Personalchef.com

Information Portal for the Personal Chef Industry

Scott Naugler and Joshua Knotts were settling in as first-year owners of a personal chef business even before they graduated from culinary school.

As partners in Davenport, Fla., near Orlando, they could handle cooking dinner for four. But they say their first upscale dinner party, for more than 20 well-traveled international visitors, left them feeling insecure. They were cleaning up back at their place, when a driver delivered a special card. Inside, the guests of that night's event had written to praise their food and urge them to follow their dream. ''We still have that letter tacked on our bulletin board" says Scott.

Feedback and appreciation top the list when personal chefs talk about why they like this career. "In a restaurant, you're cooking everything in volume and you're attempting to please a broad-based palate," says Candy Wallace, founder and director of the American Personal Chef Association, based in San Diego. "As personal chefs, we serve our clients one client at a time, and each entree we prepare is palate-specific.''

Don't confuse private chefs with personal chefs, though. ''Private Chefs are employees and have one proprietary client," says Wallace, ''They usually prepare three meals a day are subject to the client's travel schedule and frequently live in. Personal chefs are owner-operators of their own businesses.''

Wallace estimates there are about 9,000 personal chefs in the United States. She expects to see as many as 20,000 within the next five years, as people start to understand what personal chefs can do for them.

"We are some of the last 'scratch cooks' around, other than some of the white-table-cloth restaurants," she says. Many clients are looking for good food that's well prepared. By using fresh ingredients and preparing them according to clients' preferences, personal chefs fit in perfectly with the lifestyles of the future.

Wallace says typical clients include single professionals, double-income couples, single parents, people on special diets by choice or for medical reasons, seniors living alone and fine-dining clients who don't want a full-time employee.

As a personal chef, you find and choose your clients and generally cook in their kitchens. You might work for them weekly or less frequently. On cooking day, you haul your groceries and cooking equipment to the client's house and prepare several meals in one session. Then you pack up the foods in containers with labels, freeze or refrigerate the food, clean up and leave heating instructions for each meal.

Before each cook day, you and your client determine what dishes you'd like from this session. Then, you gather your recipes, prepare shopping lists and print up package labels and heating instructions.

You're the boss...and the employee.

As a personal chef, you run your own business. You decide how much work you can handle and when you want to work. You won't have a boss. But that means you'll also have to handle the paperwork and deal with complaints.


As the marketer, you have to figure out the best way to attract the potential clients. Many chefs market through networking. In Holderness, N.H., Colleen Lester whips up little magnetic signs bearing her business information, which she tacks onto her car. Parked in the post office parking lot to read her mail, she's a real-life advertisement for her business.

Your salary in this field depends on what level of service you offer and where you do business. Big-city jobs usually pay more than rural locations, while wholesome, everyday meals earn you less than fine-dining meals.

Wallace of the APCA says if you're cooking five meals a day, you should be able to make about $200 a day Jim Davis, who helped pioneer the personal-chef business near D.C. seven years ago, estimates that chefs in a good market, working four days a week, can earn $50,000 or more a year. Using a commercial kitchen can raise that to $100,000 or more.

Chefs say figuring out how to price and what to charge is always a challenge. In fact, there's a whole discussion forum on the Web site of the APCA, where personal chefs can discuss fees, pricing and costs.

Marketing yourself

As a personal chef, you play up your unique talents to tantalize clients in your market. -----Naugler and Knotts developed a "personal-chef services" gift certificate for realtors to present as a move-in gift to owners of new homes.

In San Francisco, Beckette Williams draws upon her background as a registered dietitian to specialize in healthful, contemporary cuisine. She plans menus using guidelines from the American Heart Association and American Dietetic Association, and even offers nutritional analysis of the menus.

Southern California chef Bev Kinnaman sticks to down-home cooking - meat loaf, casseroles, and soups. She has cooked dinner at the mansion for the final 10 or 12 contestants of the FOX TV show "American Idol" for several seasons in a row

Jim and Bryan Davis, a father-and-son team in the D.C. area, do daytime jobs as well as parties on evenings and weekends. They rent a caterer's commercial kitchen for efficiency, but they still personalize their meals.

In Hoffman Estates, a Chicago suburb, Terry Riesterer's clients often have special requirements - diets such as the ZONE, South Beach or Atkins. Gastrointestinal Bypass patients after surgery can only eat four ounces at a time, so she has to make sure those four ounces are packed with nutrition. When she works for athletes, from Chicago Cubs players to tri-athletes, she figures in how each sport will affect an athlete's needs.

In the New York suburb of Pomona, Michelle Gandy flexes her culinary muscles beyond dinners and dinner parties. She'll create a kids' baking day, conduct a pizza party for kids, shop for clients' groceries or even bake special pet treats with natural ingredients.

Some chefs find more room for creativity in this field than they did in restaurants. But good food is just the intermediate goal. ''The finished product to me is the smile on the face of the client," says Naugler.

Getting there from here

There's no single route to becoming a personal chef.

Michelle Gandy came to the career with 14 years of restaurant and hospitality experience, a culinary degree and both a bachelor's and a master's degree in hospitality management.

When Jim Davis joined forces with his son, he brought his love of cooking, plus the business skills he learned as a mortgage broker. His son brought all kinds of restaurant experience plus a culinary degree. Then the elder Davis entered and graduated from culinary school, too.

Colleen Lester worked in restaurants most of her life, and owned a 24-seat restaurant serving typical diner favorites. She worked a few years in a corporate-office job and then went part time while kicking off her business. APCA professional-development seminars and information helped her.

Bev Kinnaman had always loved to cook, and turned to this career after being laid off as a business analyst for 26 years. She's never taken a cooking class, and focuses on home cooking.

Because credentials can be so different, the APCA has worked with the American Culinary Federation to develop a certification program that lets customers know a chef has achieved a certain standard. Wallace says the certification will boost acceptance of this field as a professional culinary career. You can learn more about certification at www.acfchefs.org/certify/crt.html

Wallace is now working with culinary schools to develop a personal-chef curriculum. Keep reading Sizzle for further updates on that.

American Personal Chef Association
4572 Delaware Street
San Diego, CA 92116
800-644-8389
619-294-2436
contact@personalchef.com