Transcript
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[00:00:00] Starting a part time personal chef business versus a full time personal chef business has a lot in common. You still have to make all the decisions, have goals, make a plan, but there are some huge differences that if you just want to be part time, you especially if you want to be part time on the side of a full time job or just any other job that you really have to take into consideration and do differently.
That’s what I’m going to break down here today. Hey there, Chef Shelley here. I’ve had a personal chef business for over 15 years, and when I’m not cooking for my own clients, I’m I help passionate cooks just like you start your own personal chef business so that you can get paid to do what you love, cook on your own terms without sacrificing all your nights, weekends, holidays, family life, or without having to go to culinary school if you’re not able to.
If that’s something you’re interested in, be sure to [00:01:00] like, subscribe, and hit the little bell so that you never miss one of my weekly videos.
One of the main things that you’re going to need to take into consideration is how much time are you working at your job? And how much time do you have left over to work on your business?
So let’s talk about the time commitment of starting your own business. This is something that you really need to take into consideration if you’re starting this on the side of a full time job or just another job. And just in general, even if you’re just wanting to start this part time, how much time do you have available to work on your business?
Realistically, if you’re working full time job and you have two days off a week, do you really want to cook for clients on both of your days off? If you want to do personal chef services, aka meal prep services, and you have one weekly client, that’s one cook day right there. If you have two clients, and [00:02:00] you don’t want to work on both your days off, would you be able to do both of them in one day?
That’s hard. That takes a lot of skill, a lot of time, and a lot of organization. And so you really need to think about how you’re going to balance your existing work time, if you already have a job, with your days off. Or the other side of that is, if you’re just wanting to set this up part time, and you’re not being really productive.
How much time are you going to commit to a week to working on your business, getting it started, and what is your goal of how much time you want to be working? That way you’ll set the business up the way you want it to be and not end up working nights when you don’t want to or having too many clients or anything like that.
Now that’s kind of talking about meal prep services. If you want to do catering, what you need to consider is the most common time for catering is Saturday nights. It’s [00:03:00] probably followed by Friday nights or Sundays, brunches, kind of things like that, depending on what type of catering you’re going to do, what type of menus you like to handle and things like that.
So if you have one catering job a week on Saturday nights. You’re going to be not just working the actual job on that Saturday night, but how much time are you going to have to spend on it ahead of time working with the client, doing the planning, doing the prep work, and things like that. You’re really going to have to consider the whole experience.
If you could extend the working time with one catering job, whether you’re doing just romantic dinners for two, or seated dinners up to eight, or if you’re doing larger buffet styles, think about your whole time commitment for doing one event, and then how many of those would you be able to work into your schedule if you want or [00:04:00] can only be part time?
When you really think about this, again, breaking down your schedule, you might not want to spend as much time as something like catering on a Saturday night might require. Again, this isn’t to say it can’t be done. If you are a hustler and you really want to put the work in and you are working a full time job, again, you can do two weekly clients on one day.
You can do a weekly client after work on Mondays. You could, in theory, do a catering every Saturday night. I just want you to realize again that in terms of when you’re making these decisions, you want to be thinking about that so that you’re setting your goals and making a plan looking at what you want your work to look like and really what you’ll be able to do.
Since you have limited time, either having another job or choosing to limit how much time you’re going to [00:05:00] work, you’re going to want to allocate specific hours or days of the week to work on your personal chef business while you’re still balancing your other job, your family commitments, or your personal life.
And realize that if you are wanting to go from Part time on the side of a full time job to having your personal chef business be your full time job, you’re still going to have to start with only a few clients and it’s going to take you longer to build your business. To take that even one step further, if you want to quit your full time job at some point, you’re probably going to have to jump the canyon.
And that means with a full time job, you probably won’t be able to ramp all the way up to full time income on the side of that job. So at some point, you’re going to have to skip from Making a little bit less than you want to and making that up after you leave your full time job. And the best way to [00:06:00] do that is weekly meal prep clients, starting a wait list, gettering, getting catering jobs booked up for a couple months ahead.
Then you know you can leave your full time job and make that transition. But I’m getting off track. We’re supposed to be focusing on part time, right? So again, when you want to be part time, one of the benefits about this is, is, or this could be a challenge for some people, you get to be super selective about the clients that you take.
Because if you’re only going to work one day a week with one meal prep services client, you certainly do not. want to get stuck with a client that you don’t like, who’s over demanding, over nitpicky, who just kind of makes you miserable. If you’re just doing it one day a week, you’re probably doing it because you are so passionate about it.
So you want to make sure that you work with a client that you really gel with. The other side of that is too, if you’re only able to work one day or two [00:07:00] days a week, you’re probably going to need to coordinate with clients who are able to have services on the days that you are available. Like I’ve talked about before, weekly.
meal prep clients generally like to be at the beginning of the week. Mondays, maybe they’ll go for Tuesday or Sunday. If someone’s only doing every other week or once a month, that’s fantastic. They are happy to be fit in anywhere. So you’ll want to think about that when you’re looking at where in your schedule can take a client and clearly communicating that when you talk to potential clients.
Now let’s getting into kind of the having part time to be able to start your personal chef business. You’re going to want to make sure that you are maximizing your planning time because it’s limited. Set specific results you want to get out of the time you have. Don’t just say, I’m going to work on my business plan today or I’m going [00:08:00] to, you know, work on my flyer in the.
couple hours I have here. You need to decide in this time block I am going to make these decisions or I am going to finish half my business plan. I’m going to reach out to five people about my services. I will finish five menus and get the pricing calculated for my catering menu. Something like that.
The result that you want to get at the end of the time, the limited valuable time you have to get your planning done. And then, moving on into the business y, business y stuff. Even if you’re just part time, you’re still going to need to look into local licenses, you know, check with your city to see what’s required, check with your health department to see where you need to be cooking, what kind of business entity you want to get set up, and if you’re going to get liability insurance.
All those things stay the same whether you’re doing this as a full time business [00:09:00] or a part time business. Now, you’re going to want to focus on specific areas of improvement that are going to have the most impact impact on your part time business, whether that’s getting your recipe collection together or practicing your meal prep services, whatever it is in the beginning.
You can go below this video and get my free guide on how to do meal prep services for clients and start getting your practice in if that’s what you need to work on the most. Because I’m telling you, whether you want to be part time or full time, the clients are out there. And they’re hungry for what you’re cooking.
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