Tide & Tribe is a private chef service for yachts and villas in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. We cook ashore in St. Vincent and we come to you every day of your trip, often twice — dinner in the evening, then breakfast, lunch and any extras in the morning. You don't shop, you don't cook, and you don't sail around with a week of food on board.
Most food you can buy for a charter down here arrives once. A list, a supermarket, a taxi, a fridge packed to the roof on the first morning, and then a week of somebody in your party doing the cooking. We are the other thing. Meals are cooked ashore in St. Vincent by the founder and her kitchen and brought out to you day by day, so the food on your table on Friday was cooked for Friday.
Dinner arrives in the evening, ready to serve. Nobody spends the last good hour of a sailing day making it, and nobody spends the hour after it at a sink.
We come back in the morning with breakfast, lunch and whatever else the day needs. It is fresh because we come back, not because it had to last the week.
Menus are built around your party before you sail, not chosen from a pack. We contact each of your guests ourselves for allergies, dislikes, appetite, and the one thing each of them is actually glad to see on a plate, so whoever organised this trip chases nobody. We cook vegan food in its own pots, with its own utensils, and halal means halal cuts, no pork, no alcohol, as standard. Coeliac and severe allergies we plan with you before you book, one boat at a time. Each menu journey is a full fourteen-day rotation, so no plate repeats, and a longer trip gets a second one built.
Four to eight guests is our sweet spot and fourteen is our ceiling — a number we will say out loud, because a kitchen that claims no limit has not thought about yours.
Plenty of charters want both, and there is nothing wrong with buying both. A grocery order fills the fridge for the odd hours: the beers, the cereal, the fruit somebody grazes at eleven at night. It arrives once, at the start, and from then on the cooking belongs to whichever member of your party is willing. That is the errand we take off you, and here is exactly where the two part company.
A grocery order is one delivery at the start of the week. We are there every day of the trip, often twice a day, so nothing has to survive until Friday in order to be eaten on Friday.
Groceries are the makings of a dinner somebody still has to cook, plate and clean up after. We hand over the dinner.
A grocery order is only ever as good as the list somebody typed the night before the flight. We build a menu around your party, guest by guest, before you sail — and we do the asking, not you.
We contact each of your guests ourselves — the vegan, the halal guest, the one who eats nothing on the standard list — and the menu is built from what comes back. Coeliac and severe allergies we plan with you before you book, one boat at a time. Nobody at your table gets handed the sad plate.
The comparison that actually fits is a private chef, not a grocery order. The difference is that ours cooks ashore in a full kitchen, and does not take a cabin, a share of the water, or a seat at your table.
Weather sometimes wins down here. When it does there are two separate calls. The first is at the kitchen, before a box is loaded: does the forecast support sending food out on a run we cannot recall? The second is at your end on the day, before anybody sets out to you: is this water safe to come alongside and pass boxes over a rail? Whoever is driving makes that second call, and nobody overrules it, not the office and not the customer. Both are made before the run, never at your rail, because once you are alongside in bad water the mistake is already made. If a run is called off you are not charged for it, and you hear from us straight away with where your food is and what happens next.
No, and that is the assumption we exist to break. Bareboat means you sail the boat yourself. It does not mean somebody in your party spends the holiday in the galley. We cook ashore and bring dinner out to you in the evening, then come back in the morning with breakfast and lunch. The boat is bareboat. The food isn't.
Every day of your trip, and often twice a day. An evening run brings dinner. A morning run brings breakfast, lunch and any extras. That rhythm is the service: you are not buying one delivery, you are buying every meal for as long as the trip runs.
A grocery order is one delivery of ingredients at the start of the week, and the cooking is still yours. We are a daily service delivering finished meals: dinner in the evening, breakfast and lunch in the morning, every day you are out. Plenty of charters take both — a stocked fridge for the odd hours, and dinner that somebody else already cooked.
You can hire a crewed yacht with a chef aboard, which costs considerably more than a bareboat and changes the whole character of the trip. What we do sits in between: the cooking is done by a chef, ashore, and brought to you every day. You get the food without adding a person to the boat, a cabin, or the bill.
You do, with us, before you sail. We contact each of your guests ourselves for allergies, dislikes, appetite and the one dish they would be glad to see, so whoever organised this trip is not chasing anybody for answers. Each menu journey runs a full fourteen days, so no plate repeats, and a longer trip gets a second rotation built.
Yes, and here is exactly why it works. Vegan and vegetarian food is cooked in pots and with utensils kept for that food only — never in the pan that just held meat. Halal cuts, no pork, no alcohol, as standard. That control stops a spoonful of the wrong thing crossing over, which is how a vegan or halal plate actually gets spoiled — so the guest with the restriction eats the same standard of food as everyone else at the table, at the same time, off the same plan.
It is not a gluten or allergen control; those are a different problem. We handle wheat flour in this kitchen, so coeliac and severe allergies we plan with you before you book, one boat at a time.
Here is the honest answer, because a webpage is the wrong place to promise anybody's health. We cook dishes made without gluten-containing ingredients, oil is never shared between dishes, and flour is worked on its own table. We also handle wheat flour in this kitchen, and we will always tell you that. So coeliac and severe allergies we plan with you before you book, one boat at a time. You will speak to the person who cooks, and she will tell you plainly what she can and cannot do for your trip.
Four to eight is our sweet spot and fourteen is our stated ceiling — a number we will say out loud, because a kitchen that claims no limit has not thought about yours. Beyond fourteen we would be promising something we have not built, and we would rather have that conversation now than on the day.
Yes. Same kitchen, same menus, same standard, same daily rhythm, delivered to the villa instead of the boat.
Two calls, and both are made before the run. First at the kitchen, before a box is loaded: does the forecast support sending food out on a run we cannot recall? Second at your end on the day, before anybody sets out to you: is this water safe to come alongside and pass boxes over a rail? Whoever is driving makes that second call and nobody overrules it, not the office and not the customer. Never at your rail, because by then the mistake is already made. You are not charged for a run we could not make, and you hear from us straight away with where your food is and what happens next.
Any week of the year. There are no blackout dates. Give us your dates on a twenty-minute call and you get a yes or a no, never a maybe.
For a standard charter the food starts from $33,000 ECD ($12,177 USD), inclusive of VAT (value added tax), quoted to your party and your route within a day. It covers every meal, every day, for the length of the trip, built to your menu rather than to a package.
Mauricia Fessal's kitchen in St. Vincent. Her kitchen, her ingredients, her standard, and she is in the room while the work is done. Tide & Tribe is the yacht and villa arm of Tribe Holdings, a Vincentian food company that has been feeding a subscription clientele here since well before it ever went near a boat.
Twenty minutes, your route and your party, and a quote back within a day. Any week of the year, no blackout dates. Or build the outline yourself first and we will work from that.
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