Transcript
Transcript is autogenerated and may contain typos, errors, omissions etc.
[00:00:00] There is some weird information floating around out there in the interwebs about really what it takes to start a personal chef business. And you know me, if you’ve been here for any amount of time, you know I’m always going to tell it to you straight. So I’m going to tell you what these questions are.
four big myths or misunderstandings, whatever, are floating around out there about starting a personal chef business. So you can make your own informed decision with all the facts. Hey, there’s chef Shelly here. I’ve had a successful personal chef business for over 15 years when I’m not cooking for my own clients.
I’m here helping passionate cooks just like you start your own personal chef business so you can get paid to do what you love. Cook on your own terms, all the freedom, all the joy that you want. If that sounds like something you’re interested in, be sure to like this video, subscribe and hit the little bell so that you never miss one of my weekly videos.
Myth number one I hear a lot is that you have to buy a bunch of equipment. Now, I think the one that this kind of comes out of, well, [00:01:00] two different parts, but one is that you’re, people kind of think about like a big catering business where you need big cambros, big chafers, and big equipment that can cook a big volume of food.
The typical personal chef business, the first service they do is, It’s meal prep services, also known as personal chef services, right? And there’s no commercial equipments, no commercial sized equipment you need to do that. It’s all the regular stuff that you use to cook for yourself all the time, probably.
Because you’re not doing anything in that big a bulk. I mean, yeah, you’re gonna want good knives, good cutting boards, good cooking tools, pots and pans. But loving to cook and being a passionate cook, you probably have all that. That’s the other part, but we always want more, right? And we always want better.
And that’s a hundred percent true. But don’t let that keep you from getting started. If you already have the actual things that you need to do, [00:02:00] you just want to buy more or to upgrade what you have. Now, If you want to get a taste of what actually doing a personal chef service is because you’re not really sure if you have everything you need or even if it’s something you want to do, there’s a link below where you can get my guide on how to do weekly meal prep services for clients.
Do a service for yourself. It walks you through all the steps and you’ll see exactly if you have what you need, if you need to get more of something or whatever when you’re doing a cooking service exactly like you would for a weekly client. Okay. Myth number two, you have to get a loan to be able to start the business.
Sometimes I talk to people who are just really concerned about having enough startup money. They need to get a small business loan or start saving up or whatever. And you don’t need a lot of startup money to start this business. Now, as I said, you probably already have all the equipment or most of the equipment, even though you might want some new [00:03:00] stuff, but you’re not going to need the big commercial equipment.
You’re not going to need, if you’re doing it their traditional way, a commercial kitchen to kit out. With equipment or a lease to pay for or anything like that, you’re not going to have employees and payroll, and you’re not going to, you know, have inventory or anything like that. The biggest things people need that they get hung up on too are that they have to have a website and stuff.
And even if you insist on getting a website before you get started, which you don’t have to do, you can get that for peanuts. Now it’s not like it used to be when you had to hire a web designer to make you a website because you didn’t know how to code HTML. Doing a personal chef business, you’re not going to be selling food off your website so you don’t need online purchasing or anything secure to get clients information or anything.
All you need is some pages with information about your services, [00:04:00] a form they can submit to email you directly if they want, and that’s about it. Not expensive at all. You don’t even have to have a website, though. You could even just do that through a free Facebook page. And that has its own challenges, so that’s a totally different video.
But, startup costs to start a personal chef business, very low. Not anything you need to worry about startup money or getting a loan for. The third myth, and this is a big one, is that you can cook out of your house as a personal chef business and do weekly meal prep right out of your own kitchen. Now I know this one’s a big bummer, but at the time I’m doing this video in 99.
8, and yes I counted, percent of the counties currently in the United States They do not let you cook this type of food out of your house and get paid for it. Cottage laws allow you to bake and do non hazardous foods. That’s an entirely [00:05:00] different business than doing meals. Now some people don’t check with their local health department.
Some people know better and just choose to do it anyway, right? And it’s understandable why there can be a lot of confusion about this because so many people are out there doing things out of their kitchen, right? I would say that the hospitality industry is second only to maybe construction when it comes to people trying to fly under the radar, right?
But the difference here again is when you’re doing something that can make people ill. 48 million people get food poisoning every year. 128, 000 have to go to the hospital. It’s so bad. 3, 000 people die every single year from food poisoning. I really encourage you to consider the liability. Even if you have liability insurance for a personal chef business, it will not cover you if you’re not doing it legally.
And we all know how soo happy people are, right? Not to [00:06:00] mention the people out there that get their jollies by reporting people that they think are doing something wrong. We all know those people. If the internet has shown us nothing else, it’s those kind of people, right? So just take that all into consideration when you’re thinking about whether you have to do it.
out of your home or not. The fourth and biggest myth about starting a personal chef business is that you have to go to culinary school. Now you have to be a great cook and people have to love your food. Do you have to go to culinary school first? No. Do you have to go to culinary school to be a great cook?
No. Now, you’re not running a restaurant in this business. You’re not managing staff, you’re not handling inventory, and all the other things that they teach you in culinary school about being a restaurant chef. Now, even with all that, you know, right, that Gordon Ramsay didn’t go to school, culinary school, Tom Colicchio, Thomas Keller didn’t, right?
[00:07:00] But at the end of the day, if you don’t want to call yourself a chef or even a personal chef because you haven’t gone to culinary school, you do not have to. You can call your business Martha’s Mealtime Solutions and do the exact same thing and just not even deal with being called a chef. Think about Ina Garten, right?
Do you think she can cook? Do you think she’s a kajillionaire? Do you think she went to culinary school, calls herself a chef, any of that? No, it has not stopped her from being hugely successful and making plenty of money, and it does not need to stop you either. If cooking is your passion, if you want to have your own business, getting paid to do what you love, you can get my free guide below.
It’ll walk you through doing meal plans, prep services. If that’s a service you want to do in your own business and you can see what it’s actually like to do the work of a personal chef. Even if you choose not to call yourself chef, you can see if you [00:08:00] have the equipment or if it is going to cost you some money to get started.
Check into your local health department. See if you can cook out of your home kitchen or not. Take all those things into consideration so that you can make. the best decision for you about whether to start a personal chef business or not. Because if you decide you want to, the clients are out there and they’re hungry for what you’re cooking.
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