Guides
Signature dinners: food in the band. Stay Chef: groceries at cost.
Format decides the billing. Signature dinners include food inside the published per-guest band. Multi-day Stay Chef bills groceries at cost with receipts — on an island where food runs 31–53% above mainland prices, that split deserves a page.
The mechanics
Your chef shops for your week — the Saturday Hanalei market, the island’s grocers, the fish that came in — and the receipts come back with the invoice. You pay exactly what the food cost. The service lines (day rate, staffing) are separate and fixed in the written quote.
Contrast with the “grocery allowance” model: an estimated food budget, padded against island prices, kept whether spent or not. At-cost with receipts is the honest version.
The island price reality
Hawaiʻi groceries run 31–53% above the mainland depending on category — milk and eggs at the high end, local produce and fish at the kind end. The receipts show the real numbers; the menu plan is built to shop smart: market greens, island beef, day-boat fish, and mainland luxuries only where they earn it.
Why dinners work differently
Single dinners include groceries inside the per-guest band — one evening’s shopping is predictable. Weeks aren’t: your table’s appetite for ahi is yours, and at-cost is how you pay for the fish you actually ate rather than an average you didn’t.
Questions, answered
Always — the receipts envelope (or its photo) is part of every at-cost booking. Auditing the week’s food spend line by line is your right, not an imposition.
Honest range: it depends on the table. Island-smart menus lean on local produce and fish; tables that want imported luxuries see them on the receipts. The menu call sets expectations before the shopping starts.
Never. At cost means at cost — receipts attached, no handling margin on food. The service lines are where the service is priced.
Keep reading
- guide Chef at the house, or the dining room?
- guide Private or personal? The honest split.
- guide The Facebook chef vs. the written quote.
- guide The marketplace vs. the written quote.
- guide The planning library.
- guide From inquiry to first course.
- guide How to hire well on an island.
- guide What a kitchen needs.
Get a written quote
Kauaʻi runs inquiry-first: you tell us the table, we send a written quote — and that quote is the confirmed total. We never hold a date we can’t crew.