Introduction
Introduction
Do you enjoy cooking and baking, and consider these activities an escape from the everyday world? Do you spend every possible minute in the kitchen, creating delicious treats for your family and guests? Do you delight in each compliment and each recipe request you receive from people who have tasted your unique creations?
If you can answer yes to these questions, you have probably thought at one time or another about turning your love for cooking into a full-time career. If you are like many people, though, the prospect of transitioning into a career in cooking might seem daunting. How would you get clients? How would you come up with the money to start your business? What types of food would you make, and whom would you serve?
Unfortunately, too many talented people face these questions and, lacking the resources or support to find the answers, never let themselves explore the prospect of a career in the culinary arts.
This book might be just the resource and the support you have been hoping for.
If you are passionate about cooking, and have always wanted to cook for a living, the information contained in this book could prove to be some of the most valuable information you will ever read. Within these pages, you will learn how to plan a personal chef business and begin taking the steps to achieve the career you have always dreamed of.
A career as a personal chef can be a perfect solution for people who love to cook, but who are not excited about any of the traditional careers available to people in the culinary arts.
Many chefs who are not aware of the emerging personal chef opportunities that have become available in recent years feel that they are limited to the constraints of cooking in a restaurant owned by someone else. Although working in this type of environment might pay the bills, it can sometimes limit your creativity and leave you feeling unchallenged. Working for a restaurateur also significantly limits a chef’s income – unless you are willing to move each time a more lucrative opportunity becomes available at another restaurant, your income is limited to what the owner is willing to pay you.
Another option pursued by many chefs is to open their own restaurant. Although this is a dream shared by many people in the culinary arts, opening a restaurant takes a huge financial investment and often requires taking out enormous loans to finance the restaurant space, pay your staff members, purchase ingredients and supplies, and market the restaurant to local diners. Furthermore, new restaurants often take several years before a profit is even made. Because of these challenges, many chefs are left deterred by the prospect of undertaking such a large financial investment that will take so long to show any financial return.
A private chef works for one client exclusively, to meet their tastes and needs. Because a private chef is limited to one customer or organization and is employed exclusively for that person or organization, he or she is limited to the needs of that client. A private chef might prepare and serve up to three meals a day for the client. Although it can provide long-term job stability, it is easy for a private chef to become bored in this career; once a private chef knows how to cater to the needs of his or her client, he or she can feel that this career lacks the challenges necessary to maintain his or her passion for food.
A personal chef works with various families and organizations and has no exclusive contract limiting his or her services to just one client or organization. Starting a personal chef business provides an option that offers an opportunity for a chef to open a business with a significantly lower financial investment than opening a restaurant and affords the chef the ability to be creative and constantly challenged.
In today’s busy society, the need for personal chefs is growing day by day. The career, social, and family demands placed upon people today have created a unique need for the expert services of personal chefs who can take care of the often time-consuming task of preparing and serving meals. Busy families that want to have nutritional meals but do not have time to cook, elderly people with specific dietary needs who find it increasingly difficult to cook for themselves, and individuals and families that entertain and host dinner parties often, but do not have the time to cook for large groups, are all potential clients for personal chefs. This book addresses the unique needs of all types of customers, including the difficult customer, and how to cater to their personal needs.
As you might have guessed, it takes more than just the ability to cook to be successful as a personal chef. Although cooking nutritional and tasty meals is imperative to success as a personal chef, there are many business aspects that must also be explored and carefully planned for. As with any business, there are many mistakes that a new businessperson can make; these mistakes can cost you thousands of dollars in lost profit and can ultimately cost you your success in the culinary field. The purpose of this book is to give you the tools to troubleshoot potential business pitfalls and be prepared to make your business profitable and successful.
In the following pages, you will learn what a personal chef is, what a personal chef does, and what valuable business tools you will need for success. You need not have a degree in business to learn how to operate and run a personal chef business. However, as with any business venture, it is important to develop the business savvy necessary to reach your potential customers, make wise business and financial decisions, keep your customers happy, and generate repeat business.
In the following chapters, we will take a journey through every aspect of a personal chef business. You will learn, in detail, what kinds of tasks a personal chef undertakes and what kinds of different settings a personal chef works in. You will also learn how to build a business plan, undertake any necessary education, procure the equipment and supplies necessary to create and package meals for your clients, work with your customers to identify their needs, account for their dietary preferences and restrictions, and above all, keep them happy. You will also learn various marketing techniques that you can use to reach your ideal customers.
Grab a pen and paper because you might want to take notes as you read through this book and learn the secrets to success as a personal chef. Make yourself comfortable and prepare to dive into the life of a personal chef.