You love to cook, but the monotony of working in a restaurant would bore you to tears, and you don’t want to limit your culinary pursuits or income by being a full-time employee. You’re an entrepreneur at heart who wants to do your own thing, so you need to know how to become a private chef.
We’ll show you how to start your own personal chef business right here on the Airmart food ordering platform.
What does a private chef do?
Private chefs work independently from restaurants. They may cook for a select few clients for special occasions or prepare daily meals for a single family.
How to Become a Private Chef
Steps to becoming a private chef/personal chef:
- Hone your cooking skills
- Test dishes on friends and family
- Get your home kitchen approved or find a commercial kitchen space
- Host dinner parties where people can pay for a plate
- Ask participants to leave reviews
- Post your offerings on Airmart (catering, individual meals, meal prepping, etc.)
- Share your Airmart shop on social media
- Host pop-ups at other local businesses
For a real-life example of how an entrepreneur followed these steps to become a private chef, check out Chef Christina Alexis’ story here. The owner of The Pleasure Principle Supper Club and Dining Events started her cooking venture with a dinner party of strangers and now offers event catering and private dining experiences.
Pros of being a private chef
Working as a private chef can give you the creative freedom to cook what you want to cook and experiment in the kitchen. Depending on your client’s requests, you may change your offerings on a whim, release new dishes each week, and switch up the type of cuisine.
Challenges of being a personal chef
The independence may be freeing, but being a private chef is also a lot of work. You’re a one-person show. Without a restaurant marketing team bringing diners to you, you’ll have to learn to build relationships and create content to promote your services. Restaurant chefs often get to stay behind the scenes, but as a private chef, you must be customer-facing. So before you venture out on your own, make sure you are definitely a people person.
Take Chef Lang, for example. He went from working in Silicon Valley sushi restaurants to offering sushi directly to his own customers through the Airmart food ordering platform. His success as an independent chef is all thanks to the relationships he built while serving restaurant patrons. In fact, the social aspect is his favorite part of the job: “When I was entering the restaurant business, it wasn’t just to make money– it would feel empty if it was just for the money,” he shared. “I do this to connect with people through food.”
But even with an existing customer base, Lang had to do tons of marketing to launch his private sushi service. Luckily for you, Airmart offers both free and paid marketing tools like livestreaming, video shops, and blog features.
Launch your own private chef service on Airmart now.