Trust & Safety
A stranger cooking in your home — or cooking in a stranger's home — only works when trust is built into the structure. Here's exactly how, in plain words.
Built into the platform
Proposals are sealed
When chefs propose on your event, each proposal is visible to you alone. Competing chefs never see each other's menus or prices — so every proposal is a chef's honest best, not a reaction to someone else's number.
Agreed terms are locked
When you select a chef and they confirm, the agreed terms — price, menu concept, inclusions, guest count — are frozen in a commitment record neither side can quietly edit. What you agreed is what stands.
Your address stays private until it matters
Your exact address, access details, and day-of phone number are shared only after mutual confirmation, and only with your one confirmed chef. Chefs are bound by our terms to treat them as confidential and single-use — and your home is never their content: no photos, posts, or geotags without your explicit consent.
Records are real and permanent
Reviews can only come from events that actually happened — there are no purchased placements or fabricated ratings anywhere on Tableside. A new chef with zero reviews is honesty, not a red flag. Cancellations are recorded separately from reviews, so quality and reliability are two signals you can read independently.
Conversation lives with the event
Coordination happens on-platform, attached to the event it belongs to. If something ever needs a referee, the record of what was said and agreed is in one place.
What verification means here
“Vetted” is an easy word to say and a hard one to stand behind. This is our standard for chefs joining Tableside — when you see a verification mark, this is what was checked:
Identity confirmed
Real name, verified in a live conversation with our founding team
Founder interview
Every chef joining Tableside talks to us — background, style, professionalism. Not a form. A conversation.
Food-safety certification
Certificate document sighted and verified
Liability insurance
Policy declaration sighted — the badge only appears when we've seen it
Professional experience
Work history reviewed and discussed in the interview
Verification means we checked what's listed above, when it was checked — it is not a guarantee of any chef's work or any outcome (that's also in our terms, in plain words).
What we don't do — said plainly
We don't run criminal record checks today. We're honest about that rather than implying otherwise; it's on our roadmap as we grow.
We don't process payments yet. Hosts and chefs arrange payment directly — agree on deposit terms in your coordination thread, and see our Cancellations & Refunds standard for how cancelling is handled and recorded.
We don't invent numbers. No inflated chef counts, no fake ratings, no “5,000 happy customers” before there are any. If you see a number on Tableside, it's real.
Something feel off — before, during, or after an event? Contact us. At our size, a founder reads every message, and genuine emergencies are handled person-by-person, not by policy tables.