Becoming a Personal Chef

Becoming a personal chef

Editor’s note: Becoming a Personal Chef was most recently updated in May 2022.

In recent years the demand for personal chefs has been growing. Using the services of this type of chef is becoming increasingly more popular with people who are time poor, (somewhat) cash rich and know that living on takeaways seven days a week is not a smart health choice. So let’s consider routes into becoming a personal chef.

What does a personal chef do?

A personal chef is someone who is a trained cook, who prepares at-home meals for their clients for a fee.

Chefs will most commonly customise a meal plan according to the client’s dietary needs and preferences, shop for the items, prepare the meal and may also clean up the kitchen after they’re done. This saves their clients the time and effort needed to cook their own food. Other work often involves catering for special events or occasions or delivering cooking classes or demonstrations.

Why make the career move to becoming a personal chef?

Being a personal chef is a great way for many experienced chefs to move out of commercial kitchens and become self-employed. It involves less capital outlay, risk and sleepless nights than opening a restaurant, and often allows for a better work life balance.

Read: Private Chef Versus Personal Chef

How do you go about becoming a personal chef?

It’s fair to say that the best personal chefs are those that have already gained solid experience. The majority of successful personal chefs will have no less than 5+ years of industry experience behind them, before embarking on a personal chef venture. Likewise they’ll be conversant in multi cuisines and familiar with catering to specific dietary requirements and food allergies.

You know as well as we do that a good service is often down to getting the mise en place right – the same applies to setting up a personal chef business. It pays to consider both the macro and micro detail of the delivery of your food offer.

Fundamentally you need to think about how your chef skills and experience can be used to make you stand out from the crowd. You need to know what your unique selling points are around what you are proposing to offer. Making sure to promote these in order to secure work ahead of the competition.

But as a general rule of thumb, potential employers will look for skill, flair and good feedback on the consistency of the food you deliver.

Personal chef – routes to explore

As a personal chef you’ve got three routes you can explore for work.

First, you can go it alone and advertise to find clients, alongside tapping your own personal network. Second, you can sign up with a personal chef agency. They will help promote your skills and expertise and find you clients. Third, a hybrid approach of routes one and two.

But on whatever scale you’re looking to start out, word of mouth and personal recommendation is a solid way to build any personal chef venture.

It’s not just cooking

Running your own chef venture means you are a small business owner. You’re therefore liable for its stewardship, legal compliance, accounting, marketing and advertising. No mean feat. It’s important to be up to speed with general business practice.

As with any other job involving food handling, you must have current food hygiene certifications.

You don’t need a special licence to cook in other people’s homes. But if you’re in the UK and going to do food preparation at home you’ll need to comply with the rules laid down by the Food Standards Agency. This may also mean complying with the FSA inspection procedures.

Read: Things to Consider Before Becoming a Personal Chef

Can I make money becoming a personal chef?

Going independent means no more guaranteed salary. Instead of a boss telling you how much money you’ll be making, you’re the one telling clients what you charge. So a personal chef salary is exactly what you make it.

A significant driver of your success will be determined by the type and appeal of the food you offer and how good it is in reality. Where you live will also play a part in terms of how much you can charge to be in step with your competition. But commercial success is very much there for the taking. Especially if you fine tune your offer to be in step with your preferred customer profile.

Conclusion

Being a personal chef can be an excellent career move. It can lead to you earning more money, and at the same time give you a greater work like balance. But doing your own thing comes with its own challenges. Like any other small business owner, there are pressures and compliance requirements that you’ll need to master in order to succeed.

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