how can we help?

Chef Happens is an AI kitchen companion that turns your ingredients, cravings and dinner-panic into recipes you can actually make. Type ingredients or a dish name, snap a photo of your fridge, or free-text Ask Pepper — she drafts a recipe on the spot. You can also plan the week, track your pantry with expiry dates, save favourites, and follow step-by-step cooking with timers and voice.

The first launch wave covers Australia, New Zealand and India. Regional cues (units, seasonal produce, festival calendars, brand names, currency) are tuned for those three markets. The app is geo-locked at launch — post-launch expansion will be data-driven.

iPhone (iOS 15.1+), iPad (iPadOS 15.1+), and Android phones and tablets (Android 7.0+) at launch. A full web version is coming soon after the mobile release. You can register on the site today to save your spot — everything will sync across devices once mobile goes live.

Yes — a five-slide onboarding introduces the core moves (pantry-based cooking, mood-based ideas, rescue mode, weekly meal planning, and meeting Pepper + Fizz) right after registration. You can skip it any time and revisit from the menu.

Pepper is your conversational cooking partner — she generates recipes, plans meals, adapts to your pantry, and coaches you through dinner. Fizz is your responsible drinks companion — she suggests cocktails, mocktails, coffee, tea and smoothies that fit the meal. Both are AI helpers, not medical or nutrition professionals.

Pepper takes your ingredients (or a dish name), your dietary preferences and allergens, and your region and drafts a recipe from scratch — nothing pulled from a static database. Every generation runs through your filters, so a vegetarian, gluten-free, low-FODMAP recipe stays vegetarian, gluten-free and low-FODMAP.

Yes. Add ingredients to your Pantry (typed or via a photo scan), then on the Cook tab tap the Pantry row to pick which items to include. Pepper builds the recipe around exactly what you've selected — flag "leftover-aware" and she'll prioritise anything close to expiring.

Yes. On any generated recipe, use "Adjust" to swap ingredients or change the serving size — or drop into Mom, Lazy or Show-off rewrite modes. Pepper regenerates the full recipe around your change.

Yes. Open any recipe and tap "Cook" to enter Cooking Mode — step-by-step instructions, built-in timers per step, and text-to-speech read-along so you can keep your hands in the dough.

Yes. Paste a link from a recipe site, YouTube, Instagram Reels or TikTok — Pepper reads the source and structures it into a clean, cookable recipe. Handwritten notes and screenshots work too (Handwritten Scan). Monthly limits vary by tier.

You can edit any step or ingredient inline. If import fails outright, email support@chefhappens.app with the source and we'll improve the parser — imports are one of the most-iterated parts of the app.

Rescue Mode helps when a dish goes sideways mid-cook (too salty, too runny, burnt) — tell Pepper what happened and she'll suggest a fix. What the Fork is the anti-decision-fatigue button: it hands you a mystery recipe based on your mood in Safe, Lazy, or (Head Chef only) Unhinged mode. Both live on paid tiers.

Your Pantry is organised by grocery aisle — Produce, Meat & Seafood, Dairy & Eggs, and so on — and each aisle collapses on its own. Add items by typing (they auto-sort into the right aisle), by tapping "Add" at the bottom of any aisle, or by pointing the camera at your fridge. Tap "Move" on any item to send it to a different aisle and your choice sticks. A "Use these soon" card surfaces anything close to expiring, and items you mark running low flow into a one-tap shopping cart. Your customisable Staples and this week's grocery-list check-offs are folded in automatically.

Yes. Pick your week-start day and household size, then choose how to build it. Autopilot (AI Magic): tap "Plan with Pepper" and tell her about your week — gym days, kids home, in-laws visiting — for a tailored 7-day plan, or use quick "Autopilot this week" for an instant one. DIY: build each breakfast / lunch / dinner slot yourself. Either way you get a full week you can edit slot-by-slot. Meal-plan generation is a Sous Chef or higher feature.

Yes. The household stepper on the Meal Plan tab (1–8+ people) drives both recipe portions and grocery-list quantities. Each week captures the household size at creation, so changing the default later doesn't retroactively resize past weeks.

Every generated week has its own grocery list — tap the cart icon on the week card. Items are grouped by aisle, and anything already in your Pantry is skipped so you don't buy it twice. Check things off as you buy them and they're added to your Pantry automatically, sorted into the right aisle.

Yes. Open a week, tap any breakfast / lunch / dinner slot, and ask Pepper for a swap. Weekly swap counts scale with tier — 10/week on Sous Chef, 30/week on Head Chef.

The heart on any recipe drops it into your Saved tab ("Your Hall of Yum"). It's split into three tabs — Favourites, Imports, and My Own — with a search box across all of them, a list/grid toggle, and quick shortcuts to your cooking History and Collections. Saved recipes are user-scoped, so you need to be signed in to use this tab.

Custom folders for grouping saved recipes (e.g. "Weeknight wins", "Sunday roasts", "Kids' favourites"). Open the Saved tab → Collections, or use the three-dot menu on any saved recipe to add it to one.

Yes. The Saved tab has a History shortcut that lists everything you've generated or opened. Sous Chef gets a generous history window; Head Chef gets complete history.

A weekly curated feed with a hero carousel, editor's picks, world-cuisine masonry, a Sweet Escape dessert spread, Sip Happens cocktail stories (age-gated), a daily Comfort spotlight, and quick-win rails under 25 minutes. A fresh batch lands every Sunday. Recipes you've already saved fade out of Explore so it stays discovery-first.

Yes. Tap the share icon on any recipe, meal plan, or grocery / shopping list to open your phone's share sheet and send it via Messages, WhatsApp, email and so on. Recipes give you two options — the full recipe (title, ingredients and every step) or just the missing ingredients as a quick shopping list. Everything is shared as clean, readable text, so anyone can open it with no account required.

No. Pepper and Fizz are cooking assistants, not doctors, dietitians, sommeliers or bartenders. Always consult a qualified professional for medical or dietary advice. See our disclaimer page for the full safety notices.

Open the filters gear (top-right on the Cook and Meal Plan tabs) → Preferences. Set allergens (peanuts, shellfish, gluten, dairy, egg, soy, sesame, tree nuts…), dislikes, diet (vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher, keto, pescatarian, gluten-free…) and Health & Allergens filters (diabetes-friendly, low-FODMAP, higher-protein, and more). Pepper honours these on every generation and meal plan.

No — they're informed estimates. Cook times depend on your specific stove, oven and altitude; nutrition depends on brand-level ingredient values Pepper doesn't have. Treat both as directional guidance, not lab results.

Email support@chefhappens.app with subject "Allergen concern" and paste the recipe title or share link. This queue is prioritised above everything else — we aim to remove or correct within 4 hours.

No. Alcoholic pairings are only shown to users who are of legal drinking age in their region (based on date of birth on file). Under-age users, guests without a DOB, and anyone who's opted out see the alcohol-free side of Fizz — non-alcoholic pairings, coffee, tea, smoothies. The Sip Happens cocktail carousel in Explore is hidden for minors too.

Tap Get Started, enter your email and a password — or sign in with Google. There's a five-slide onboarding after signup so you know where each core feature lives.

Go to /forgot-password (or tap "Forgot password?" on the login screen), enter your email, and we'll send a one-time code. Codes expire after 15 minutes.

Chef Happens is single-device by design at launch — logging in on a new device signs out the previous one. Your data (saved recipes, meal plans, pantry, history, subscription) follows the account and restores instantly on whichever device you're logged in on.

Every new account gets a 30-day free trial with all features unlocked — no credit card required to start. You'll see a countdown pill in the app and a reminder five days before it ends. After 30 days the account drops to Sauce Chef (free forever) unless you've picked a paid tier.

Sauce Chef (free forever): 6 recipe generations/day, 6 pantry scans/day, 3 Ask Pepper/day, 20 named-dish generations/month, 5 URL imports/month, plus Cooking Mode, Pantry, Fizz and shared recipes. Sous Chef (paid, monthly): unlimited generations & scans, 200 Ask Pepper/day, weekly meal plans (10/week with 10 swaps), Rescue Mode, Confidence Mode, mood-based recipes, Mom/Lazy/Fancy rewrites, What the Fork (Safe, Lazy & Unhinged) and generous imports. Head Chef (paid, monthly): everything in Sous Chef plus unlimited Ask Pepper, unlimited named-dish and imports, up to 40 social-video imports/month, 15 meal plans + 30 swaps/week, unlimited favourites and complete history, and early access to new features. Live pricing in your local currency is shown in-app on the plan screen before you subscribe.

On iOS the App Store bills you. On Android, Google Play bills you. Once web-based Stripe subscriptions launch (post-mobile), payments made on the site will go through Stripe (PCI-DSS Level 1) — Chef Happens never sees or stores card numbers.

In-app: open the ✨ Chef Happens Pro card from the menu and tap Cancel. You keep paid-tier access until the end of the current billing period. App Store / Play Store subscriptions are managed in your device's store settings; we can walk you through it if you email billing@chefhappens.app.

Everything stays. Saved recipes, collections, meal plans, pantry, and cooking history are yours forever regardless of tier — the account simply drops back to Sauce Chef daily limits. No data is deleted when a subscription lapses.

App Store / Play Store subscriptions: refunds are handled by Apple and Google respectively — we can help you file the request but the decision is theirs. Web-based Stripe subscriptions (launching alongside the web app after mobile) will include a 14-day cool-off from first payment. Email billing@chefhappens.app either way and we'll walk you through it.

Open the app → Menu → Legal → Your Data Rights. Tap "Download my data" for a JSON bundle (account, pantry, saved recipes, meal plans, chat history, billing metadata). Tap "Delete Account" — on the free plan this wipes your data immediately; on a paid plan it's scheduled for the end of your current billing period, and you can restore any time before then from the same screen.

A screenshot, the recipe or prompt you were on, your device model and OS version, and roughly when it happened. Email support@chefhappens.app with subject "Technical support" — we reply within 24 business hours.