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| Opportunities & Exposures: Family |
Home Cooking
Candy Wallace
11/01/2004
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Contrary to popular belief, healthy eating and convenience are not mutually
exclusive. Increasingly, many busy individuals and families are hiring personal
chefs to create delicious, home-cooked meals using only fresh, natural
ingredients. Personal chefs are not the type of live-in gourmet cooks one might
employ to create multicourse formal meals each night in large dining rooms.
Rather, they are highly trained professionals who work with us to custom design
meal programs that meet our specific tastes and dietary needs. They also
accommodate—and in many cases facilitate—our lifestyles. These chefs do all the
shopping, and then prepare multiple meals on a single cook-date in our kitchens,
storing those meals appropriately for our future enjoyment.
Too often,
harried, hungry Americans choose convenience over nutrition. For these
individuals, the time needed to prepare a meal from scratch is a luxury they no
longer have. They may not realize, however, that on-the-go foods, while
convenient, are often loaded with fillers, stabilizers, nitrates and a host of
other less-than-healthy additives.
Personal chefs offer a healthier
alternative. Other than fine-dining restaurant chefs who prepare entirely fresh
entrees in the kitchen, or perhaps our grandmothers who cook out of their summer
gardens, personal chefs are among the last “scratch” cooks working today.
Nothing they prepare is coming out of a jar, a can or a box, as is the case in
many franchise operations and fast-casual restaurants these days.
Anyone
familiar with the often unpronounceable lists of ingredients that appear on food
packaging understands the appeal of scratch cooking—an appeal that is growing. A
recent survey by the American Personal Chef Association (APCA) identified more
than 9,000 working personal chefs currently working in the United States. APCA
projects this number will increase to more than 20,000 in the next five
years.
The personal chef industry is relatively new, having gained visibility
over the last decade as more and more people discover that in-home food
preparation is eminently affordable for the service that is being provided.
Typically, meal service provided by a personal chef costs between $15 and $20
per serving, which is comparable, if not favorable, to prices charged by many
popular restaurants these days. This combination of price, convenience and
quality makes personal chef services among the fastest-growing segments of the
personal services industry.
Kitchen Confidential
The growing popularity of personal chefs is the clear
result of demand and supply. The typical client for such services often has
special culinary needs: professionals who do not have time to cook; seniors who
want to remain independent, healthy and in their own homes as long as possible;
individuals with medical conditions who may have specific dietary needs; the
list goes on and on. The typical chef has formal culinary training, and some
experience working in hotel and restaurant kitchens. Increasingly, many of these
talented individuals come to appreciate the flexibility and satisfaction of
cooking for individuals.
Because of the personal nature of the work that
these chefs do—they know our personal tastes and dietary needs, not to mention
the fact that they actually cook in our kitchens—finding the right chef is
important. Though this relationship is in some ways intimate, it is a business
relationship, and any chef we hire should have a municipal business license from
the city in which they work. Furthermore, he or she should possess a “safe food
handler” certification from the National Restaurant Association, plus carry at
least $2 million in liability insurance. The APCA, in concert with the American
Culinary Federation, also provides a professional certification that indicates
that an individual is well versed in, and will adhere to, the highest standards
of the personal chef industry. Finally, we should ask for personal references
and, most importantly, for samples of a prospective chef’s handiwork.
The
pace of our lives shows no sign of slowing, and the abundance of processed foods
will only grow. Yet, as more culinary professionals leave hotels and restaurants
to become personal chefs, and as culinary schools offer programs specific to the
personal chef industry, we can look forward to dinnertime, with healthy meals
prepared to our standards in our own homes. | Candy Wallace is founder and executive director of the American
Personal Chef Association. |
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