@jannamark thanks! I'm in between jobs right now and looking for a start of a business.

@oneoddfrog I would LOVE to hear your experience on it, if/how you customize and individualize, how you get the food to people.

@reibeatall I was dealing with people who have different diets/ dietary needs. I’d be glad to chat with you about it!

@reibeatall I hope that wasn’t super rude. I said it and now I can’t decide if I was uncouth.

@oneoddfrog Haha, no, there was zero rudeness out of it. It read as "super excited to talk to somebody about it"

@reibeatall ok good! Sometimes I get excited and promptly forget to be well mannered. So I’m glad it came off as not jerkface.

@oneoddfrog first question would be how the hell do you get people to sign up? Did you just do it for friends?

@reibeatall it was mostly family and friends. I feel like word of mouth is a really good way to get this started.

@oneoddfrog Since it was friends and family did you charge? How much if you did?

@reibeatall My method might have been overly complicated, but the equation I used is food costs + prep time.

Usually I worked with people to come up with foods they liked/categories of foods. Then we did a grocery list and either I shopped for it and they paid me back or they bought the food. Either way I didn’t pay food costs.
I did a couple of weeks free early on to figure out average prep times, and then came up with a rate based on that.

@oneoddfrog That's totally not overly complicated, it's pretty close to what I'm thinking of doing. What did you average for prep time cost?

@reibeatall 2-3 hours per person for the simpler food choices. It all depends how complicated people want you to get and how much variety they want.

For example: I had one person eating a simple diet who wanted repetition and to not think about what they were eating. So 2 hours was enough prep/cook/package time for hard boiled eggs, roasted chicken, salads, fresh veggies, etc (aka not very complex). More variety as well as restrictions/allergy concerns will lengthen your time.

@oneoddfrog So you really did it custom for each person, got it. Seems like you did it for the full week for them too?

@reibeatall I was dealing with different specific dietary needs, and people who were traveling. So I had to pack a bunch. Some things overlapped, and I probably could have done a more set menu. Individualized helps, when trying to cost out the groceries, though.

Also a good food scale will be your best friend.

@JigmeDatse Lol, yeah, I get that needing a PA thing. Sometimes there's just too much crap going on.

@reibeatall Most days for me there are too many different things going on. And I'm not dealing with that particularly well. Still I'm managing to deal with it well enough that I'm not going backwards (as far as I know).

@green ok cool! This makes me happy that somebody is interested! Could you send me an email at reibeatall@gmail.com and we can start to discuss?

@reibeatall I can't promise that I'll be able to sign up right away--we're having a period of economic wobbliness for Reasons that's probably going to last until June. :/ but I'll send an email and follow!