How Does a Personal Chef Handle Food Allergies, Preferences and Picky Eaters?

Every family has their food preferences. Maybe one person is gluten-free. Someone else doesn't eat dairy. One kid loves salmon, and the other won't let it touch their plate. Or you're managing a combination of allergies and preferences that makes finding one dinner everyone can eat feel like a logic puzzle.

We get it. At Just Table It, we've cooked for families with multiple dietary needs happening under the same roof. We've built vegetarian menus while also navigating nut and seed allergies. We've cooked for households where one person is gluten-free, and everyone else isn't. And, of course, we've cooked for plenty of kids with some very strong opinions about dinner, including at least one who considers ketchup a food group. No judgment. We were all that kid once.

Your family doesn't have to be easy to feed for a personal chef to make your life easier.

Tell us how your family eats

Before your first cookdate, we ask a lot of questions through our Food Questionnaire. We want to understand allergies and dietary restrictions, of course, but also preferences, favorite foods, foods you absolutely don't like, how adventurous everyone is, and how your family actually eats.

We love your feedback but we are also paying attention to what gets eaten and left behind. As we learn, we adjust.

Then your chef uses everything we've learned to build your menus each week.

Allergies aren't just preferences

If someone doesn't particularly care for mushrooms, we need to know that. If someone has an allergy, we really need to know that.

We document allergies and dietary restrictions in your client profile so your chef has that information when planning menus and preparing your food. They aren't details we want anyone trying to remember off the top of their head, ours included.

And when there are several needs within one household, we look at them together. Instead of finding a recipe and then figuring out how to remove three ingredients, we can build menus with those needs in mind from the beginning.

And then there are the kids...

We recently had a family whose kids weren't eating much of the food we were making. Mom wanted fresh, wholesome food for her family, but she still found herself making boxed mac and cheese because the kids weren't interested in that night's dinner. That wasn't making her life easier.

So their chef and I talked about how we could approach the menu differently. We started incorporating a couple of more familiar, kid-friendly meals, while still providing a variety for the adults.

The family could mix and match. The kids had food they were excited to eat and opportunities to try other things, and Mom wasn't back in the kitchen making a second dinner (or, let's be honest, a fourth batch of chicken nuggets). *

Your chef gets to know your family

The Food Questionnaire gives us a great place to start, but we also know we aren't going to learn everything about your family from a form. That's where feedback comes in.

Maybe everyone loved something we weren't sure the kids would touch. Maybe a meal sounded great on paper but wasn't a hit. Maybe we discover that your family likes a lot more spice than we initially thought (it happens more than you'd guess).

Your chef learns, we keep track, and that knowledge helps inform the menus moving forward.

You tell us about the people we're feeding. We'll think about dinner.

6 pm changes here.

Wondering if JTI can work with your family's food needs? Learn more about our Weekly Personal Chef Service, or schedule a consultation and tell us a little about your household.

*We changed a few details here for privacy, but the story is a real client experience.