A chef with Idachu cooks meals at a customer's house.

An Idachu user who asked to be identified only as Qi, says she has booked Chinese New Year's Eve dinner through the app because she wants her mother to enjoy the time together with the family.

Qi says she and her husband are extremely busy with work, and her parents live with them looking after their 5-year-old son. They also pay for a part-time ayi, or housekeeper and sometimes book chefs through online apps to cook for the family.

During the Spring Festival, Qi's mother, who is nearly 60, used to toil in the kitchen to prepare the Chinese New Year's Eve meal, while the rest of the family watched television or chatted, Qi says.

Qi says she was unable to help her mother and always felt guilty, so on Chinese New Year's Eve last year she reserved a table in a restaurant, hoping that would make her mother happy.

However, the restaurant was noisy, the service was bad, and her mother felt uneasy when she knew how much they paid, she says.

When she found out about the app's private catering service for the Spring Festival she did not hesitate to book the set menu that costs 3,999 yuan.

"The dishes look delicious on the app, and they are not that expensive compared with Chinese New Year's Eve dinners in restaurants. The best thing of all is that my mother does not have to cook."

Opting out

However, some apps that provided a similar service last year, such as Shanghai-based Haochushi, or "good chef", is not providing the service this year.

Wu Fan, a spokesperson for Haochushi, says there was a good reception last year for Spring Festival catering. The catch is that, just like most people, chefs want to be with their families during the festival, so the company discontinued the service.

What needs to be remembered is that catering for Spring Festival accounts for a fraction of the company's revenue, Wu says, and thousands of orders are received daily during weekends and other holidays during the rest of the year.