How to Become a Personal Chef

The American Personal and Private Chef Association is the gold standard in the industry. We are not only flattered by imitation, but moved by it to constantly innovate, and continually raise the bar on service to our membership.APPCA is the largest legitimate professional personal and private chef trade association in the United States.

We represent personal and private chefs—giving them a professional posture that allows this growing industry to sustain and flourish.

We have created Home Training Systems and Live Jump Start Seminars that bridge the huge gap from a dream of becoming a personal chef and owning a successful business to a reality of a viable, profitable career.
Explore our site to learn more about us, our training programs and our membership benefits, and please call (800) 644-8389 with any questions on the industry or what APPCA can offer you.

Here are just a few of our industry-setting innovations:

• We were approached to write the definitive textbook on the personal- and private-chef industry, and were asked to draw on our decades of experience developing proven business models for personal-chef success. The result is The Professional Personal Chef: the Business of Doing Business as a Personal Chef (Wiley, 2007)
• We sought third-party certification, knowing that true credibility and professionalism could only be granted by an outside organization administering certification. As a result of APPCA’s continued push for professional recognition of this industry, The American Culinary Federation (ACF) now grants a certification of “Personal Certified Chef,” or PCC as well as “Personal Certified Executive Chef,” or PCEC. Visit our press release for more information on this career-building partnership between APPCA and ACF.
• We are the first and only to provide a Visitor’s Discussion Forum and Open Forum Archives for a long view of the personal-chef industry.
• We offer groundbreaking new software that will give you the tools and templates to run your  Personal Chef Office.

Many people love to cook, but not everyone knows how to set up and successfully operate a personal-chef service. This industry is new, and we want you to be successful in it. That way, we can all grow together.

APPCA’s philosophy is simple—we promote the education and advancement of our membership in the personal- and private-chef industry, and the betterment of the industry as a whole.

We’re here for you.

Candy Wallace, founder and executive director