Video:Day in the Life: Personal Chef

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Transcript:Day in the Life: Personal Chef

Hi, I'm Chef Mark Tafoya from Remarkable Palate Personal Chef Service here in New York City. And I'm going to take you along with me on a day in the life of a personal chef.

Responsibilities of a Personal Chef

A personal chef business is a very flexible kind of business. The name personal is right there in the title so you really are there to give the best dining experience to the clients. That can range from doing dinner parties, special events, cooking classes, to a regular weekly cooking service.

You cook a number of dishes at once. Usually a variety of dishes, so the client has a week or two weeks or sometimes even three weeks where there's food in the freezer in the fridge, ready to go. They just take it out and heat it up.

A Typical Day

A typical day is when you're cooking a number of dishes at once for a client. There's a great deal of flexibility for someone who wants to own their own business and it gives you a chance to be an entrepreneur. And you're not necessarily working for one family or one employer.

It would be difficult for someone who's not a self starter who isn't motivated because you really are the entire business. In many jobs you do a portion of the job. With this kind of business you're the owner, you're the operator, you're making the menu planning, you're doing the shopping. I mean you're doing just about every aspect of the business. It's all on you. It's 100% your business.

Training to be a Personal Chef

In the beginning of the personal chef industry it attracted a lot of people from other careers who were fed up and wanted to own their own business and wanted to cook. Now that it's been more recognized as a profession, culinary schools are starting to offer courses in becoming a personal chef. And you're starting to see a lot of younger people choosing that from the beginning. The people who want to be a chef or a cook are now saying, “Well, I want to be a personal chef.”

Making Money as a Personal Chef

Urban settings you can obviously make a lot more money than if you're in a suburban or rural setting. I know chefs that make between 30 thousand, on the low side, to up to 100 thousand a year. But that's going to be very rare, someone making that much money.

It's the kind of job that you do for the love of it because it gives you an outlet for your passions. But, you can make a decent living doing it.

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