Published November 12, 2020 – Updated June 13, 2024
Everything you want to know about how to become a Personal Chef: income, education, typical week etc.
Discover if being a Personal Chef is right for you.
Overview
What is a Personal Chef?
The easiest way to describe a Personal Chef is to compare it to being a Private Chef.
Private Chefs are employees and work full time for one family, cooking and serving.
Personal Chefs are more like contractors. We cook for multiple families or clients and get paid per cook day or job. The food is left packaged and labeled in the fridge or freezer for them to eat at their convenience.
Private Chefs are employees, work regularly scheduled hours, are onsite full-time, and at their client’s beck and call.
Personal Chefs have more control over their work time. You decide how much and when you want to work.
Job Description for a Personal Chef
Personal Chefs prepare meals for people. Period.
That’s basically the job description of a personal chef.
It doesn’t matter if they’re individuals, families, or even sometimes other clients like businesses. If they eat, we can cook for them.
We don’t work in commercial kitchens. Most personal chefs cook in the client’s home, business, or venue the event will be at.
There are some states/counties/cities that are licensing home kitchens for business use. This will revolutionize the personal chef industry and make it even better.
To check if your area is licensing home kitchens, follow the progress, and support the movement, check out Cook Alliance.
Sure, you’ll come across someone who’s working out of a commercial kitchen, but at that point they are more of a caterer or meal delivery service.
What does a Personal Chef do?
There are many services that Personal Chefs can offer to clients, but the most common are:
Preparing A Week’s Worth Of Dinners
This is the foundation of a Personal Chef’s business. It’s referred to as ‘personal chef services’ or more commonly now as ‘meal prep services’. The client chooses what they want to eat for the week, the personal chef shops, prepares the food, packages it up, puts it in the clients fridge, cleans, and gets paid.
Small Catering
Most Personal Chefs do small catering for clients. This can be anything like:
- Romantic dinners for 2
- Seated dinner parties
- Small event buffet catering
- Party trays/appetizer spread/grazing table
- Corporate lunches/club meeting
- Brunch as for a bridal shower
- Cocktail party with passed hors d’oeuvres
- Holiday parties with special menus
Cooking Classes and Demonstrations
Some personal chefs teach cooking lessons to individuals. These can be on basic cooking skills, a specific food style, technique, or many other things. This can be done in person or online.
There are cooking lessons to a group where you are in front leading a cooking demonstration. At the end the audience might enjoy the food prepared. This can also be done in person or online.
Then there are group cooking lessons where you are managing multiple people to prepare a menu that they then enjoy together. This is done in person.
Other Services Personal Chefs Offer
There are many other services you might offer like 30 day Whole 30 service, kitchen setup or organization, meal planning, recipe development, or even selling products from home under local Cottage Laws.
The ‘big three’ Weekly Meal Prep Services, Small Catering, and Cooking Lessons are by far the most popular and profitable for a Personal Chef.
Physical Personal Chef Work
There can be heavy lifting and a lot of crap to haul, depending on how efficient you pack.
You will need to stand for hours and cook. Then you need to clean the kitchen.
For a new Personal Chef you can expect this to take 6-8 hours. For experienced Personal Chefs it can be closer to 4.
Mental Personal Chef Work
As an entrepreneur with your own business, there is a lot of paperwork and organization to be done. When you are starting you need to:
- Compile your recipe collection
- Decide your services and pricing
- Set up your business entity and checking account
- Get liability insurance
- Create marketing materials
- Create business forms
- Get clients
When your business is up and running, there will be ongoing work:
- responding to inquiries
- running a waitlist when you’re fully booked
- Providing entree lists or menus to clients
- Pulling recipes and making grocery lists
- Preparing invoices and labels if needed
- Bookkeeping and taxes
- Ongoing marketing to get clients
Company Size and Coworkers
You are a ‘solopreneur’ as they say when you are a one person show.
You may hire part-time support like a bookkeeper, accountant, attorney, marketing support, kitchen cleaning help, staff for catering etc. but again, having a personal chef business is not having a commercial kitchen with a lease, inventory, staff on payroll etc.
Other people whom you may consider support staff are any vendors you buy from. This is everyone from the grocery store manager, butcher, seafood manager, produce manager, venue staff, rental company if you’re doing catering etc.
The more you build relationships with these people the smoother your job will be and the better your client’s experience with you will be.
What Does A Personal Chef Do In An Average Week?
For personal chef services, also known as weekly meal prep services, you talk to clients who have a service coming up and get their menu selections.
Then you pull the recipes and do the labels, grocery list, invoice, and any other paperwork needed.
On each client’s cook day, you load equipment you need, do the grocery shopping for what you’ll be cooking, go to the client’s home, and cook their menu.
Cool, package, and store their food however they would like it. Clean up and get paid.
At the end of each day, or however you want to do it, you’d make your deposit and then enter your expenses and deposit into your bookkeeping system.
Some days you field phone calls and emails from prospective clients. You meet with them to discuss their needs and your services, and then schedule their cook days.
When you’re just starting out you will spend a lot more time marketing to get clients than cooking. Then there will be a balance of both.
Finally, when you’re fully booked, you can run a wait list and spend all your time cooking instead of working to get new clients.
Where Does A Personal Chef Work?
You can work anywhere from the client’s home, to an onsite location.
If you’re in an area with MEHKOs (Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen Operation) where they are licensing home kitchens, you may work out of your own kitchen.
You’d do your paperwork in your home office. Even if that’s the kitchen table.
Career and Job Satisfaction
According to Career Explorer who has surveyed personal chefs, satisfaction is rated Above Average, in the top 25% of all careers.
Of course it is!
First, you’re doing the thing you’re most passionate about, cooking.
And second, people are paying you for it. Paying you well.
And of course I’m biased! I work when I want, for whom I want, take time off when I want, and I spend all the time I want with my family and friends.
How To Become A Personal Chef
Education Needed
There is no required education to be a Personal Chef.
You don’t need a degree or certification in culinary arts or cooking. You can be successful as a self taught cook.
You do need to be a great, confident cook. You should work on improving and/or get some basic training in any areas you’re lacking if you need it.
You don’t need a business or marketing degree.
You do need to know or learn things like basic bookkeeping or hire someone to manage your books. You will need to learn some marketing to get clients if you don’t already have people ready to hire you.
What training do Personal Chefs need?
There is no special or required training to become a Personal Chef. Being any type of chef is not a regulated profession like being a medical doctor, attorney at law, or therapist. That’s why there are ‘self taught’ chefs.
There are things that are recommended like food safety training so you are providing professional service to paying clients..
What skills does a Personal Chef need?
You need to be able to cook well.
Period.
In order to be above board, and run your business as a business and not some half assed cookery, you need to look into requirements for where you live. To protect yourself, you’ll want to look into three things:
- Setup an LLC, or other entity, for your business
- Get liability insurance
- Check into whether you need a business license and/or a sales tax license. Different states, counties, and cities have different requirements.
Education Needed
There is no required education to be a Personal Chef.
You don’t need a degree in culinary arts. Or even have any culinary school education. You don’t even need a business or other degree.
But, you should get some basic training in any areas you’re lacking. If you can’t balance your checkbook you need to either learn how to or hire an accountant to manage your books.
What training do Personal Chefs need?
There is no special or required training to become a Personal Chef. Being any type of chef is not a regulated profession like being a medical doctor, attorney at law, or therapist. That’s why there are ‘self taught’ chefs.
There are things that are recommended like food safety training so you are providing professional service to paying clients..
What skills does a Personal Chef need?
You need to be able to cook well.
Period.
It doesn’t matter if you went to culinary school or not.
It doesn’t matter if you worked in restaurants for a million years.
And it doesn’t matter if your passion is gourmet, or comfort food, or vegan, keto, gluten-free, Mexican, Vietnamese, or anything else. There are clients who want what you have to offer.
BUT you have to be able to cook it well.
You do not need to go to culinary school or have restaurant experience.
Will that experience help? Maybe, but there are plenty of successful Personal Chefs without it.
What skills besides cooking do I need?
Being a Personal Chef is a one person show. You need to be able to run your business in addition to being a great cook. You will be marketing for clients, doing your bookkeeping, and a million other things that small business owners have to do.
What equipment do I need to be a personal chef?
Cooking equipment can vary wildly from client to client. Some may be foodies and have a gorgeous kitchen full of everything you could ever dream of.
And some don’t even have a spatula.
You need to have everything you will need, to cook whatever you’re cooking that day. So check the client’s kitchen when you’re first hired, and then bring what you need.
And you know how it is when you’re into cooking. If you’re like me you have way more than you should, including appliances you rarely if ever use! Chocolate tempering machine anyone???
How much money can you make as a Personal Chef?
Speaking of making good money, let’s talk about how much you can make as a Personal Chef.
How much do personal chef services cost?
For someone doing personal chef services, also known as weekly meal prep services, we researched pricing from over 60 personal chefs across the United States. For service fee only (not including the cost of groceries) for one cook day there is a range from $225 to over $600. The median is $350. You can get a copy of the Personal Chef Pricing Report here.
This is consistent with the American Private and Personal Chef Associations findings.
How much do personal chefs charge for catering?
Catering pricing is completely different. For information on pricing catering services, check out this post.
Personal Chef Salary
To be clear, Personal Chefs are not salaried.
They are more like contractors. They get paid per cook day or event.
Income for Personal Chefs
If a personal chef is only doing weekly meal prep and is working 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, two weeks off for vacation, making the average daily rate of $332, that would be $83,000 per year.
Most personal chefs do not work 5 days a week and make less per year. They work part-time, not full-time.
According to the Canadian Personal Chef Association, on average their Personal Chefs work three to four days a week, take multiple vacations a year, and end up earning between $35000 and $45000.
Not bad for part time work! I know if I worked at my kids’ school as a receptionist full time, it would be more hours and I’d make about $26000 a year for a full-time job.
How much can you really make as a Personal Chef?
Your income as a Personal Chef will be determined by how much you WANT to work, and then how much time and effort you dedicate to getting clients, providing outstanding service, and keeping clients.
The other biggest factors are where you live and, to be honest, how good you are.
Personal Chefs in New York and San Francisco make more than Personal Chefs in small midwestern towns.
Does that mean you can’t be successful as a Personal Chef if you live in a small town, or rural area, or the suburbs?
Not At. All.
Just like high-end urban Personal Chefs, you need to determine your income and work goals, find your specialty and most likely client base, and market well to your ideal client.
More experienced Personal Chefs have recommendations, testimonials, and generally better cooking skills. They also can be more professional and confident which goes a long way with clients.
That being said, you can be extremely competent and confident as a new Personal Chef. You need to own it!
Personal Chef Job Listings
Becoming a Personal Chef and starting your own business is really how it works.
There are a few places that list Personal Chef jobs like Zip Recruiter.
You’ll need to be sure that the job position is actually for a Personal Chef and not a Private Chef, or even a restaurant or cafeteria chef.
There are also companies that hire personal chefs to work for them like Friend That Cooks and Chefs For Seniors. They handle all the marketing and send you out to the clients.
These companies hire you to work for them on an hourly basis, part-time or full-time, and some include benefits. These are not the places to find clients if you have your own personal chef business.
How To Start A Personal Chef Business
Starting your personal chef business is like starting any small business.
You will want to develop your business plan as you research the following:
- Decide on your cooking specialty, the services you want to offer, and your pricing.
- Determine local regulations for business and health codes, tax requirements, insurance, and what type of business organization you want to have (i.e. LLC etc).
- Create your recipe collection and menus.
- Purchase any necessary equipment needed.
- Develop your ideal client profile based on your target market for your specialty.
- Create a marketing plan and materials to get clients.
- Refine your processes and systems as needed.
Advice For Becoming A Personal Chef
Don’t try to cook everything to please everyone. When I started out in 2002 the market was flooded with fad diet books, “The Zone, Fat-flush Diet, Atkins, Southbeach, yada, yada. I was asked to and stupidly read and cooked from everyone of them. It was futile. Now the fads are Paleo, Gluten-free, Blood-type Diet, etc. Don’t get trapped. Find a niche market and stick to it. Kosher, Diabetic, Vegan, home-medical recovery e.g. Chemo Patients….. whatever the needs are in your area that no one else is addressing. My niche market happens to be affluent seniors. The average age of my clients is 76. My oldest and longest clients are 92 & 94 and I’ve been cooking for them for 9 years, catered their anniversary and 90th birthdays.
Chef Lynn Linde, Big Red Chef LLC Personal Chef Service ~ www.BigRedChef.com ~ La Cruces, New Mexico, USI will say that although we are cooks, running our own business requires us to also be marketers, salespeople, customer service, bookkeepers, graphic designers, website builders, and whatever else has to get done. Sharing info helps to position yourself as an expert, once people view you as such then you can offer solutions to their needs. Don’t give up, you’ll get there. ~ www.TaylorDForTaste.com ~ Caledon, Ontario, Canada
Chef Jason Taylor, Taylor'd For Taste Personal Chef ServiceConclusion
In conclusion, being a Personal Chef can be an extremely rewarding career both personally and financially if you have a passion for cooking and a good work ethic.
Still have questions? Feel free to leave them in the comments.
How To Do Weekly Meal Prep
Get paid to do what you love without spending tens of thousands of dollars and years of your life on culinary school.
In this guide you’ll get:
- Discover the personal chef service you can provide for paying clients, that keeps your nights and weekends for you.
- Step by step plan that will have people loving your cooking and keep them coming back for more.
- Techniques that Personal Chefs use when getting paid to cook, that amateur cooks don’t know about.
- What you must do to get great quality ingredients and better service at the grocery store.
- Exactly how to plan, shop, and cook efficiently to maximize your profit.
- Don’t miss the PRO TIP on page 7 for the easiest way to get free marketing for your personal chef business.
This article is VERY helpful. Thank you! I’m not seeing how to download the guide. I don’t see a link or anything on the page.
-Jessica
Hi Jessica – near the bottom of the page is where you can enter your email address to have the guide sent to you. In the meantime I’ll email it to you directly!
Hello,
Your post came like delivered from heaven. Sometimes I think phones besides listening, also read minds!
I’m a professional Chef, with 10 year experience in the industry. I haven’t set foot on a professional kitchen for many years as I was busy growing my babies. Now we just moved to a new city and babies are old enough to let mami cook part time, could really use the extra income.
So, I have been thinking over and over where to start! But really can be confusing.
Thank you a thousand for your post, it already carved a path for me to follow and, Please! Can I have a copy of your guide? Thank you in advance
~ Virginia LC
Hi Virgina, I’ll send it over check your spam/promotions if you don’t see it
Just got to say this already is so helpful. I recently was asked by a friend, who’s friend was looking for a Chef for a client. I’ve worked in a 5 star hotel for about 6 years now (I was a sushi chef prior to this hotel and came in as lead garde manger), but never have done private or personal clients.
Where to even start! Do I need to get a license off the bat? What is a typical Interview like, would this be similar to staging (they did mention a cooking trial)? Does needed supplies come out of my personal budget? Do you ever order food, example, a specific dessert they want? How far can we push of what we are willing and can not do? Finally, I know you mention no schooling, but I can imagine with all the trends brushing up on a basic nutrition class couldn’t hurt?
Thank you again for this whole article. It definitely helped in many other questions I have rattling around. Cheers! Thanks again!
Hi Chef! The great thing about having your own business, instead of working in a hotel or for a restaurant, is YOU get to choose. Do you want to cook a trial or just have an interview? Do you want to have a price that includes everything or get reimbursed? Do you want to make desserts or not? The only thing I won’t do (so far) is prep eel. Do you want to take a nutrition class? Are you going to target people who are concerned with the nutrition aspect of food? You can check with your city/county/state about licensing, where I am you don’t need it as a personal chef. I do have an LLC for tax purposes.
I have been trying to find out what permits and licenses I’ll need to start a personal chef service.
Hi Serena – it’s different in each city/county/state. Google you local government office and they will be able to tell you exactly. It’s the same as a private chef.
Great information. I’m a Le Cordon Bleu graduate and have been a cook for about five years in the San Francisco Bay Area and have recently moved with aspirations of of becoming a personal chef and your site has me even more excited. Prior to my current culinary career I was in the military with the last few years acting as an instructor (not food related), and fell in love with the teaching/mentoring process. The only thing that rivals my love of food is the idea of passing that passion and knowledge to others willing to learn, so the potential for that to be part of the personal chef world really excites me. From your experience, is it financially “smart” for this to be a front runner in advertisement or should it be just something I would offer as an option within my services? I know there are many variables at play when considering this question, but I’m just curious of your opinion.
All aspects of this culinary avenue has me drooling and I’m looking forward to the journey. Thank you for supplying the amuse bouche in my hopefully fruitful culinary adventure. Cheers!
Financially it doesn’t matter if you lead with teaching cooking or cooking for people. As long as your marketing is done well and consistently you may design your personal chef business any way you like!
i love this idea
Please send a guide , thanks
Done – look for it in your inbox or PROMOTIONS or spam folders.
Thanks for taking the time to write and put this together.
I’m loving this information and I am so excited about starting my personal chef business!!!
You would need to check with who you’re turning in the essay to what their requirements are for sources
Good afternoon Chef!
I’m currently a FOH restaurant manager. No cooking school and very little professional cooking experience which was Years ago. And that was pantry/prep, salads, and deli -type work. I Have, however, been cooking since age four and can do quite a bit at home with regard to both technique and ingredients. I’m looking at this as a possible alternative to working in restaurants as I’m getting fed up with the general public’s behavior in restaurants. I’ll do better with a far smaller ‘niche market’ of regulars with whom I have an ongoing professional relationship. Thank you for this article. Before reading this I really had no idea where to start. Now I have some clue where to begin.
Hi Aaron – I hear you, restaurant can be grueling under the best of conditions, let alone in today’s climate. Glad you found the info helpful be sure to get the free guide so you can get a real taste of what having a personal chef biz is like.
I am interested. It’s on my mind a long time
Im very interested in becoming a personal chef
would love a copy. Thanks
You got it! Check your spam/promotions if you don’t see it 🙂
Sent! Let me know if you don’t see it in your inbox check spam/promotions
Thank you for making this article fun and understandable, it’s has offered answers to my numerous questions. You are appreciated.
Reading this has been very helpful and informative. I was one of those people that thought culinary school was a must, but apparently it’s not. I do have a full time job but I would like to find a client(s) who would only need my services maybe a few times a month. Do you think that’s possible? Please send me a copy. Can’t wait
Absolutely you can have clients who are once or twice a month. You can easily work part time or on the side of your full time job.
I’d love a copy. Thank you for taking the time great article
Sent! Let me know if you don’t see it in your inbox – check spam/promotions too
I’m delighted you pointed out that personal chefs are more akin to independent contractors that provide cooking services to several households or clients and are compensated by cook day or task. I’m hoping I can locate a personal caterer for my son’s birthday party next month since I don’t think I have the ability to cook for at least 50 people. Thanks for explaining how personal chefs can help individuals like me that struggle with cooking.
As someone who has not attended culinary school is it out of the realm of possibility to become a personal chef? Cooking is the only thing I truly enjoy. I have a family and kids so school is not possible at the moment (bills need to be paid)
Hi Joshua – the vast majority of personal chefs haven’t gone to culinary school. Neither did Gordon Ramsay. You can do just fine as a personal chef without it.
Hi Chef Shelley,
This is great information, thank you!
I worked for a family in my neighborhood for almost two years, after they had suffered a family tragedy. I had never done this before, but they thought I cooked well and asked me to do it. I agreed, despite my working part time in a different field. I chose their menu, shopped, cooked out of my kitchen, and brought the food over to their home a few times a week. I also bought all the groceries myself and was paid one lump sum for “parts and labor”. However, as inflation became higher, I made much less profit.
I did enjoy the work and now considering advertising and finding another client or two, labeling myself as a Personal Cook. I have two questions, if you don’t mind:
Does everything you said still apply if I’m working out of my own kitchen?
Should I exclude the cost of groceries from my salary and bill that part separately? I certainly didn’t make the amount of money you quoted, but this was a special circumstance. I want to do a better job with the finances next time.
Thank you!
Great questions Michelle – you’ll need to check with your city to see if it’s legal to cook out of your home or if you’ll need to do it in the clients home or out of a commercial kitchen. I definitely don’t recommend all in one pricing, you saw what can happen with that. My YouTube video can help you with your pricing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwcalWmsIvU
Thank you so much!! I’ll watch the video. Much appreciated!
Hi:
Do you have any materials that can help with marketing, I’m thinking in getting a marketing person to do it.
Any recommendations will be really appreciated.
Thanks
Hi Brenda – what about marketing do you need help with? Have you written a marketing plan? Have you taken any clients yet?
Hi! Thank you for this! I was just wondering for your grocery trips is that part of your pay or does clients reimburse you
Glad that it helped you Coleen! I recommend reimbursement, you can learn more about pricing meal prep services in the video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwcalWmsIvU
This is so helpful. Please can I have a copy of your guide.
Hi Hellen – you can get the guide by filling the form on this page with you email and it will come to you immediately!
Love this
Ii’d love to receive a copy of your guide, if it’s still available. Thank you for this extremely helpful information.
Best regards,
Cynthia
Hi Cynthia – sorry this reply took so long, it went to junk folder for some reason – did you get the guide from the link above yet?