How to start a supper club people pay to attend

Supper clubs can be as informal as friends taking turns hosting dinner for free, or as ambitious as a ticketed evening built around an unusual menu, venue or a highly bespoke shared experience. This guide focuses on the paid format: supper clubs where hosts sell a limited number of seats and create an evening that guests simply wouldn't get in a restaurant.

This guide draws on what hosts have written and said about running their own supper clubs, from London living rooms to New York pop-ups. It covers ideas and themes, building a menu around a small kitchen, pricing, the rules to check, and how to successfully sell seats to your event.

Quick answer: To start a supper club, decide on the idea behind the evening, such as a cuisine, a book, a venue or a way of bringing strangers together, and a size (8 to 12 seats is common at home). Check your local food, allergen and alcohol rules, and price seats so ingredients come to roughly a quarter to a third of the ticket. Plan a set menu you can mostly cook ahead, and take payment when guests book. Checkout Page lets you sell seats from your own event page, with a seat limit, dietary questions and check-in on the night.

What is a supper club?

A supper club is a ticketed dinner, usually in someone's home or a pop-up space, where guests book a seat in advance and everyone eats the same set menu at the same time. Supper club guests are often strangers to each other, and many come on their own.

Chloe Walsh, a British chef who hosts in Los Angeles, told Roadbook that "around a third of guests are solo diners."

What sets a supper club apart from a restaurant is the shared table and the host. The cook usually comes out to explain each course, and the evening has its own small rituals.

At That Dinner Thing, a supper club in Brooklyn, each evening has a one-word theme for the toasts, and as one guest described, people leave an anonymous secret on their seat for whoever sits there at the next sitting.

In Stockholm, one host put a sparkler at every place, and a guest would light it when they wanted to speak to the whole table.

A little bit of history…

The term supper club has long been associated with American dining and entertainment venues, which became popular in the 1930s and 1940s. Today's home supper clubs have a different history. London's underground restaurant scene took off around 2009, with pioneers such as Ms Marmite Lover drawing inspiration from Cuba's paladares, which are small, often family-run restaurants operating from private homes. The Guardian reported on London's emerging scene in 2009.

Supper club ideas and themes

Most supper clubs start from one idea the host is passionate about and wants to share: a cuisine, a book, a place, or a particular way of bringing people together. The idea informs what you cook, where you host and who your guests are likely to be. The ideas below all come from real clubs, run by chefs, home cooks and people whose main interest is the gathering itself.

Food from your family or heritage

Cooking the food you grew up with is one of the most common starting points. Rangoon Sisters have run Burmese supper clubs in London since 2013, and they treat each guest "like a member of our extended family." Asma Khan started with dinners for about a dozen guests in her London home in 2012 and later opened the restaurant Darjeeling Express. A menu like this gives the host something incredibly rich and personal to say about every dish: where it comes from, who cooked it first and how it's usually eaten.

A book or film night

The Novel Diner in London cooked dishes from novels: boeuf en daube for To the Lighthouse and madeleines for Proust. A book gives a table of strangers something they already have in common. Guests arrive knowing the story, each course connects to a scene they remember, and that gives people an easy way to start talking to someone they've just met.

A secret location

Gingerline in London has texted guests on the night with the name of a station, then guided them to a venue they hadn't seen before. Photos that give the venue away are "politely banned," according to Time Out. Not knowing where you're going makes the journey itself an integral part of the evening, and guests arrive already bubbling with conversation about their experience getting there. A simpler format is to send the address a day or two before, which also keeps a home address off a public event page and introduces an element of surprise.

One question for the table

Some hosts build the evening around conversation. Second Helping in Chicago gives each table a question, such as "What was your favorite cartoon growing up?", and a guest book to sign at the end, as a Time Out Chicago writer found when she went on her own. Because everyone answers the same question, strangers learn something real about each other early on, and nobody is left out of the conversation.

A collaboration with a local producer

Working with a local producer lets you build a whole evening around their work. Think: a menu shaped by one farm's harvest, a beer chosen for each course, or a dinner held where the wine or bread is made. Manchester Union Brewery and the bakery Bread Flower ran a supper club with a beer matched to each course. Guests get to enjoy meeting the people behind the food, and the producer often brings some of their own regulars to the table.

An unusual venue

Supperclub.tube serves six courses in a retired Tube carriage in Walthamstow, and other hosts have used a 1926 sailing barge, a bookshop basement and cafes after closing time. A space with its own character tells guests what kind of evening to expect before they sit down, and it can suggest the menu too. On the practical side, ask owners about an after-hours rate, or whether they'd lend the space in return for the people it brings through their door.

Pay-what-you-can nights

Heirloom in Brooklyn uses a sliding scale that starts at $65 for four courses. "We think $65 is a good deal for a full-service four-course dinner but realize that's still a lot for many people," the hosts told Brooklyn Magazine. Pay what you want pricing lets guests choose their own price above a minimum you set.

How to plan a supper club menu

A supper club menu is usually a set menu of four to seven courses, served to the whole table at once. Guests don't order, which is what makes cooking for 12 or 20 people in a home kitchen possible. It also lets you plan the evening as a whole: how the courses build, where a surprise goes, and which dish shows the idea behind the night most clearly.

Cost the menu before you set a price. The Edible Flower, a supper club that started in London, aims for ingredients to be 25 to 30% of the ticket price. London host Wendy Yun, in her guide to setting one up, allows "around one third for food costs." Venue rental, help and drinks come on top.

Plan for the kitchen you have. Kippy Snacks, a host who has run supper clubs at home for seven years and writes about it on Substack, works from a three-day prep sheet and makes curry bases early because they taste better after resting. He also notes that stir-frying and deep-frying don't scale to 20 people. James Ramsden of The Secret Larder has suggested roasted almonds or ceviche to start, a slow roast for the main and a cold dessert such as lemon posset, because a meal "doesn't require three hot courses." Family-style platters save plating 20 identical dishes.

Cook the whole menu once at full size. The Sewing Tin in New York runs a full trial one to two weeks before each dinner. Wendy Yun found that a cake that works in a small batch can come out dry when the recipe is scaled up.

Decide your dietary policy before anyone books. Hosts handle this very differently. Some accommodate everything. Supperclub.tube in London offers vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options on request but lists the allergies it can't cater for, and Kippy Snacks caters for no allergens at all and says so on the booking page. Whatever you choose, ask about dietary needs when people book rather than on the night. Our guide to event registration questions covers how to word them.

Choose how drinks work. Many home supper clubs are bring your own bottle, partly because including alcohol in the ticket price usually needs a license (see the rules below). A paid wine pairing is the other option, and offering dinner and dinner with pairing as separate ticket types keeps the choice simple at booking.

How to start a supper club, step by step

1. Decide on your format and size

Most home supper clubs seat 8 to 12 people, which is about what one table and one oven can manage. Hired spaces tend to seat 18 to 30. If you want more guests, two sittings help. That Dinner Thing runs two sittings of about 20 on the same night, and Lucky Dinner Club in New York prefers a room that's "juuuust too small for everyone" so a large group still feels close. Decide, too, whether everyone sits at one long table, which suits guests who come alone, or at smaller tables, which suit couples and groups of friends.

For your first dinner, keep it small enough to learn from:

• Invite 8 guests rather than trying to fill 20 seats.
• Choose three or four courses you can mostly prepare ahead.
• Use one table and the plates, glasses and chairs you already have or can borrow.
• Cook a practice dinner at full size for friends who'll give you honest feedback.
• Ask them about portions, pacing, price and how the evening felt.

2. Check the rules where you live

The rules depend on where you live and how often you host, so check them with your local authority before you sell a ticket. They fall into five separate areas.

• Registering as a food business: in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, food provided from home "on a regular and organised basis" may count as a food business. You register with your council at least 28 days before you start, and registration is free, according to the Food Standards Agency's guidance. In the US, cottage food laws generally cover packaged, low-risk foods rather than meals served to guests, so ask your county health department. California allows home kitchen operations with dining on site, but only in counties that have opted in.
• Permissions: ask your landlord or mortgage lender, and your home insurer, before you invite paying guests.
• Food hygiene: in the UK, a hygiene certificate isn't compulsory, but you must be able to show you've been trained and have written food safety procedures.
• Allergens: in the UK, you must give allergen information for every dish that contains any of the 14 main allergens, as set out in the Food Standards Agency's allergen guidance.
• Alcohol: in the UK, selling alcohol needs a license, or a Temporary Event Notice for a one-off event in England and Wales, and some councils say drinks included in a ticket price count as a sale. In the US, selling alcohol also needs a license, and whether guests can bring their own bottle varies by state and sometimes by town, so ask locally.

Liability insurance is also worth asking an insurer about, and many venues will want to see it.

3. Set your ticket price

Prices vary a lot by city, venue and what's included. The table compares hosts by format so you can find the ones closest to your plans.

Prices as reported between 2023 and 2025 by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Brooklyn Magazine, Extra Credit and The Irish Times. Check each host's current listing for today's price.

Wendy Yun charged only the cost of ingredients at her first dinner and raised the price as she grew more confident. Hosts are open about the pay. The Edible Flower warns that your hourly rate may be "well below the minimum wage for your first few events," and Kippy Snacks spends two full 12-hour prep days plus a shopping day on one dinner. Count your own time before deciding the price is high enough.

What a dinner can leave you with. Here's an illustrative example for 12 guests at $65 a head. The figures are examples rather than averages, so swap in your own.

If shopping, prep, cooking, hosting and clearing up take you 24 hours, that's about $13 an hour before tax. Each extra guest adds $65 in ticket money but only about $20 in ingredients and card fees, so the last few seats make the biggest difference to what you keep. It also works the other way: if a guest doesn't turn up after you've shopped, you lose their ticket but still pay for their food.

4. Sort out the venue, equipment and help

You may initially be able to borrow most of what you need. Couch Cafe started with folding chairs and a borrowed couch, and plates and glasses for a full table can come from flea markets and secondhand shops. The first jobs hosts tend to hand over are dishwashing and front of house. Couch Cafe's ticket pays about three friends from the restaurant trade, including one who runs front of house and makes the cocktails.

5. Run the night

Send the address, timings and house rules a day or two before. Kitchen Theory in London tells guests in its booking terms that "late arrivals may miss courses," which sets expectations up front saves an awkward conversation at 8pm. On the night, a welcome drink and a seating plan that intentionally mixes strangers can help people settle. Much of the atmosphere comes from small decisions like these: who sits next to whom, when the host comes out to introduce a course, and whether the menu is announced or kept as a surprise.

It’s important to remember that there will be things that don’t go to plan. Guests are usually forgiving about that fact. The power went out at Heirloom's first dinner, and the apparently guests barely noticed.

How to sell supper club tickets

The question new hosts ask most on Reddit's r/supperclub forum is whether anyone will turn up at all. Many clubs fill their first table through friends of friends and a mailing list, then grow by word of mouth. A clear idea makes that easier: a Burmese supper club or a dinner in a Tube carriage is something people describe to their friends, where "a dinner at my place" isn't. The Edible Flower has never paid for advertising, and keeps posts about ticket sales to about one in ten of its social posts.

Take payment when guests book. A no-show at a supper club means food you've already bought and cooked. Wendy Yun added cancellation rules after "the odd person didn't show up," and almost every host we found now takes payment in advance. Many let a guest pass their seat to a friend instead of refunding. Kippy Snacks refunds a cancelled seat only if he resells it.

Decide how seats are released. The way you release seats becomes part of the club. Kippy Snacks gives his mailing list 24 hours' notice before tickets go on sale to everyone, and The Sewing Tin's tickets usually sell out within about 15 minutes of going on sale.

Some hosts use a lottery instead of first come, first served. That Dinner Thing modeled its lottery "after sneaker drops," and taking payment up front pays for its test dinners.

Keep the next table filling. Start collecting email addresses before you announce your first date, and tell guests about the next one while the current dinner is still fresh. Add an opt-in checkbox to your booking form, because, as Kippy Snacks points out, booking a dinner isn't the same as agreeing to marketing emails. A producer or wine shop you work with can also share the date with people who already like what they do.

There are more ideas for filling seats in our guide to selling more event tickets.

Choose where to sell. Some hosts take bookings by direct message and payment by Venmo or PayPal. That works for a small dinner among friends of friends, but you have to keep track yourself of who has paid, who has booked and who can't eat what.

Marketplaces can bring you diners who have never heard of you, which helps when you're starting out, and that discovery has a cost. Eatwith adds 30% to your price, which the guest pays, according to its help center. Airbnb says it generally takes a 20% service fee from the host's payout for experiences. Kippy Snacks started on Eatwith and later moved to his own ticketing because of the fee. If you're comparing general ticketing sites as well, Eventbrite's fees work differently again.

Once you have your own following, through a mailing list, social media or a producer you work with, selling from your own page keeps the guest list and the money with you. For a supper club, the booking page is part of your planning too. It tells you how many people are coming and what they can and can't eat, and it means they've paid before you buy a single ingredient. With Checkout Page, you create an event page and share the link or add it to your own site, and payments go into your own Stripe account. Our guide to selling tickets on your website covers the setup. For a supper club, you can:

• Limit the seats: set a limit of 12, for example, and sales stop when every seat is taken.
• Offer different tickets: sell "Dinner" and "Dinner with wine pairing" at different prices.
• Give regulars early access: share a hidden ticket link with your mailing list before general sales open.
• Collect dietary needs: ask about dietary needs and allergies on the booking form, so you can plan the menu before you shop.
• Check guests in: scan tickets or check guests off from your phone on the night.

Checkout Page has a free plan for sales up to $3,000 a month and doesn't add its own fee to each ticket, although Stripe's card fees still apply. Our guide to selling event tickets without fees explains how that works. It won't run a waitlist or assign seats, so you'll still handle those yourself.

How to start a supper club FAQ

How much should a supper club cost?

Recent examples range from about $65 a head for a dinner in someone's home to $195 for a six-course dinner in a hired New York space. Work from your costs, with ingredients at roughly a quarter to a third of the ticket price, then add venue rental, help and drinks. Compare clubs near you that serve a similar number of courses.

What are the rules of a supper club?

The host sets the rules and usually shares them when guests book. Common ones are paying in advance, a cancellation or transfer deadline of 48 to 72 hours, telling the host about allergies when booking, arriving on time, and sitting with strangers. Bring-your-own-bottle clubs often ask guests to share and to bring their own opener.

What makes a supper club different from a restaurant?

A supper club serves one set menu at a set time to guests who booked in advance, usually at a shared table. It's often in the host's home or a borrowed space, and it may only run once a month. The host tends to introduce each course, and many guests come alone to meet new people.

Do you need a license to run a supper club?

Usually, if you host paying guests regularly. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, you register with your council as a food business at least 28 days before you start, which is free. In the US, rules vary by state and county, so ask your local health department. Selling alcohol needs its own license in both countries.

How do you stop guests canceling at the last minute?

Take payment when guests book, and set your cancellation policy before tickets go on sale. Many hosts allow cancellations up to 48 or 72 hours before, and some accept none in the last 28 days. Letting guests pass their seat to a friend, or refunding only if you resell it, keeps the table full without leaving you out of pocket.