The professional life of a chef can be exhilarating and fast-paced, if also demanding. Long hours and steep learning curves accompany most catering, restaurant, and personal chef jobs. The culinary industry is also competitive, and 45% of restaurants fail in the first year. But the industry is growing; the restaurant industry is predicted to grow over 5% to $511 billion this year alone, which means that aspiring chefs should have a lot of opportunity to ply their trade.
For every high profile chef in the country, there are hundreds more who fly under the radar while making a living cooking for private parties, menu planning, and catering. Their names might never make the headlines, but they prosper doing what they love.
The Ingredients of a Culinary Career
Personal chef Laura Kaufman describes an average day on her job. "Last weekend I did a dinner party for 6, in a pretty formal, Park Avenue setting. In the morning, I went shopping for an hour and a half, went to two different stores. I went to the clients’ house at 3:30pm and came home at 11:30pm. Sometimes it can be very long. In the past I’ve done cocktail parties for 100, but not anymore, since I have kids."
Working in New York City, where many chefs attempt to make a career out of cooking, Kaufman ensures repeat business by knowing the unspoken rules of the industry that make her clients’ happiness the real bottom line.
"When you work in restaurants, you’re in the back of the house, and you’re dealing with other people who have similar intensity and speed. But one-on-one with a client, you have to know when to talk, when not to talk, not to pry."
Amy Aversa, another chef in New York, caters for private parties. For Amy, no day is an "average" day. "I had a 12-hour day yesterday, with lunch and dinner for 500 people. There was a lot of prepping and cooking throughout the day," she says. But this is just one slice of a personal chef's life. If you want a personal chef career, make sure that "flexibility" is on your culinary resume.
Education is Number One
Kaufman's culinary education provides the crucial basis for her career, and many of the skills that she learned in cooking school she now uses on a daily basis. "The knife skills are critical. You have to learn how to use a knife….Once you have those knife skills, everything falls into place. Another thing you learn in cooking school is organization."
Aversa describes her culinary education as "really intense, but very valuable." She too agrees that knife skills along with organizational abilities define two critical hallmarks of a good culinary education.
"It’s great," Kaufman says about culinary school. "It really teaches you discipline, timing, working with people. It teaches you language, so you can go anywhere and know what you’re talking about. To go into a kitchen where things have to be done instantly, cooking school is very important. It’s important for gaining confidence."
Personal chef has become a popular professional goal at culinary schools. In fact, 32% of the students at one east coast culinary institute expressed an interest in a personal chef career, compared with 12% just four years ago.
Health-Conscious Meal and Menu Planning
In response to the public's growing health concerns, many chefs are now focusing on the art of eating right while eating well. Today's chef cooks for the 100 million-plus American adults with borderline high-risk cholesterol levels. Over 60 million of a chef's clientele is obese. In today’s health-conscious dining climate, chefs recognize the value of preparing healthy meals.
"I like to do healthy gourmet types of cuisine," says Aversa of the types of food she enjoys preparing most. Like Laura Kaufman, she offers meal and menu planning services.
To have weekly meals cooked for them, many people are willing to pay $200 for 10-12 meals plus a chef’s fee. Personal chefs have anywhere from a dozen to nearly 200 clients for whom they cook each month. For busy people looking to improve their diet, hiring a personal chef can be ideal.
The Good Life
Despite the long hours on their feet, personal chefs Kaufman and Aversa enjoy the flexibility their profession gives them to live their lives the way they want. They can take on as many or as few culinary clients as they like, and the two chefs aren’t burdened with weekly schedules that come with restaurant or hotel cooking jobs.
In the high profile food world of New York City, these cooks have laid the foundations of their careers at culinary school, built on their hard work, and enjoyed satisfying, successful lives as personal chefs.