Transcript
Transcript is autogenerated and may contain typos, errors, omissions etc.
Speaker: [00:00:00] If you are passionate about cooking, but you’re overwhelmed by all the business stuff, the licensing, the insurance, the marketing, the entity, the website. I get it. You just want to cook, right? Well, what have I told you that you can start your personal chef business with just. Three simple decisions that you can literally make right now, or at least this week.
No complicated business plan. No thousands of dollars in startup costs. No months of preparation. Just three easy things that will move you from dreaming about it. It to actually doing it stick around because I’m breaking down exactly what those three things are now. Hey everybody, chef Shelley here. I’ve been running a successful personal chef business for over 19 years, and I have helped literally thousands of passions, passionate cooks I’ve helped.
Hey everyone, I’m Chef Shelley. I’ve been running a successful personal chef business for over 19 years, [00:01:00] and I have helped. Thousands of passionate cooks just like you turn your love of cooking into a profitable business that’ll give you freedom, flexibility, and great income on your own terms. And here’s the thing.
When I started way back in 2005, I was completely overwhelmed with everything I thought I needed to do. I spent months researching and planning and then procrastinating. I thought everything had to be just right, and then I would be completely booked with clients before I could start. But looking back now and after talking to so many people trying to start their business and struggling, I realize there are three simple decisions that actually matter the most to get done in the beginning to get you started.
Everything else can come after. So today I’m gonna give you the three easiest things you need to decide to get your personal chef business started. And these aren’t just theory, they’re just practical foundation decisions that are gonna move you from thinking [00:02:00] about it to actually having paying clients.
And I’m going to give you specific examples. Even so you can make the decisions by the end of this video, or at least this week. So let’s dive in.
First up is pick the service that you want to start with. And honestly, this is where a lot of people get stuck. They think they need to offer everything to everyone.
And we do it because we love to cook and we love cooking for people, and we’re multi-passionate and we want to do all the things. So we want to do weekly meal prep services, we want to do romantic dinners, we want to do sit seated dinners, plated multi-course dinners. We want to do. Small buffets, maybe brunches or luncheons or dinner parties, or Super Bowl parties, graduation parties, bachelorette parties, right?
Maybe you want to teach cooking lessons. Maybe you want to do them online. Maybe you want to do them in real life. Maybe you want to do meal planning, maybe you want to do kitchen [00:03:00] organization. Stop. Just stop right there. Start by picking one service. And spoil alert. I’m gonna tell you which one to pick. Start with weekly meal prep services.
That’s it. That’s your first service. Now, here’s why. This is the easiest and smartest place to start. It’s during the day, so you keep your nights and weekends for friends and family and personal life. Like most of the world who’s not in the hospitality world, having to work nights and weekends all the time.
It’s recurring income. You have the same clients week after week instead of constantly marketing for new events. It’s predictable, you know your schedule. It’s always the same, and it solves a real problem that tons of people have. Tons of people want to eat healthy home cooked meals, and they don’t have the time, or they hate to cook, and you love to cook.
So here’s exactly what this service looks like. You come to the client’s home once a week. You cook about five different [00:04:00] entrees. You package everything up in containers, label it, put it in the fridge, clean the kitchen, and leave. They’ve got delicious, healthy meals for the week or not healthy. If that’s not your jam, all they have to do is heat them and eat them.
That’s it. Simple, straightforward, extremely valuable. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but what if somebody wants a dinner party? What if they ask about cooking lessons? Here’s what you say. That sounds amazing. Right now I’m focused on weekly meal prep services, but I’d love to talk about other options once we’ve got you set up with the regular weekly service.
You don’t have to say no forever. You’re just not overwhelming yourself trying to do everything at once, especially considering the fact that everybody knows what catering is. People know when they need catering. If you are wanting to focus on weekly meal prep services to get that regular income and that regular schedule, you really need to focus on it.
Once you build that out, it’s very [00:05:00] easy to get catering jobs, so don’t worry about that. The next thing you do after you decide on your service, even though I told you to do weekly meal prep services, if you know you only want to cater, you only want to do cooking lessons, you can absolutely do that too. So you’ve chosen your service
then of course you need your recipe collection. You need it to be. Professional and organized. Now that being said, you don’t need hundreds of recipes. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel either. You need to start about 30 solid crowd pleasing entree recipes that you can mix and match to create variety for your clients.
Wow. So just start with like the proteins. If you are a general cook, we’re talking beef and pork. Chicken, maybe Turkey, seafood, shellfish, meatless. Then you can think about different cooking methods, like think about the different ways that you prepare chicken, you saute, [00:06:00] you oven, roast, you grill, you broil, you.
It’s instant pot. You slow cook. Think about different flavor profiles. Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, African, third, Mexican. There are tons, right? Mix and match these, and you’ve got endless combinations. You know more than you think you know, just because you might not have the recipe written down.
I always say, lasagna, do you know how to make lasagna? Did you invent the recipe for lasagna? Of course not. That doesn’t mean you don’t include it in your recipe collection. So again, think about the proteins. If you’re plant-based, you know, obviously you think about tofu, satin. Beans, the different things that you like.
Some people prefer others. Think about if you are gluten free, those same categories. If you’re vegetarian, are you going to do any that are dairy focused? All those things, all those cooking methods, and then all those flavor profiles [00:07:00] again, can. Think about two. What dishes do people always ask for? What are their favorites that you make?
They always ask for the recipe. Those are your gold mines. Here’s the key, when you’re thinking about your recipe collection, you want recipes that are delicious but not overly complicated. They reheat well, if you’re focusing on those weekly meal prep services, they use ingredients. That you can get easily.
You don’t want to have a client tell you what they want on Monday when their cook days, the next Monday, and you have to special order things that aren’t going to arrive in time. You want things that are going to work for the type of food you want to cook. And the type of person you want to cook for.
Obviously if you’re vegan, you’re not including meat, but if you are a general cook, but you don’t want to prepare seafood, you need to keep your recipe collection dialed into that. If you are a general cook, avoid anything too exotic for the [00:08:00] average person, too delicate. Think crowd pleasers. Save those other things for if you do want to do catering, where you are preparing and serving immediately, and then you can really use those show off dishes.
And here’s a pro tip.
Again, don’t overthink this. You probably already know 30, 50, a hundred recipes. That would work perfectly. Get them digitized. Get them entered into your recipe collection software. Make sure you’ve tested them and cooked them. You know that they work great. This is your starter collection. And then third.
Set your just right pricing. This is where I, people get stuck, so stuck that they don’t get to the part where they get a client who’s paying them. They research every competitor, they, they create complicated charts of pricing and they second guess themselves into paralysis. Stop. I’m gonna make this simple for you.
Here’s your pricing [00:09:00] structure, flat rate. Grocery reimbursement for meal prep sessions. That’s it. It includes everything, the planning, the client communication, the shopping, the cooking, the packing, the cleanup, the works and everything. No hourly, no add-on fees, no complicated calculations based on if they want three servings or four servings.
Keep it simple. In the United States, you’re looking at an average of $335. This can vary wildly depending on if you have a lot of experience, if you’ve worked in hospitality, if you’ve gone to culinary school, if you’re in a big expensive city, or just any big urban area really, versus you’re just starting out, you don’t have any experience.
You’re not very confident or you’re in a really urban or a really rural area, right? So think about that and adjust from there. In general, this is excellent money for doing something that you love. But [00:10:00] again, here’s the thing, don’t get stuck trying to calculate it perfectly. The value isn’t about how many.
Servings they’re getting. It’s not even how much time it takes you, it’s the result for the client. And the result is not just having food in the fridge. What is it that they’re getting? Here’s a tip. You get this from your conversation with them. ’cause it can be different for different people. Is it. Their health.
They need to eat healthy. Is it that they hate to cook? Is it that they want the time of not planning and shopping and cooking and cleaning? What is it specifically that they want? At the end of the day, that’s what they want. It’s not the food anybody can buy pre-made food at the grocery store. Right.
What is it about this that they want, you’re giving back? Them back hours of their time, you’re pre providing professional, delicious meals in their home. Now I know what you’re thinking here. If some of those numbers were a [00:11:00] little triggering. What if that’s too expensive? What if that’s not enough food?
What if it’s too high? What if it’s too low? How do you find your just right pricing? Just start with the average of $335. If you’re getting a lot of interest, then start raising your prices. It’s easier to get fully booked first and go up from there than it is to second guess all the time. But I’m telling you right now.
Do not think that if people are telling you it’s too expensive, that that means you necessarily need to lower your price, especially if you are pricing around that average, it’s much, much more likely than you are just talking to the wrong people. If your friends and family who would never hire a personal chef are telling you your prices are too expensive, do not listen to that.
They are not your people to the right people. There are already. Hundreds of personal chefs out there cooking at those prices. So [00:12:00] again, here’s the most important part. Whatever price you pick, just own it. Don’t apologize for it. Don’t discount it unless you really want to and have a strategic reason.
Don’t change it over and over again. Confidence in your pricing creates confidence in your service, helps you create confidence in yourself. So let’s put it all together. You’re offering weekly meal prep services for the average of $335 plus groceries. You have your 30, 40, 50, a hundred go-to entree recipes that you know, you would be able to provide a list to a client to choose from.
You know, you’re providing five-ish entrees per session. You do the planning, shopping, cooking, packaging, cleanup at the client’s home. That’s your business. It’s simple. It’s clear, it’s valuable. That is all you have to tell Potential clients, listen to them, tell you what it is they need, and if it’s something that you can provide to them, whether it’s [00:13:00] saving them time, improving their health, taking care of something they hate to do, then ask them when they’d like to schedule.
Now if you’re thinking, well, this all sounds great, but I still have questions about the practical stuff. How do you actually do the meal prep session? What containers do you use? How do you handle this or that? I totally get it. The details matter and I want to help you with all of it. So there is a link below to my free guide on how to do weekly meal prep services for clients that walks you through things from selecting recipes to organizing the cooking, doing it, packaging it up, chilling it all down, and putting it in the fridge. I go deep into how the whole day works, and once you get that pricing in, you’ve got yourself two thirds of the way there, and now you just have to start taking on clients.
If this video was helpful, subscribe. I put one out every week. I [00:14:00] also have videos you can search here on how to get clients. Whatever works for you is the most challenging, I promise. There are videos on here for it. If you are more of a go-getter, you want more. Help you want to get started faster and getting to the fun part, the cooking, and not struggling to find information and putting it all together in a plan that’s gonna work for you.
Just shoot me a DM on Facebook or Instagram. I am happy to help you one-on-one because I’m telling you the clients are out there and they’re hungry for what you’re cooking.
Leave A Comment