's home, but they're not home and you have no way to get in.
💡 Try some obvious things. Look for a key under the doormat. Check if the door is unlocked (open and yell). Triple check the address. Review your text history with the customer. If a lock box, open the door on the lock box itself to get the front door key (the lockbox button might require a 'pull' rather than a 'push').
If you can't get entry to your customer's home, take these steps.
- 1
- Text your customer (to both numbers, if provided) from your appointment page and your personal phone. If the customer is new to you, include their address and entry instructions (they may have made a typo).
- 2
- If you get no response, call (both numbers) and leave a voicemail. Again, mention their address.
- 3
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If you don't get access 20 minutes after your scheduled appointment start time, leave and return your groceries. Reset the lockbox key numbers if relevant.
- 4
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On your appointment page, uncheck your staples, set your grocery total to $1, upload any faux photos, and close your appointment.
- 5
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Contact support. We'll reach out to the customer to smooth things over. 😀
You'll still receive your full shift pay and tip. Thanks for trying!
Ingredients
Your customer may supply a subset of your groceries or staples for use in your appointment.
For ingredients supplied by your customer, adjust your reimbursements:
- Staples: Uncheck supplied items on your staples list
- Groceries: Don't buy supplied items (these costs won't be in your grocery total)
In-home tips
- Read tips from experienced Elves for best practices for being efficient in the kitchen.
- Many customers expect a quiet presence, so ask first if you want to play music.
- Minimize phone calls if your customer is home.
Extra food
Some 2-person recipes use ingredients that require much larger "minimum purchase quantities" than 2-person size.
💡 If you have extra ingredients for 2-person dinners, only cook 2-person size dinners (don't cook more).
- The number one reason customers order 2-person dinners is they don't want to waste food. Family size dinners are too much food for them.
- Customers get confused when they order 2-person size dinners but receive double portion sizes for some recipes.
Bad customers
Customers receive automated emails and texts prior to every appointment about their responsibilities:
'Please clear one refrigerator shelf, clean sinks and countertops of dirty dishes, and leave out glass containers or clean containers from past orders.'
If a customer doesn't comply, follow these steps:
- Do the best you can during your appointment (show good customer service).
- On your menu card, leave a friendly reminder to clean their sink, etc.
- If they don't improve by the next appointment, contact support and we'll play bad cop.
- (Optional) You can request to block the customer so they can't book you again.