Two Chefs Use AI to Run Solo Cooking Businesses

Business Insider reports that chefs Meenu Bhasin and Melanie Underwood operate solo cooking companies and are using generative AI for operational tasks. Business Insider describes a recent incident in which Bhasin, alerted to a severe egg allergy in a child attending a private class, opened ChatGPT and asked it to come up with two egg-free recipes from the ingredients she had on hand; Bhasin told Business Insider, "It delivered." Business Insider says both chefs deploy AI for ingredient research, menu adjustments, event planning, and social strategy, and that they told Business Insider AI does not replace hands-on teaching and tasting.

Small, solo-run service businesses commonly adopt consumer-facing generative models for ad hoc problem solving, real-time substitution, and content generation. Industry-pattern observations note that tools like ChatGPT are attractive because they require minimal integration and provide fast, conversational outputs useful for menu variants, client messaging drafts, and checklists.

Observers following small-business adoption of AI point out trade-offs between convenience and risks such as model hallucinations, inconsistent outputs, and potential privacy exposure when entering client dietary details into third-party services. Companies undertaking comparable transitions often prioritize workflow automation first, then tackle data handling and verification as usage scales.

Indicators to follow include whether solo operators begin integrating AI with booking and payment platforms, how they manage client data shared with third-party models, and whether domain-specific culinary tools emerge that reduce hallucination risk while preserving the chefs' hands-on expertise.