HOW FAST?

With possibilities like these,
it's no wonder the personal chef and private chef
sectors are among the fastest growing in the field
of culinary the professional.
Candy Wallace, owner and executive director of the
American Personal Chef Institute and Association,
notes that when she began her career in San Diego 10
years ago, she knew of no other personal chefs. Now
the APCA has 2,000 operating members and is growing
at the astonishing rate of 100 new members a month.
In 1996, Cindy Race and Susan Flynn began working as
private chefs in San Francisco Bay Area. A year
later, they were fielding enough requests to begin a
referral company called Four Star Chefs. The
response has been so great that in June last year,
they opened a satellite in Seattle with chef Laura
Dewell as director.
Steve Kelley, director of career services at Peter
Kump's New York Cooking School, note that since his
department began informally tracking the types of
calls it gets from graduates seeking job placements
this spring, requests for personl chef leads
outnumber requests for restaurant leads two to one.
Last year, Enterpreneur Magazine designated the
personal chef industry "one of the 12
fastest-growing businesses in the country," and
industry predictions are that within the next five
years, at the present rate of growth, there will be
nearly 25,000 operating personal chefs in the United
States serving nearly 300,000 clients.
What's more, this job option, industry-wide, appears
to be most appealing to women, with APCA membership
running 60-65 percent female and a seven-to-three
female-to-male ratio of students on this career
track at Peter Kump's.
So is this job of the future for talented women
culinarians? Does it truly offer more flexibily and
less pressure than restaurant work? Can anyone do it
anywhere? Where do I sign up?
Personal chef. Private chef. Job of your future?
Let's begin with a matter of definition. Although
lay people sometimes use the terms "personal chef"
and "private chef" interchangeably, industry
professionals stress they actually mean two separate
things. A private chef works for one client or
family, while a personal chef generally has several
clients. How this plays out may vary from chef to
chef and client to client, but generally speaking,
the private chef's life is more intricately involved
with that of the client and may include going on
trips or cooking for for parties and special events
as an expected part of the job.
Private chefs tend to cook in the client's home on a
daily basis 4-6 days a week, while personal chefs
come to the home weekly or monthly, creating a block
of menus at a time, freezing certain entrees to be
reheated. Personal chefs usually work in the
client's home as well, but if they have access to a
commercial kitchen or a home kitchen that meets
health standards, they may prepare food and bring
it.
Generally speaking, the private chef has a little
less schedule flexibility, but there can be
extraordinary perks with certain clients. One of
Four Stars' chefs follows the family she cooks for
on the polo circuit, which means her job description
includes yearly trips to Europe, Palm Springs and
Jackson Hole, Wyo. She also serves meals on Limoges
china and has the opportunity to splurge and
experiment with expensive ingredients she might not
buy on her own.
In Seattle, a private chef can start at $40,000 a
year for full-time work. Steve Kelley of Peter
Kump's says a private chef's salary depends on the
client's situation but in the New York area, pay can
range from $45,000-$70,000 and may or may not
include benefits, including lodging. One drawback to
the private chef's career: You must live in an area
where there are clients who can afford and need your
service, and that generally means a fairly large
urban market with a certain level of affluence.
Personal chefs are finding job opportunities almost
everywhere, however. Candy Wallace notes that APCA
has member chefs throughout the United States and in
four other countries: Canada, Sweden, Argentina and
Scotland. A personal chef's job description can
vary, but generally it entails creating a menu to a
client's needs and preparing several meals at a time
- most to be frozen and reheated - on a regular
basis in the client's home.
The largest demographic for clients are homes with
two incomes where the income totals $70,000 or more.
Candy says that those homes fall into two distinct
categories: those without children who want an
alternative to the fine restaurant dining they've
been doing, and those with children who are
concerned that the family gets good nutritious food
and can find a way to fit mealtime into busy
schedules. In addition, she says there are three
other distinct categories of client: the
work-obsessed single who typically spends 10 hours a
day on the job, then goes to the gym and wants to
eat healthy; seniors with a certain amount of income
who can no longer shop or cook with the ease they
once did, but want to find a way to stay in their
nice homes; and people with specific medical dietary
requirements.
Personal chefs generally bill per our or per meal or
sometimes charge for a "package" of meals per week
or month. Hourly prices vary widely based on where
the chef workw, and total earnings depend on how
manyjobs the chef is willing to take on and what the
market provides. Candy says many of her chefs earn
up to $300 per day. Steve says that in the New york
City region, most personal chefs bring in $20-$25 an
hour, with really efficient, experienced chefs able
to earn as much as $35-$40. WCR member Kelly
Hammers, who works as a personal chef in the Western
Kentucky University community of Bowling Green,
says, she makes $13-$15 an hour. In all cases, the
wage earned by personal chefs is generally higher
than standard kitchen work in a restaurant.
In addition, there are other perks to the job.
Kelly, an accomplished visual artist who worked for
several years in restaurants and as the employee of
another caterer in Bowling Green, appreciates the
independence of the personal chef and says the
creative stimulus is a big plus. "I have a lot more
freedom than I did in a restaurant kitchen or even
as a caterer, where you tend to work from the same
menu again and again, I can make the food I prepare
as complex aw I want. I can push myself more as a
personal chef. No two days are alike for me. And
sometimes my clients push me by asking me to make
something that on my own I never would have
attempted. I will say sure, if they are willing to
take the risk."
She says her job has forced her to keep honing and
perfecting her already considerable cooking ability
- not always easy to do in a community far from the
major cooking schools and isolated from a large
restaurant community. Cookbooks and texts from
cooking schools are her reference library, and she
says she has learned a great deal from cooking shows
on television, particularly those she has found on
the Discovery Channel. "I learned a lot about the
consistency of meringue by finally seeing it done
right on TV," she says.
Steve notes that in New York it is pretty common for
personal chefs to work one night a week in a
restaurant to "stay fresh and get good ideas. It's
hard to be challenged and pushed out there on your
own, so this is a way they have devised to stay
current and inspired."
A personal chef also has a certain flexibility in
how often or when they want to work, within the
framework of their client's needs and acceptance.
Kelly makes a stipulation of her job that there are
certain times that she will not be available to her
clients because needs to travel or spend time with
the family. The downside is that she also must be
flexible when her client decides at the last minute
to cancel a week of work because of a
spur-of-the-moment trip.
So with all these advantages, why isn't every
culinary professional tossing in the toque to go the
personal chef route?
Steve points out that the job simply isn't designed
for everyone. "The restaurant still has a certain
element of swagger to it. It's a more public arena,
and that appeals to a lot of young people going into
the profession. A personal chef also has to have
really good people skills and be willing to adapt
and work with the individual client's needs. That's
not something just anyone can do."
In addition to culinary skills, a successful
personal chef must be able to market her service and
to manage it from a business standpoint as well as a
foodservice perspective. Kelly say the most
important skill she brings to the job is not her
technique with a knife or the recipe in her
repertoire but "time management."
Getting some experience in a restaurant will serve
anyone well as a personal chef," Steve advises. "It
will give you necessary information about portion
control, pricing and economy of movement as well as
cooking skills. All of this essential to being
successful as a personal chef."
The chemistry needs to be right with the client as
well, Steve says. He adds a cautionary note for
anyone considering this profession: "It's still a
bit of the wild, wild west out there in terms of
food jobs. There aren't many regulations beyond the
health department codes." That means that there is
little if a personal chef encounters discrimination
or unreasonable demands on the job, except to leave.
"The job is only as good as the relationship between
the chef and the client," Steve says. He recommends
to his students and prospective clients alike that
they work one shift for money but "on spec" to get a
feel for how they will fit together, much as a
server or cook may trail in a restaurant before
signing on permanently.
Interested in pursuing the personal or private chef
option further? These sources mentioned in the story
can give you more information and may also be able
to provide you with support: