Many middle-class families hire landscapers, maids or pool
services to help with their household chores, but most people think
a personal chef is a luxury that’s out of reach.
Two women want to change that point of view.
Many middle-class families hire landscapers, maids or pool services to help with their household chores, but most people think a personal chef is a luxury that’s out of reach.
Two women want to change that point of view.
Linda Kiener of A Personal Palette and Sharon Harmon, The Traveling Chef, offer South Valley residents meal planning, grocery shopping and cooking services.
“It works out great for families who have kids with sports games, music practices, dance classes,” said Harmon. “I know, I have four children of my own who are all grown now.”
Harmon recalled the frustration of busy afternoons spent transporting kids to extracurricular activities, leaving little time to cook nutritious meals.
“You go through the drive-through all the time,” she said, noting that in addition to eating high-fat, low-nutrition food, kids are “learning very poor eating habits.”
Hollister’s Bernadette Abramson has used Kiener’s personal chef service for about a year, and she couldn’t be happier. Abramson is a real estate agent and her husband is a mortgage broker. Their careers and a family of four kids ranging in age from 7 to 20 leave little time to prepare family dinners.
“I didn’t have time to cook and my family was eating fast food all the time,” Abramson recalled. “It was amazing to me. I didn’t have to do anything. She shopped, cooked, cleaned up the mess, and left reheating directions.”
To fight the fast-food syndrome, personal chefs offer customized meal planning, grocery shopping services, nutritious and delicious easy-to-reheat meals, a clean kitchen, and, perhaps best of all, more free time for their clients.
Families with two working parents and multiple kids are a natural market for personal chefs, and both Harmon and Kiener report that busy families are frequent clients. But families on the go aren’t the only market for personal chefs. Potential clients also include single professionals, seniors and people with dietary restrictions.
One of Harmon’s first clients was a single man who travels frequently and who has limited cooking skills. The first time she cooked for him, he was away in Korea for a week.
When he came back and saw his well-stocked freezer, “He was just ecstatic,” Harmon said, adding that replacing his constant diet of airline and fast food with healthy, home-cooked meals led to an unexpected bonus.
“Within the first months of me cooking for him, he lost 20 pounds,” she said.
A personal chef can help delay or prevent an elderly parent’s move to a nursing home or assisted living center, Kiener said.
“Sometimes people will do this for their parent who doesn’t need to be in a nursing home but who can’t do the physical labor of grocery shopping, cooking and clean up,” Kiener said. “It makes sure they’re eating healthy.”
Clearly, many people can use the services of a personal chef, but how many can afford one? Prices vary from company to company, so it’s important to shop around and ask lots of questions of prospective personal chefs.
Kiener charges $35 an hour for families of one to three people, or $40 per hour for families of four to six, plus the cost of groceries, to prepare a week’s worth of meals, including side dishes and one dessert for the week. It typically takes five to six hours to shop and cook each week.
Harmon charges $250 plus the cost of groceries to prepare up to ten meals.
Harmon and Kiener offer similar services, and both women can suggest meals or work from a client’s own recipes. For those on a weight-loss diet like Atkins or South Beach, they can prepare meals that meet the diet’s rules. They interview new clients to determine food allergies, special dietary restrictions, and the clients’ likes and dislikes.
They will shop on the morning of your cooking day to buy groceries. Kiener will also do the rest of your family’s grocery shopping while she’s shopping for your cooking day supplies.
Meals can be refrigerated or frozen, depending on when the clients plan to use them. They can be packaged in individual or family-size servings. Harmon brings all her own equipment to the home and will vacuum-seal meals if that’s the preference.
For the Abramson family, hiring a personal chef brought family meals back to their home.
“It’s expensive, but it’s well worth the money,” Abramson said. “When you think about it, and what it costs to eat out, it works out well. I feel like we’re eating healthier and eating better.”
