The Professional Personal Chef

The definitive guide to a successful career as a professional personal chef The job of professional personal chef is one of the fastest growing careers in foodservice. People are choosing to become personal chefs in order to have a culinary career on their own terms, with a self-determined schedule and freedom from restaurant strictures. Not only do personal chefs have the chance to work with food in a more creative, personalized way, they are also able to approach their careers with a more entrepreneurial business sense. Written by Candy Wallace, the founder and Executive Director of the American Personal and Private Chef Association (APPCA) and Greg Forte, CEC, CCE, AAC, The Professional Personal Chef offers the definitive guide for starting and growing a successful professional personal chef business. It covers the skills and competencies required for the American Culinary Federation's Personal Certified Chef certification, and lays out a practical road map for this challenging but rewarding career. Filled with resources rich in detail, this useful and engaging text covers: The evolution of the professional personal chef career path The benefits and disadvantages of various forms of business ownership Operating legally Writing an effective business plan Creating a vision statement, mission statement, and elevator speech for your personal chef business Managing and securing finances Identifying target markets and revenue streams Developing marketing and sales plans and quality customer service A day in the life of a personal chef In each chapter, learning outcomes, key terms, and review questions reinforce the key concepts. From the Field features present interviews and real world experiences from working personal chefs. A complete instructor support package providing business resources, syllabi, and project suggestions is posted on a companion Web site at www.wiley.com, and also offers sample business plans, recipes for menus, forms, and other useful documents. Culinary arts instructors seeking a classroom text, as well as individual culinary professionals and amateurs interested in starting or growing a personal chef business, will find The Professional Personal Chef the essential A-to-Z guide to this exciting career.

Book & CD-ROM. According to the U.S. Department of Labor one of the fastest growing segments of the food service business is providing professional personal chef services. Personal chefs can expect to make between $100 and $400 a day every day. Until recently having a chef prepare food for you and your family was considered a luxury for only the wealthy. Today, many individuals and families have discovered that a personal chef service is an affordable, timesaving, and healthy alternative to the stress and time constraints of working to put a wholesome, economical, and tasty meal on the table every night. A personal chef offers a professional service of meal preparation. A client's individual tastes drive the creation of their customised menu. These personalised meals are prepared either in the client s home or your catering kitchen and then packaged, labelled, possibly delivered, and stored in the refrigerator or freezer. Most services include complete grocery shopping, customised menu planning, and storage in oven/microwavable containers. Families in which both spouses work, singles and couples who work long, hard hours, seniors who would rather not or cannot cook anymore, gourmets who love to cook but who do not always have the time, and individuals that have medical conditions, such as wheat/gluten intolerance, milk or other sensitivities, diabetes, or high blood pressure, who require specialised meals will seek your services. This book will not teach you how to cook, although there are some sample menus. What you will learn is all the aspects of starting your business, pricing your products, marketing your business, and conducting your day-to-day business operations. This comprehensive book will show you step-by-step how to set up, operate, and manage a financially successful personal chef business. The author has left no stone unturned in explaining the risky business of food service. The book covers the entire process of a personal chef business from start-up to ongoing management in an easy to understand way, pointing out methods to increase your chances of success and showing you how to avoid the common mistakes that can doom a start-up. The companion CD-ROM contains all the forms used in the book in PDF format for easy use, as well as a detailed business plan, which will help you precisely define your business, identify your goals, and serve as your firm's résumé. The basic components include a current and pro forma balance sheet, an income statement, and a cash flow analysis. While providing detailed instructions and examples, the author leads you through finding a location that will bring success (in your home or a rented kitchen), managing and training employees, accounting and bookkeeping procedures, auditing, successful budgeting, and profit planning development, as well as thousands of great tips and useful guidelines. You also will learn how to draw up a winning business plan, how to set up computer systems to save time and money, how to hire and keep a qualified staff, how to generate high profile public relations, and how to keep bringing customers back. In addition, you will become familiar with basic cost control systems, profitable menu planning, successful kitchen management, equipment layout and planning, food safety and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP), low cost marketing ideas, and low and no cost ways to satisfy customers and build sales. This book covers everything that many companies pay consultants thousands of dollars for. PCRs, as those in the business are nicknamed, will appreciate this valuable resource and reference it in their daily activities as a source for ready-to-use forms, Web sites, operating and cost cutting ideas, and mathematical formulas that can be easily applied to their operations.

From estimating your start-up costs and finding clients to cooking for special needs and staying profitable, this book takes you through every aspect of setting up and running a thriving home-based personal chef business. Whether you’re just starting to learn the trade or are an experienced chef looking to be your own boss, each chapter will guide you on how to build your own successful personal chef business.

Breaking into the Private Chef industry In 2010, Entrepreneur Magazine listed personal and private chefs as one of the fastest growing businesses in the country, with more than 300,000 clients expected in the next 5 years. You love being a chef, but what don't you love? The non-stop pace that goes hand-in-hand with restaurant life? What if you could not only make the same money and create imaginative dishes, but also make your own schedule, take holidays, and have the social life you crave? Acclaimed private chef Alex Tishman has made a name for himself cooking for San Francisco's elite. In this book he shares the secrets of his business with you. With opportunities for careers in the culinary arts expected to grow in the coming decade, there are now over 165 accredited Culinary Arts programs in the U.S. alone. In The Best Book On How To Become A Private Chef, Alex shares his secrets to getting into a top culinary program, as well as guides his readers through the steps to finding a job, building a clientele, and shopping for top-notch ingredients. Readers will take away details such as the day in the life of a private chef, salary and perks of being a private chef, as well as how to plan and execute the perfect ingredients, menu, and demo. Getting into the industry requires more than being a good cook: you need to have an outgoing personality and personal flair, a wide variety of clients, and know how to remain organized and structured in your daily life as a private chef. The Best Book On How To Become A Private Chef is guaranteed to get you on your way to a successful career in the private chef industry. Now, let's get started!

This engaging and approachable (and humorous!) guide to taste and flavor will make you a more skilled and confident home cook. How to Taste outlines the underlying principles of taste, and then takes a deep dive into salt, acid, bitter, sweet, fat, umami, bite (heat), aromatics, and texture. You'll find out how temperature impacts your enjoyment of the dishes you make as does color, alcohol, and more. The handbook goes beyond telling home cooks what ingredients go well together or explaining cooking ratios. You'll learn how to adjust a dish that's too salty or too acidic and how to determine when something might be lacking. It also includes recipes and simple kitchen experiments that illustrate the importance of salt in a dish, or identifies whether you're a "supertaster" or not. Each recipe and experiment highlights the chapter's main lesson. How to Taste will ultimately help you feel confident about why and how various components of a dish are used to create balance, harmony, and deliciousness.

It can be intimidating to shop for seafood. You wonder if it's healthy for you, you worry about whether it's overfished and whether it's caught in ways that harm other species or the environment. Making smart seafood choices has never been more confusing or more important for the planet and our health. Chef and seafood advocate Becky Selengut knows from good fish, and in a voice that's informed but down-to-earth, she untangles the morass surrounding seafood today. From shellfish to finfish to littlefish, fifteen good fish are featured, and the accompanying seventy-five recipes will appeal to a wide range of home cooks: from beginners, to busy parents trying to put a healthy weeknight meal on the table, to the more adventurous who want to create special-occasion dishes. Sommelier April Pogue provides wine pairings for each recipe. Good Fish is an invaluable resource for anyone living on the Pacific Coast. Chef Becky Selengut is an advocate for seafood sustainability and seasonal, regional cuisine. Her writing has been featured in Seattle Homes and Lifestyles and Edible Seattle magazines. She lives in Seattle.

'The Professional Chef' has always provided a complete introduction to classical European cooking, and this all-new edition is completely revised and updated with coverage of increasingly important topics.