Cooking and Shopping It Yourself alternative
It's cheaper to cook it yourself. It costs you the evening.
4.9 ★ · 35K+ dinners cooked
Two ways to handle dinner
Cooking every meal yourself is the cheapest way to eat, roughly $4 to $9 a serving in groceries alone. What it costs instead is time. National data puts food prep, shopping, and cleanup at 5 to 9 hours a week for whoever does most of the cooking. A personal chef costs more per plate, about $26, but a vetted chef shops, cooks, and cleans up in your kitchen, so that block of hours goes back to your week. Whether it's worth it depends on which you're shorter on: money or time.
| What we compared | Livin | Cooking and Shopping It Yourself |
|---|---|---|
| Who's cooking | ||
| Model | LivinA vetted chef shops and cooks your chosen meals in your kitchen | Cooking and Shopping It YourselfYou plan, shop, cook, and clean up every meal |
| Who does the cooking | LivinYour chef, shopping through cleanup | Cooking and Shopping It YourselfYou, every night |
| What you eat | ||
| Variety | Livin450+ dishes you choose from | Cooking and Shopping It YourselfWhatever you have energy to plan and cook that week |
| Nutrition data | LivinComputed from USDA data, per dish | Cooking and Shopping It YourselfWhatever you calculate or estimate yourself |
| What it asks of you | ||
| Weekly time cost | LivinYou choose meals in minutes, the chef handles the rest | Cooking and Shopping It YourselfRoughly 5 to 9 hours a week for planning, shopping, cooking, and cleanup |
| Allergies and hard-nos | LivinYour chef cooks around them at the ingredient level | Cooking and Shopping It YourselfYou manage substitutions yourself, every time |
| Coverage | LivinAtlanta and Los Angeles | Cooking and Shopping It YourselfAnywhere you have a kitchen |
| What it costs | ||
| Per plate | LivinAround $26 a plate. | Cooking and Shopping It YourselfGroceries alone run roughly $4 to $9 a serving depending on what you cook, before counting your own time None, you do the shopping yourself |
Cooking and Shopping It Yourself details verified July 2026.
Now, the easiest part of your day: dinner.
Fresh, not frozen.
Your chef shops for fresh ingredients, with your household's preferences and needs as their guide.
Cooked in your kitchen.
No commissary. No ghost kitchen. No meal kit box. Your stove, your standards, your table.
This month, your chef is making
Real dishes from the current menu. Customizable, with USDA-verified nutrition on every plate.
“For the first Sunday in like a year, I don't feel exhausted. I actually went outside and played with my boys. It was awesome! This is truly the best thing I've spent money on in a long time! Best. Service. Ever!”
— Crystal, Executive and Mom of Twins
Be honest with yourself
Stay with Cooking and Shopping It Yourself if
Your grocery bill is the tightest part of your budget, you enjoy cooking, or you have the time most weeks to plan, shop, and cook without it feeling like a second job. Cooking it yourself wins on price every time.
Switch to Livin if
The bottleneck in your week isn't the cost of groceries, it's the hours of planning, shopping, cooking, and cleanup. You want your evenings back, still want to choose exactly what you eat, and you live in Atlanta or Los Angeles.
It gets better every week
A box is the same on week one and week fifty. Livin learns. You give feedback, your profile updates, next week is sharper. Same chef or a new one.
- 01
We learn your household.
Allergies, picky eaters, the way your Tuesdays go. We build your profile before anyone steps in your kitchen.
- 02
We propose your menu
Each week, dinners built for your household. Keep what we send, swap a dish, or send us a request.
- 03
Your chef handles the kitchen
Shopping, cooking, cleanup. Plus heating notes so the rest of the week is easy.
- 04
We keep tuning
You give feedback. We update your profile. Sometimes a new dish. Sometimes a new chef. Either way, next week is sharper.
Who's behind it
“I built Livin so dinner could feel like an actual part of life again, not a thing to survive.”
Erica
Founder of Livin
A chef who learns your household. Not a box from a menu.
Get StartedFrequently asked questions
- It depends on what's actually scarce in your week. If money is the tightest constraint, cooking it yourself is cheaper every time, roughly $4 to $9 a serving in groceries. If the real cost is your time, national data puts food prep, shopping, and cleanup at 5 to 9 hours a week, and a personal chef is built to give that back.
- Groceries alone run about $4 to $9 a serving. Livin runs about $26 a plate. The difference pays for a vetted chef to shop, cook a week of dinners in your kitchen, and clean up, not just the ingredients.
- National time-use data puts food prep, shopping, and cleanup at roughly 5 to 9 hours a week for whoever does most of the cooking in a household, not counting the time spent deciding what to make.
- No. You choose your meals from the full menu, filter by dietary need, and see the macros on every dish before you pick. Your chef cooks the meals you select and works around your allergies and dietary needs.
- No. A meal kit or delivery service still asks you to cook or reheat. Livin's chef shops for and cooks your chosen meals fresh in your kitchen, so dinner is done when they leave.