Personal Chef salary, hourly, and daily rate versus Private Chef salary and hourly rate. Who is really bringing home the bacon?
First let’s just get this out of the way. A Private Chef and a Personal Chef are two totally different things.
Sort of.
They both work in the client’s home.
They both cook.
That’s where the similarities end.
What is a Private Chef?
- Private Chefs are employees and are salaried.
- They are employed full-time and paid biweekly or on whatever regular schedule they set up with their employer.
- If you lose your one client you’re unemployed and looking for work.
Imagine leaving for work at 6am and fighting traffic. Getting to your client’s house. Seeing that they’ve eaten everything in the fridge. Managing to pull breakfast together.
Going to the store to restock groceries and then sitting around waiting to make lunch. Making lunch and having the client decide they want something different. Going back to the store. Making lunch again.
Wiping down the counters for the third time waiting for someone to need a snack.
Serving appetizers at cocktail hour and trying to keep your client from getting hammered and ruining dinner.
Your client deciding they want dinner two hours later so your salmon filets that are just finishing in the oven will have to be repurposed for something else.
Finally finishing up at 10pm and heading home.
Getting to their house the next morning and having them tell you they’re spending winter in the South of France so won’t need you any longer.
That, my friend, is a Private Chef.
What is a Personal Chef?
How does this sound instead?
Dropping the kids off at school and heading to the grocery store first thing in the morning when it’s empty.
Buying the groceries for exactly what you’re client wants to eat. Rolling up to their house and unloading in the kitchen.
Cooking for about four hours. Packaging and labeling the food and putting it in the fridge. Cleaning the kitchen. Getting a check.
Maybe grabbing a snack or latte on your way to pick the kids up from school. Going home. Or to practice/game/rehearsal etc.
Having dinner with your family. Tucking your kids into bed.
- Personal Chefs are more like contractors. We are paid per job.
- So if I’m cooking a week’s worth of dinners for a regular weekly client, whether it takes me four hours or six hours, they are paying for the service they receive, not specifically my time. (Although I do take my time into consideration when I determine my pricing.)
- And multiple clients mean less risk to you. If one leaves you are still working for your other clients.
This is important to consider is so that we can compare apples to apples.
Private Chefs are salaried. Apples
Personal Chefs are by the job which is more like hourly. Oranges
Private Chef Salary and Hourly
So the average Private Chef makes about 70k according to Zip Recruiter, 62k according to PayScale, and 48k according to Glass Door. (And yes, I’m rounding.) Assuming they’re working full-time 50 weeks a year, that makes the hourly rate $35, $31, and $24 respectively.
For this discussion I’m going to totally ignore overtime, travelling with the family, not working if they’re travelling, being on call and a million other variables like experience and location.

Personal Chef Daily Rate
After researching Personal Chefs across the country, the range of pay for a regular weekly service client ranged from $200 to $500. (The median and the average were $333 by the way if you’re a smarty pants
This is exactly in line with the American Personal and Private Chef Association who stated: Depending on the market in which you live, our personal chefs generally report an income between $200 and $500 a day.

To see how Personal Chefs price in your area, get your copy of the Personal Chef Pricing Report here. It includes over 60 chefs across the country and what their pricing is.
Personal Chef Salary and Hourly
Assuming that they’re working full-time 50 weeks a year that makes the salaries 50k, 83k, and 125k. The hourly rates would be $25, $42, $63.
For this discussion I’m going to totally ignore that one cook day is actually much less than 8 hours which means the hourly rates are actually higher, not working if clients are travelling, and income from catering being at different rates, experience, and location.
In conclusion
I don’t know why anyone would want to be a Private Chef.
Personal Chefs have more stability, better hours, and can make a LOT more money.
But that’s fine with me. It leaves more clients for us Personal Chefs
How To Cook A Personal Chef Service
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.

Download the guide to learn how to cook a personal chef service so you can get paid to do what you love.
Leave A Comment