What Cooks Can and Cannot Do

A PlatedUp cook's role is to prepare your booked meal in your home, using the groceries you've arranged.

What cooks do

• Prepare the meal or meals you've booked, in your kitchen.
• Where you've selected grocery pickup, collect the groceries you've already chosen and prepaid for before your session.
• Communicate with you about your booking, preferences, and any dietary needs.

What's outside a normal booking

• Cooks are not expected to pay for groceries out of their own funds.
• Cooks are not expected to independently decide what groceries to buy on your behalf, or do general grocery shopping for you — your grocery choices and payment are handled separately from your cook's labor. See Who Buys the Groceries?
• Cooks aren't a general household or cleaning service outside of the cooking session.
• A Cook booking is for cooking-related services. Unless PlatedUp separately introduces and clearly describes such a service, a Cook isn't booked to provide childcare, supervision of children or vulnerable adults, elder care, medical or nursing care, pet-sitting, house-sitting, or security services.

If a child is at the booking

A cook isn't a babysitter, childcare provider, or supervisor for children — being over 18 doesn't make a cook a responsible adult for a child in the home. If anyone under 18 will be at the booking, the customer (or another responsible adult who isn't the cook) needs to stay for the entire time the child is there. The customer or that adult is responsible for keeping an eye on the child around kitchen hazards like the stove, oven, knives, and hot food.

If that requirement isn't being met — the adult never showed up, or leaves partway through with a child still there — a cook can pause, decline, or end the booking and contact PlatedUp Support instead of continuing. See Preparing Your Kitchen Before a Booking for how this fits into an unattended booking.

Asking for proof of age

Cooks don't check ID at every booking. If a cook genuinely and reasonably isn't sure whether a customer or the required adult is at least 18, the cook can ask for reasonable proof of age — a government-issued photo ID is one way to show this, but it isn't the only way.

If someone shows an ID for this, the cook can only look at it long enough to reasonably tell whether they're 18 or older. A cook must not photograph, screenshot, scan, copy, or keep an ID, and must not write down or send the birthdate, ID number, or address from it. If age genuinely can't be reasonably confirmed this way, a cook can pause, decline, or end the booking and contact PlatedUp Support.

Good to know

If you're unsure whether something is within scope for a specific booking, message your cook directly or contact PlatedUp Support.