How to Start a Home-Based Personal Chef Business

I'm a personal chef and I recently was at The Personal Chefs Network convention and got to hear Denise give an unbelievable energetic presentation. She really knows her stuff and gets you moving! I purchased this book along with How to Start a Catering Business that she wrote. They are both great books even though I've been a personal chef for a few years now. There is never too much learning to do as a business owner or chef. I wish I had it when I started!

Denise Vivaldo was a guest speaker at our recent Personal Chefs Network Annual Convention. She is not only a dynamic speaker, she is a clear and precise writer. I highly recommend this book to anyone considering this great profession. It contains lists and tips and charts and examples that will help you throughout your career. It is not a substitute for professional affiliation, but it is a wonderful starting place.

`How to Start a home-based Personal Chef Business' by caterer / writer, Denise Vivaldo is her second book on a culinary self-employment career, her first being a book on running a home-based catering business. One irony I must point out quickly is that the `home-based' part of the title is just a tad misleading, as the laws of many municipalities prohibit one from cooking food for sale in one's own home without some pretty elaborate licenses and special permits. Some other municipalities require that if you are cooking for a family, this be done in THEIR own kitchen, not yours. Of course, I learn all this from reading Ms. Vivaldo's book, which is one of the things that make it so valuable. I am very happy to see that the lion's share of the book is dedicated to the details of the Personal Chef (PC) business and not the culinary aspects (recipes and cooking skills) of the job. And, while the author does give us 29 pages of menus and recipes, they are primarily case studies in how to do one of the classic 5 X 4 meals a personal chef commonly does. This 5 X 4 schema is one of my biggest surprises in reading this book. I always imagined a personal chef worked exclusively for one or maybe two families and cooked each meal on the day it was to be eaten. In fact, the most common scenario is to prepare five meals of four servings each, one for that day and four for the fridge or freezer. This way, one PC can realistically have up to seven clients, if they are willing to work seven days a week or double up by doing two families' 5 X 4 setup a day. The conditions imposed by having to cook in the client family's own kitchen adds a major subject; how do you maintain a traveling kitchen and how must you maintain stocks in each clients home, if at all. I've occasionally toyed with the idea of taking on the part-time job of PC; however, I believe Ms. Vivaldo has talked me out of this notion. Her book begins with an excellent questionnaire on those things that qualify or disqualify one from being a good PC, and what is the sense of getting into something like this if you will not both enjoy it and do a good job. After all my readings of culinary memoirs, one aspect of PC qualifications is no surprise. To succeed, you really need to be able to work quickly and efficiently, almost, but maybe not quite as rigorously as you need to do in a commercial kitchen (after all, there are some benefits of flexibility in being your own boss and working alone.) It is not NECESSARY that you graduate from a culinary school or work in a professional kitchen to obtain this skill, but both are far better than trying to obtain these skills by yourself. The author did both, and I suspect her success as both a PC and as a caterer testify to this fact. This book also reveals that there are a lot of relatively unpleasant things one must do in order to succeed, not to mention staying legal in your business. The two least tasteful are probably writing a business plan and accurate pric

I have both previous books written by Denise Vivaldo and really like them so was very excited to find this one. I've been a personal chef for a few years now and wish I had this book when I started. (I was using Ms. Vivaldo's catering book as a guide!) Anyway, this would have saved me time and money if I read it years ago. It tells you just what you need to think about before you start in this career. There are all kinds of forms to guide you through pricing, accounting, interviewing new clients, and tons of useful info on marketing your business. There are even recipes and menu suggestions for a variety of different diets and cuisines. It is the best book I've seen to use as a starting point for a PC career. And it's a whole lot less expensive than the PC organizations which may or may not be worth the money...often in excess of $1000.00 for membership, materials, classes, etc. It's not like us cooking professionals are rolling in dough. At least not the green kind of dough!