For chefs
Ninety minutes of your time.
80% of every sale, forever.
The Chef's Three is a weekly interview series about the three dishes you'd tell a friend to order at your restaurant — and the recipes behind them, sold in your own words, with 80 cents of every dollar going to you. Read the demo issue to see exactly what your issue would look like.
What we ask of you
- One pre-call, 30 minutes. You name your three dishes and hand over the recipes as they exist — batch sheets, "a coffee cup of this," whatever form they're in. We do the converting.
- One session, about 3 hours, before service. A sit-down interview at your bar (~45 min) and camera time while your kitchen preps the three dishes. One shooter, one interviewer, lav mics, we stay out of the way.
- One approval pass. Every quote and every recipe goes to you before anything publishes. You cut anything, no questions. If you hate the whole thing, it never runs.
- One repost. When the issue drops, you share it. Your audience is the distribution — that's the honest deal.
What you get
- 80% of every sale of your recipes and your pack, settled monthly, with the numbers visible to you.
- A produced short-form video set about your food — yours to repost forever.
- The "what to order" record — your picks, in your words, pointing people at your actual tables.
- The economics segment (optional) — if you open the books on one dish, we tell the story diners never hear. Marisol's version is here. Skip it if it's not for you.
80¢ you20¢ us
What we never do
- Publish a quote you haven't approved.
- Sell a recipe we haven't cooked successfully on a home stove — our test kitchen does the conversion work, you get final sign-off.
- Charge you anything. Ever. The 20% covers production and testing; if you make nothing, we made less.
- Lock you in. It's a one-page agreement and either side can pull the issue down.
How a session actually runs
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 2:30 | We load in. Two lavs, one camera on a tripod, one handheld. Your bar, your music off. |
| 2:45 | The interview: your three dishes, the stories, and whatever you want on the record. ~45 min, conversational, you can strike anything after. |
| 3:30 | Kitchen time: we shoot the three dishes being made during your normal prep. We don't stage, we don't direct your cooks, we don't touch anything. |
| 5:15 | Beauty shots of the three plates, ten minutes, done. You're back to service; we're gone before family meal. |
Then: we write the issue and convert the recipes, our test kitchen cooks them until they work, you get one approval pass, and it publishes Thursday. Your check comes monthly with the math shown.
Interested, or at least curious?
Let's talk about your three.
One email. Tell us your restaurant and the dish people sleep on — we'll bring the demo issue and buy the coffee.
[email protected]Chicago first