Transcript
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[00:00:00] If you love to cook and want to get paid for it on your own terms, having a personal chef business is the best and most lucrative way to do it. Thousands of passionate cooks have been helped by my videos, training, and coaching to start their successful personal chef business and get paid to do what they love on their own terms.
But don’t take my word for it. Watch this and decide for yourself. First of all, if you’re brand new to a personal chef business or being a personal chef, let’s talk about what is a personal chef business and get clear that we’re talking about the same thing. It’s having your own business. Cooking for multiple clients, usually in their homes.
We’ll talk more about that later. Doing services like weekly meal prep and small caterings. You don’t have employees, there’s no commercial kitchen, and no food inventory or food costs. So let’s dig into all this. What does a personal chef do? Having your own personal chef business is different than being a [00:01:00] private chef.
A private chef is an employee usually to one family. They work full time. They usually cook and serve the food. Sometimes they even live on site at the family’s and maybe even travel with the family. Again, as an employee. Let’s talk about having a big catering business. When you have a catering business, you have a commercial kitchen lease.
You have industrial commercial equipment. You have a lot of staff that are paid a low hourly wage. That’s how you make profit as the business owner. So you have payroll, there’s food inventory and food costs. You’re cooking for
So when it comes to having a personal chef business, you’re getting the benefits of having your own business and not being an employee, but with all that overhead. Unlike having, being a private chef to one family, you’re cooking for multiple clients. You are either full time or part time, depending on [00:02:00] how much you want to work.
You’re making all the decisions. As a personal chef, you’re usually cooking in your client’s home. You’ll need to check in your local city for your local laws. As of 2025, when I’m making this video, over 90 percent of places in the U. S. don’t allow you to cook and sell food out of your home.
As of 2025, when I’m making this video, about 90 percent of places in the United States don’t allow you to cook out of your home kitchen for paying clients. But have faith! There are a few counties in California, and it’s starting in Washington State, where they are permitting where they are doing commercial permits for home kitchens.
The movement has started just like cottage laws for baking out of your home are all in 50 States. The number one service that personal chefs do is regularly scheduled personal chef services, also known as meal prep services. This usually looks like cooking a week’s worth of dinners for a [00:03:00] client. And we’ll get more into that later.
Now the reason that this is the number one service is it takes place during the week. No weekends, nights, or holidays. It’s regularly scheduled clients over and over week after week. So then you have a regular schedule and regular income. But small catering is definitely huge with personal chef businesses too, whether it’s seated dinners for two, four, or eight, or small buffets, whatever you can handle on your own is fair game.
Business is a great fit for you if you’re a passionate cook who wants to get paid for it on your own terms. That could be whether you are a passionate home cook who wants to get out of their corporate ninety five. This could be whether you’re a passionate home cook who wants to get out of their corporate 9 to 5 and get paid to do what you love, or a culinary grad who already knows that the restaurant hotel route is not for you.
Or, a burned out restaurant pro who is sick and [00:04:00] tired of nights, weekends, holidays, toxic culture, low hourly wages, and working to make money for other people. Even someone who just wants to do this part time as, you know, a retiree or a stay at home mom, or even as a side hustle for passion instead of your regular job.
You just want to cook for clients who love your food. The thing we all have in common is We’re a passionate cook, we want to get paid for it, but on our own terms. What education and training do you need to become a personal chef and start your own personal chef business? You don’t have to have culinary school or restaurant experience.
Did you know that Gordon Ramsay didn’t go to culinary school? Now this is not to say that you don’t have to be a great cook. Gordon Ramsay busted his ass for years in restaurants, right? You can learn to be a great cook online or cookbooks, be self taught, take independent lessons, but you do not have to go to culinary school or be a [00:05:00] restaurant chef.
You also don’t have to have a business degree to start your own personal chef business, and you don’t need a marketing degree to know how to get clients. More about that later, too. What you do have to have is drive. The drive to want to be your own boss, to make all the decisions, to do all the work, to be an entrepreneur.
Nobody’s gonna tell you to go to work. Nobody’s gonna fire you if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do. But this is gonna show up in the bank. So how much does it cost to start a personal chef business? Not a lot. It is very low startup costs and there is super low overhead. The best things that you’ll want to invest in when you’re setting up your business are an LLC or whatever entities best for you, food safety certification and liability insurance.
This isn’t crafting on Etsy, we can make people sick, we can cut or burn ourselves, we can damage property, so liability insurance is really [00:06:00] important. Speaking of that, let’s go through the part you’ve probably been waiting for, the steps to starting your personal chef business. The very first thing that you need to do is decide what you want.
The people that don’t do this are a hot mess. They have no idea what to do. They waste their time in confusion. They treat it like a jobby. Have you ever heard of that? It’s a hobby that you sometimes make a little bit of money doing. That’s not what we’re going for here with a personal chef business. So you need to know how much do you want to work full time?
Part time? For instance, if you’re working a full time job five days a week and starting this on the side, are you going to give up one day off that you have to do your personal chef work? Are you going to be willing to give both days up and work seven days a week? If you want to eventually be full time at your personal shop business, you need to figure out what you can do now, what the transition will [00:07:00] look like.
You don’t just plan for the full time job because that’s not what you’re able to do now. So how much do you want to work next? How much do you want to make? That is important to know, too, because this is going to drive your balance, your pricing and everything else. When do you want to work? This is important because if you don’t want to work nights and weekends, you’re not going to be doing catering.
If you’re working full time with days that, days off that change every week, it’s going to be really hard to get a consistent meal prep services client. If you love to cater and that’s a requirement that you absolutely want to do that, or if you only want to do personal chef services, also known as meal prep services, or if there are other services you want to do, you need to decide all these things before you get into the nitty gritty details of starting and running your business.
After you decide that, let’s get into the nitty gritty of starting your [00:08:00] business. the order that I’m going to go through these in isn’t that important. It’s not written in stone. You might already have some of these done. You might have priorities that affect what you do first, and that’s okay. So, starting your business foundation.
You’ll need to decide on your business name. Choose a business structure. This is like an LLC or a sole proprietorship, DBA. Make your decision on that. You’ll need to register your business and get any licenses you need. That’s usually controlled by your city you’ll want to check with. You’ll need to get a business checking account.
You’ll need to set up what you need to take payments. You’ll want to get your liability insurance to protect yourself and your clients, complete your food safety training so that you ensure that you’re being safe and to help clients trust you. That’s setting up your business foundations. Then you’ll want to work on creating your service offerings.
So are you going to offer personal chef [00:09:00] services, also known as meal prep services, small event catering, cooking classes, other things? Decide your services and then pick your rate for a meal prep service cook day or price out a few sample catering menus. Get your pricing dialed in. Build your recipe collection.
For meal prep services, this means collecting dinner entree recipes that fit into your specialty and skills, and testing your meals for reheating quality to ensure that your clients love them. For catering, this means collecting recipes that fit into your specialty that are more appropriate for possibly a more special occasion, and whether that’s a seated dinner or a buffet.
You’ll want to break those into categories, you know, depending on how many courses would you be able to do if you’re doing a sit down dinner. Do you just need appetizers, entrees, and desserts? Are you going to do soups or salads or other things? And then when it comes to buffet catering, what type are you going [00:10:00] to be doing?
Dinners, Mexican buffets, cocktail party appetizer buffet, brunch buffet, things like that. For each one of the services that you want to do, you’re going to need to get your cooking system down. You’re going to need to streamline your planning, your shopping, your cooking, your presenting or packaging, depending on which service you’re doing.
Your process for all of that. You will need to plan out your operations for catering, whether it’s a sit down buffet, whether it’s a Did I say sit down buffet? You’ll need to plan out your operations for catering. Whether you’re doing buffets, very different from doing sit down dinners, and what’s that whole process going to look like for you.
Then equipment. By now, after going through all these and getting your practice in and your recipe collection built, you should probably know what you need, if anything. You don’t need big commercial equipment. If you’re on your own, you’re not going to be doing buffets for 100 people or weddings for 250 [00:11:00] people, right?
In your personal chef business, this is one of the great things. Low startup cost. So, don’t go buying a bunch of stuff that you don’t need before you start doing your practice services so that you really know. Set your pricing, decide on your flat rate for meal prep services, and then calculate pricing for profit for sample menus for any small caterings if you choose to do those.
If you’re going to be teaching classes online or in real life, price those out too. You’ll need to establish clear policies for payment. Are they going to give you a deposit? When is that due by? How do you take payments? Different things like that. Start small and gain experience. Offer your services to friends or family to build your confidence and to get testimonials.
Practice, improve your workflow, work out the kinks now. Do not practice on people that are paying you. Finally, get clients. Marketing your [00:12:00] business. Make a plan of what you’re going to do to get clients. Evaluate it. Did it work? Then double down on it. Did it not work? Why not? Did you do it, or did you not do it?
Did you just not do it well enough yet, or is it just not a good way to get clients? Spoiler alert! Almost everything can get you clients, so really be honest with yourself. Did you not do as much as you needed to do, or was it just not good enough yet? Now let’s go into some details. What really does it take to be successful with a personal chef business?
First, there are physical demands. This is a physical job where you’re standing for hours, you’re lugging equipment and groceries, driving to grocery stores, driving to client homes, but it’s really the mental game here that’s going to break or make your business. If it was just cooking dinner, anyone could do this, right?
But, if it was just cooking dinner, everybody’d be making six figures, right? But [00:13:00] it’s not. You’re a business owner, even if it’s a business of one. So, some of the mental skills that are really important to your business are confidence in your abilities, believing in your skills as a cook and a business owner, and it’s especially important if you are feeling less than because you didn’t get formal culinary training, overcoming imposter syndrome.
Focus on your strengths and the value that you’re bringing to clients. Resilience. Handling rejections, when you’re having a slow start, when you’re having a setback without giving up. Bouncing back from these challenges. Sometimes there might be an unhappy client, or a schedule disruption, or an unexpected expense.
You have to have self motivation and discipline, pushing yourself to complete tasks and meet goals because there’s no boss to hold you accountable, right? You have to take the initiative to learn, to grow, to market your business. You need to [00:14:00] maintain focus and consistency, especially when working independently like this.
You have to keep up with your tasks like your bookkeeping, your client follow ups, other details like that. And professionalism. You have to separate personal emotions from making your business decisions, right? You need to manage your stress gracefully and ensure that clients, and especially prospective clients, see you as reliable, capable, and stable.
Let’s talk about vision and goal setting in your personal chef business. Having a clear picture of what success looks like for you. Remember we talked about that in the beginning? Deciding how much you want to work, how much you want to make, what you want to do in your business. You have to figure this out before you start.
It’s kind of like trying to go somewhere you’ve never been without a map. Then set actionable steps for yourself to get there. Regularly check. Are you progressing? Evaluate. Adjust [00:15:00] if you’re not hitting your goals. Whether that’s number of clients. Whether that’s amount of money. And you need to do this without judgment or beating yourself up.
Because honestly that’s not gonna make you work better and be more successful. It’s just gonna slow you down and probably eventually stop you. Now let’s talk about something more fun. How much can you make with your personal chef business? Short answer, a lot. Let’s go through some numbers, right? The average, right now, as of this video, in the United States, for meal prep services, for people who are pricing flat rate plus a grocery reimbursement, is 335 per cook day.
So, if you have one weekly
Let’s go through some quick numbers to give you an idea how to figure this for yourself. The average price That’s for meal prep services, as of filming of this video, is 335 as a flat rate for the cook day, plus a grocery reimbursement. So if you have one weekly client that you work [00:16:00] for, that’s 1, 340 a month.
If you have two clients, so you’re cooking every Monday and every Tuesday for the same two clients over and over, that would be 2, 640 a month. You get it. This is easy math for you to work out, right? Now, all you have to do is calculate what pricing you decide by, by how many days you work. And that’s what will give you an estimate.
So what about catering? Well, this varies wildly. What you need to do is figure out what kind of catering you want to do, sit down or buffets, what your specialty is, come up with some sample menus, and then price it out and figure out how long it’s going to take you to do the prep work, to do the actual event, all that stuff.
As we said earlier, you need to price it so that you’re making a profit. Then when you have an idea of that, you can decide best case scenario, how many catering jobs would you have a month or if you’re only doing it seasonally, a year, and how will that work into how much you [00:17:00] want to make. So what are the benefits of being a personal chef and having your own business?
Well, the first one, and the reason why most people go into this besides Getting paid to do something you love is flexibility. You get to set your own schedule. You get to decide your work life balance. You decide when you work, when you don’t work, who you’ll take as a client. All that flexibility, right?
We want to be in charge of our own getting paid to cook on our own terms. Then there’s the creativity. You’re getting to cook diverse meals. Like in a restaurant, you’re cooking the same thing over and over. This, you have your own recipe library. You’re tailing entrees to clients preferences.
Again, there’s that control. You’re making business decisions that support your life and your values. All those intangible benefits of having your own personal chef business. What about common challenges and how to overcome them? The three biggest challenges that I see [00:18:00] are Number one, imposter syndrome.
The best way to get over this is to focus on people loving your food. Yes, when we do this and we love to cook, we always want to be better, but you can’t focus on the gap between where you are and where you want to be, or where Thomas Keller is right. Always keep learning, always keep moving forward, but acknowledge and appreciate the skills you have and where you’re at now.
This business being a business of one and in something that maybe your friends and family don’t really have the same passion for can be very isolating. You need to find a community of supportive, like minded culinary entrepreneurs. This is so important, especially if the people around you aren’t supportive.
Or even if they just don’t get cooking, loving to cook, and wanting to get paid for it. Having your own business and all the rest of it, it is hard, so find your people. Finally, [00:19:00] make a plan to get clients, right? Make the plan, do the plan, evaluate the results. Then, just double down, improve, or pivot. It really is that simple.
Here’s some final tips for success. OMG, you ready for the toughest talk? Cooking is a great, rewarding hobby. But if you want this to be a successful business, you need to be professional. Keep things simple when you’re starting. Don’t overcomplicate your offerings. Commit to your pricing. Don’t torture yourself over it.
Don’t keep changing your mind. Pick it and move on. You can change it after you have a couple clients, if you decide it needs to change. But change it based on data of having clients and making money. Not just out of fear or indecision. Get your momentum going. Don’t spend weeks designing your logo. Nobody [00:20:00] cares.
Spoiler alert. Build confidence by practicing, whether it’s practicing meal prep services, whether it’s practicing a catering event you would do for a paying client. Do not get your practice in on paying clients.
If you want to get paid to do what you love, cook on your own terms, on your own schedule, with freedom and control, with your own business, making the decisions and not building someone else’s dream, cooking for people who love your food and are paying premium prices for your services. Starting a personal chef business is the best, easiest, fastest, low cost way to do it.
If I offered to help you start your personal chef business and get a paying client in 30 days, getting paid to do what you love, cook on your own terms, with a clear step by step roadmap, a supportive community, and one on one support from me every step of the way, without you having to go to culinary [00:21:00] school or work nights, weekends, and holidays, would you be interested?
Shoot me a DM and let’s talk, because the clients are out there and they’re hungry for what you’re cooking.
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