Transcript
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[00:00:00] If you are passionate about cooking and would love to get paid for it, if you’re a home cook who didn’t go to culinary school or. Doesn’t wanna work in a restaurant, but isn’t sure what else you can do with cooking to make good money. Maybe you’ve tried selling some plates or doing a little catering and it’s just not consistent enough.
Or maybe your hospitality pros worked in restaurants or service for years and you are just done with being overworked, underappreciated, underpaid, and working nights, weekends, and holidays all year. Basically giving your whole personal life to someone else’s wallet. You are in the right place. I’m Chef Shelly.
I’ve had a successful personal chef business for over 19 years, and when I’m not cooking for my own clients, which yes, I still do, I help passionate cooks just like you start your own personal chef business so you can get paid to do what you love on your own terms. Having a personal chef business is how I’ve been able to get paid to do what I love and make great money, and still get to spend time with my family [00:01:00] and my friends doing it the way I wanna do when I do all the freedom.
On my own terms, and again, making great money doing it. And listen, I’m telling you that not to say I’m so awesome. You’re never gonna see me posting pictures of me leaning on my Lamborghini with a bottle of champagne. That’s not what this is about. I wanna share my story with you to assure you that I’m not a special little snowflake or anything.
Honestly, if I did this, you can do it too. Really in the beginning, I didn’t even start out wanting to be a personal chef, like every other passionate cook, and I bet you did this too. I wanted to go to culinary school, right? To cook all the things, to learn from the pros, to improve my schools, to be a chef.
But honestly, I didn’t have money for culinary school after college. So I got a job and then life started marching on and it just seemed like something that would never happen to me. So that’s of course the first heartbreak, right, is realizing that you’re probably never going to be able to [00:02:00] do that. Nice.
Now, of course, while working jobs and things like that, in the back of my mind I always daydreamed, you know, I bet you have this daydream too, of having my own restaurant, you know, the chef owner dream, my own little bistro. Customers love my food. Every night’s like a fabulous event. Everyone’s happy, they love me, they love my food.
It’s all good food, good wine all the time. But really. I knew I didn’t have the money to invest in a restaurant, and most importantly. I knew, and you probably know this too, the dream is one thing. The reality is entirely different. The crushing overhead, the staffing issues, empty tables losing money, all the problems that we know are why the restaurants have the highest business failure rate in the country.
All that is too many problems to ever seriously consider it. So that’s our second heartbreak, right? For me after having a regular job with regular hours and things like that, [00:03:00] and having worked in restaurants before in the front of the house, I realized. I didn’t even wanna work in someone else’s restaurant, right?
Am I always gonna have to work nights, weekends, and holidays? What if I don’t like the food that they want me to make? What if they’re gonna tell me when I have to be there, when I can leave? When I can have time off, they’re gonna have me calling me to be covering other people’s shifts. And what if I don’t like the way the restaurants run?
What if I don’t like the owner? So I knew I didn’t wanna work in a restaurant. Then I actually worked at an art institute that had a culinary school, and then I learned that culinary school, while it looked great, only prepares you for restaurant work. So, uh, was I gonna go through and spend tens and tens of thousands of dollars for a culinary degree for a hobby?
That’s not gonna work. So why would I go if I wouldn’t wanna work in a restaurant? So I did what most people do. At that point, I just kind of put that dream away and resigned myself to working crappy office jobs forever. [00:04:00] The final nail in the heartbreak often, right? But one thing that stayed true for me, and I’m sure this is where you’re at too, was my love for cooking.
I always loved to cook on the side. I would throw dinner parties. I would help my friends with the food for their parties, and I loved it, but I never thought it was seriously something that I could turn into a job that would make me enough money to support me. Right? My journey actually from passionate Home Cook to Culinary business owner involved a huge shift in perspective.
From that perspective that we as foodies and food lovers and passionate cooks are influenced to want culinary school, restaurant work. Chef means restaurant versus what I actually wanted in my life. So I got to the point working these jobs, doing fun food stuff on the side, and maybe this is where you’re at, where people were asking me to do the food for their parties and I was loving it.
But I couldn’t do it in a way that was sustaining. I [00:05:00] would recreate the wheel every time for every party. I would calculate every ounce of food. The supplies that I would need, how much would I charge them, how much could I charge them? And it’s not like I was getting offers all the time either. They just kind of came when they came.
So the problem was how was I gonna make this into something consistent, not only with income, the money, but something that I could actually do and keep my life intact, unlike everything else I knew about in hospitality. So.
This is when I finally learned about personal chefing and doing weekly meal prep services, AKA personal chef services, and that’s when everything changed. Honestly, it solved every problem I had. Personal chef services are during the day, not nights. They’re on weekdays, not weekends. You’re not super busy at the holidays.
If you’re doing weekly meal prep, it’s regularly scheduled. Clients instead of trying to find new jobs to fill every weekend, I realized [00:06:00] that the fastest, easiest, and least expensive route to actually getting paid to cook for people. Regularly on my own terms was to create my own personal chef business.
So I started digging in to find out more about personal chef services, and it was kind of hard to find info, especially back then. I didn’t know how to get started, what I needed to do to set the business up. How do you run a meal prep service day? How do you price it? So basically in the beginning, I had to make a thousand decisions and figure it all out on myself.
So I started my personal chef business in 2005, and it has been a wild, wonderful ride at different points. I’ve worked full-time, I’ve worked part-time. I’ve cooked for clients while I was pregnant. I’ve taken a baby with me on cook days. I have taken time off when I wanted to, and I’ve done it all the different ways.
I’ve done meal prep services. I’ve done buffet catering, romantic dinners for two multi-course seated dinners. [00:07:00] I’ve done cooking classes, demonstration style, hands on style. I raised my prices when I wanted to. I fired clients I didn’t like and a million other things. To do this exactly the way that works for me, things that I never would’ve been able to do working in someone else’s restaurant.
And most importantly, at the end of the day, I get to do something I absolutely love, make as much money as I want, and keep my family and personal laugh, personal life entirely intact. I thought in the beginning I wanted to be a culinary school trained restaurant working chef, but I have found. All the freedom and profound fulfillment, having my own personal chef business.
So if you love to cook and people are always telling you how great your food is, if anything in my story appealed to you, whether you’re a home cook or you’re a burnout hospitality pro and you’re not sure what you could do to make enough money, if you feel.
If you’re the kind of person who’s dying to have your own business, [00:08:00] getting paid for your passion, building your dream instead of someone else’s, the freedom to pick your own schedule, cook food that you love, for people who love it and have control over how much money you make, you are in the right place.
Here’s what I want you to know. If you want this for yourself, I want it for you too. As I say all the time, the clients are out there and they’re hungry for what you’re cooking. If you didn’t go to culinary school, that’s okay. If you have culinary school, that’s great too. You don’t need connections. You don’t need to be a special little snowflake.
You don’t need to. Be anything more than you are right now. You need the cooking skills and the drive to create your own personal chef business. If I did it, you can absolutely do it too. The shift in perspective from what we are taught to want. When we love to cook to what we actually want and can make happen, that is where the magic happens.
That’s where you can find the freedom to cook on your own terms. If you’re ready to learn more, you can click the link [00:09:00] below or shoot me a DM on Facebook and Instagram for my free guide on how to do weekly meal prep services. If you like to, DIY hit. Subscribe and watch my YouTube videos. I put one out every week, and when you’re ready to get more support and get everything you need to get fully booked with clients at your own personal chef business, you can join the Personal Chef Business Academy where I’ll work with you one-on-one, and you can join the community of supported people who have created a successful personal chef business too.
Because here’s the truth, you have what it takes. You just need the roadmap to get there. Hit the subscribe button. If this resonated with you, comment below, drop me a dm. I’m happy to get back to you. So until next time, keep cooking. Keep the passion. Remember, there is a hundred percent a way to get paid to do what you love.
That doesn’t require sacrificing your life for someone else’s dream. Cut.
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