Allergies and Dietary Requirements on a Yacht Charter: How Your Chef Actually Handles Them

Three different dietary requirements in one charter group is the new normal. A typical week has one gluten intolerant guest, one vegetarian or vegan, and one doing keto, and nobody thinks twice. A crewed yacht is quietly the best place this can happen: one chef cooks for your group all week, works from a written file on every guest, and there is no restaurant telephone game between you and the kitchen.

The catch is that not every galley is equal, and finding the chefs who are genuinely good at this is exactly why we keep notes on them. Here is how the system works, in the order it happens.

It Starts With the Preference Sheet, 6 Weeks Out

Before your charter, you fill in a preference sheet: how you like to eat, what you love, what you cannot touch. Allergies and intolerances go in first, and the crew genuinely plan around them.

The one way to break the system is to mention your gluten intolerance 2 days before boarding, after the provisioning is done. Our guide to filling out the preference sheet properly shows what good answers look like.

Then Your Chef Calls You Before Going Shopping

A few weeks before the charter, most chefs contact you directly: how adventurous you are, whether anyone is vegan or gluten-free, what a perfect dinner looks like. Then they build the menu around it and shop for exactly that. Your allergy is not a substitution made at the table; it is baked into the menu before the first ingredient is bought.

A capable chef runs the menus in parallel: the vegan eats a complete meal built for them, and the other 7 still get their lamb. If everyone at the table is quietly eating half vegan because of one preference sheet, that is a galley we would not have matched you with.

Greece Makes It Easier Than Most Places

Greek cuisine is naturally kind to restricted diets: legumes everywhere, vegetables treated as dishes rather than sides, grilled fish and meat kept simple. Vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-aware guests eat well here without the chef fighting the local shops for special products.

The Part Nobody Tells You: Your Broker Keeps Notes on Galleys

Not every galley is equal, and this is where booking through us changes the outcome. We keep notes on which chefs handle restricted diets brilliantly and which honestly decline, and when a requirement is serious, we ask the boats directly before proposing them. A no from a chef at that stage is a gift: it means the yes you get is real.

Some chefs genuinely enjoy the challenge. Some build their everyday cooking around it, and some are specifically trained for it. We visit the yachts, meet the chefs, and try the food at the shows; our Top 5 motor yachts for serious foodies came out of exactly that work.

Severe Allergies and Special Cases, Honestly

For a medical-grade allergy, we put it in writing everywhere it matters: the preference sheet, the broker’s briefing to the captain, and the conversation we have with the chef before you commit to the boat. In those cases the yacht is chosen partly for its galley, not just its cabins.

Some requirements have their own tradition: kosher groups, for example, usually bring their own chef aboard, and the crew work around them.

Tell Us at Inquiry, Not at the Dock

The earlier the diet enters the conversation, the better every step works: yacht selection, crew briefing, menu, shopping. Tell us who is coming and how they eat, and we will point you at the galleys we would trust with it.

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