LocalCooking is a marketplace for food made by independent cooks and small food businesses near you. What makes it different is unglamorous: we hold every cook against the food-safety rules that actually apply where they are, and we refuse the orders those rules don’t allow.
Find locally made food not tied to a corporation's menu, and support your local economy.
Independently and legally sell food to people in your area, and express yourself without being bound to a corporation.
First 25 cooks: no fee on your first $500 of online sales. 25 places left.
Sell to strangers without guessing at the law, and get paid like a business.
Tell us where you cook and we work out which food rules apply — your state, your county, your city. We tell you what each one wants, track your credentials and permits, and warn you before one lapses. You are not reading statutes at midnight.
That is our whole cut, per item, whatever the dish costs. Card processing is Stripe’s own fee on top and goes to Stripe, not to us — we never hold your money. A dish you price higher does not cost you more to sell here.
You set prices, choose what you make, and clock in when you are actually ready to cook. Orders that would push you past a comfortable pace wait for you to approve them rather than piling up silently.
Food made by a person, with the paperwork actually checked.
Food rules are local, so the check is too: a cook is held against the requirements where they cook and where the food is going. Credentials are verified rather than claimed, and a cook who stops meeting them stops appearing.
If a dish cannot lawfully reach you — the wrong kind of kitchen, an ingredient from a source your state doesn’t admit, meat that may not cross a state line — the order is refused and the reason is named. Not “unavailable”.
Dishes carry their real ingredients and allergens, refrigerated food carries a date mark the platform enforces, and if something you bought is ever recalled we will find you and tell you.
We are a marketplace and a set of tools — not a kitchen and not a courier. The food is made by independent people in your neighbourhood and you deal with them directly. What we believe, and how it works.