How to run a supper club as a chef

A supper club works when the menu, the number of seats and the evening's rhythm are planned together. Choose a theme that shows your cooking, fix a set menu you can serve well to every guest at once, and set the number of seats by your kitchen, your space and your help, not by the room's maximum. Sell seats ahead, collect dietary needs at booking, and plan the evening from the welcome drink to the last coffee. Keep the format repeatable, so each date is easier than the last.

A supper club is a chance to cook what a restaurant menu wouldn't allow: a region, a season, a single ingredient, a family recipe. Give the evening a clear theme guests can understand in one line. Build a set menu of a few courses where the bulk of the work can be done before guests arrive, and keep only the finishing for service. A menu that depends on last-minute plating for every course is hard to serve alone.

Start smaller than you think. A full, relaxed table of fewer guests is a better first evening than a crowded one where the food arrives late.

Your home, a friend's restaurant on its closing day, a shop after hours, a garden in summer: each changes the cost and the atmosphere. Visit the space with your menu in mind: where you plate, where guests wait, how dishes go back, where the toilets are, and where coats and bags will go. For borrowed kitchens, agree what equipment you can use and when you must leave.

Ask every guest about allergies and diets when they book, not at the table. Decide in advance what you can adapt — vegetarian, no nuts, no gluten — and say clearly what you can't, so guests choose another date or speak to you first. List the allergens in each course for the evening, and brief anyone helping you.

Count ingredients, drinks if included, venue, help, laundry, breakages and your own time, including shopping and prep. Price per seat, and say clearly what the price includes: number of courses, a welcome drink, wine pairing or bring-your-own. A clear price avoids awkward moments at the end of the evening.

Note what worked: timings, quantities, the dish everyone talked about, the one left on plates. Send guests a thank-you with the next dates. Regular guests and the friends they bring are how a supper club grows from one evening to a following.

On Book, each service has a name, a price and an optional description shown on your public page. Create a "Supper club" service, and for each date open a slot with a capacity equal to your seats; each guest books one place and the date disappears from your page when it's full. In the description, give the theme, the menu, the address area and what the price includes, and ask guests to write allergies and diets in the optional note, which you read in your new-booking email. For a group of friends, each person books their own seat, or you book them yourself from your calendar with the number of people.

Durations and prices are examples: set your own. If you must move a date, reschedule each booking from your bookings list and tell guests yourself, since Book doesn't email clients about changes. Book costs €5/month, everything included: unlimited services and bookings, no commission, no contract. It doesn't take payments.