Fancy a personal chef? Now he's just a click away in China
Catering services go online to bring families in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Beijing the luxury of hiring their own personal cook at affordable rates
For 20 years, Shanghai chef Zhang Haihua spent every Lunar New Year preparing restaurant banquets as others gathered for joyful family reunions.
But it wasn't quite the same for him this year, as he was focused on just one banquet on the holiday's eve - Zhang was preparing a private dinner for a family in Pudong district.
The 39-year-old chef quit his job at a Shanghainese restaurant to join an online-to-offline (O2O) catering service called Haochushi, which links families in Shanghai and Hangzhou with private chefs.
Through a mobile application, potential clients can view Zhang's profile and reviews from others, as well as enlist his services. When Zhang receives an order, he calls the client for their preferences and creates a menu for them. A four-dish meal - the cheapest of several choices - costs 79 yuan (HK$100), excluding ingredient costs.
"[Such O2O services] save us [chefs and clients] a lot of time … Now I can communicate directly with my clients instead of getting second-hand and often wrong information from waiters," Zhang said. "And I can cook with fresh ingredients that I buy myself from wet markets just an hour before the appointment."
A week before the Lunar New Year, the Shanghai-based Haochushi, launched in September, had already sold out its reunion dinner banquets, which cost between 1,000 yuan and 10,000 yuan. About 80 Shanghai families and 50 in Hangzhou departed from traditional home-cooked meals or restaurant banquets to give Haochushi's chefs a try.