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What is a Personal Chef anyway? Need to hire a Chef for a dinner party?
Personal chef caters to his clients' tastes Published in the Asbury Park Press 04/6/05
Michael Menicucci and his wife, Liz, of Freehold, found
themselves in a culinary quandary last year. customized down to the ingredient level for what the client
likes," Kanterman said. "I'm not going to say I specialize in Italian or Asian,
this type of food or that, because my specialty is providing what the client
wants and what's going to make them happy."
Defining Women If you listened in, we do hope you were not feeling left out of the consumption of Santa Fe’ Chicken Soup and Italian snack bread, after all, our guest generously brought us enough to enjoy several servings and enjoy we did! If that was a small sample of what this chef entrepreneur is all about, he’s in for a lot of business. Let us tell you what he’s got on his personal menu. Bob Greenberg, a long time community contributor, proud father of four daughters with a happy wife of twenty-plus years, has also blessed those most in the Cromwell area with his cooking skills. After obtaining his degree from Johnson and Wales Culinary School some 23 years ago, Bob’s love for cooking has led him to many venues, his latest idea will have you wondering why you didn’t think of it yourself. Ever wonder on the way home from work, tired and spent what YOU were going to whip up for all those hungry folks waiting for you, when you know your energy level is plummeting and your ideas are far from afloat? Well, worry no more, we found just the man for you. Bob Greenberg, creator and owner of Café on The Run, takes that worry away by coming to your home to cook you an assortment of delicious, nutritious and affordable meals that can be stored away either in fridge or freezer and remain available for you to pop in the oven or microwave while you open the mail, check your phone messages, or catch up with the family, stress free! Sound good? This is how it works. First, call Bob at 860-632-0041 and he will set up a time to come and talk with you and learn about your food preferences. After getting an understanding as to what you like and need, Bob then goes grocery shopping for all the supplies (this will help you avoid buying all those unnecessary items that claim a spot on your hips or right in the middle of your belly) and brings HIS pots and pans and spends the day cooking up enough entrees to get you through, roughly a few weeks. You will never know that Bob Greenberg was in your kitchen except for the memorable aroma that will linger. NO mess, No fuss, NO stress. So let's be sure you get his concept...Bob does the planning, the shopping and the cooking. We'd have to be insane to pass this guy up! If you cannot justify doing this for yourself as a well-deserved gift, how about a gift for someone else? Perhaps a new Mom, a friend who just came home from the hospital, an elderly parent whom you wish not to be using the stove. How about the kids when you’re working late, traveling or petitioning for their next school budget? The meals are absolutely kid friendly and not exactly the same as what you’d pay for at our local fast food joints with all the grease and empty calories! Some more yummy credentials help certify Bob’s skills; this gentleman is well trained as a member of the United States Personal Chefs Association as well as belonging to the Connecticut Nutmeg Chapter. Coming from the Defining Women, Bob’s demeanor is that of "lobster bisque soup"- smooth and easy to digest. So get out there and take a load off your mind or someone elses. You may email Bob Greenberg at cafeontherun@aol.com. He’ll be equipped to answer all your questions and help you on your way. Hey, don’t forget there is a romantic holiday just round the corner, while you are out getting the flowers and looking good, Bob can be in your kitchen preparing the love-meal. He does enjoy catering to dinner parties as well, so if the thought of cooking inhibits you from sharing a great time with friends at your place, call Bob Greenberg today! Stay tuned we have a lot more to come this season! Bon Appetite’ Sally and Lisa
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Jerseyans letting chefs do the cooking
Published in the Courier News on January 12, 2003 They have catchy names such as Kitchen Magician, Your Galloping Gourmet, Your Place Not Mine and Chef on the Go. They sweep into your home in the morning with bags of fresh groceries and stacks of kitchen supplies. They leave several hours later, with the individually prepared meals in the refrigerator and freezer the only sign they have been there. They are personal chefs, a sort of private chef for the middle class, and their presence is starting to bubble up in Central Jersey. "It's something that I think a lot of people need, but they're not totally aware of," said Mark Darragh, owner of On The Mark Personal Chef Services in Westfield. "There is a growing awareness." Long Hill resident Kathy Miller, whose family's dinners come from The Garden Gourmet in Lebanon Township about four nights a week, thinks their popularity will continue to rise. "A personal chef is a great resource for healthy living," said Miller, a 34-year-old personal prosperity coach. "If people knew it was affordable, they would be using it." The chefs spend a day in a client's home, usually cooking a week, two weeks or a month's worth of food. They leave individual meals in special containers that can go directly into the microwave or oven, then onto the dinner table. The number of personal chef businesses in the country has skyrocketed from 485 in 1994 to about 7,000 today, said David McKay, executive director of the United States Personal Chef Association. Central Jersey is home to several personal chefs, including many businesses just getting off the ground. Although McKay calls it "very much an industry in its infancy," he expects personal chefs to become as common as in-home maids over the next 10 years. His group and the smaller American Personal Chef Association each are adding about 100 members a month. An estimated 100,000 Americans use personal chefs. Most users are between 30 and 55 years old, married, own a home and have a combined income of at least $70,000, according to McKay. The second largest market is senior citizens, and the third largest is people on special diets, he said. Sixty percent of clients, McKay said, are like Scotch Plains resident Amelia McTamaney, who buys meals monthly and uses them on nights she doesn't cook or dine out with her husband. McTamaney, who heads Montessori schools in Westfield and Scotch Plains, turned to the Kitchen Magician in Westfield as an alternative to eating out and getting take-out food. Three years later, she says her husband, Robert, would die if he had to go without. Mrs. McTamaney defrosts the meals in the morning and the couple sits down to dinner together whenever Robert, an attorney in Manhattan, makes it home. They can have the same meal or, just as easily, completely different ones. "It's really very nice," said Mrs. McTamaney, 57. "We have a really nice, almost gourmet, dinner in the middle of the week." Like the McTamaneys, many people use personal chefs to make their lives easier, save some time and have more time to spend with their families or to relax. "Most of the time, people are just looking for someone to give them a break from the daily grind," said Briellen Wolchik, owner of The Garden Gourmet. Miller, who is married with two teenage boys, uses the service about four times a week. She travels a lot during the day, and looks forward to dinner time. "We actually get to sit down and eat dinner together. It makes dinner more enjoyable," she said. "We have more energy. We have time to talk about the day. We're calm. Dinner is pleasant." Karen Bierbaum, a former Rocky Hill resident who lives in Morristown and commutes to Pennington, turned to personal chef Deena Malhotra a year ago after having pudding for dinner in her car while driving to a meeting. The 48-year-old project manager no longer panics when she thinks about what she'll do for dinner after her 10- or 11-hour day. "It doesn't matter how late I get home, I know I have my dinner waiting for me," she said. "It's made a really big difference." People also turn to personal chefs to have more healthy or tastier meals than they can cook themselves. Local chefs are aware of that, with many specializing in certain diets, such as low-fat or high-protein. Maureen Graham and Margie Carberry, owners of Taste Buds in Metuchen and Edison, are drafting a light, dietetic menu. Bessie Doty's Dinner Thyme Delites in Bridgewater specializes in organic foods. McTamaney will turn to her personal chef for extra meals when her daughter, a vegetarian, comes to visit. And for others, dinners from personal chefs are an occasional luxury they can use to lighten their load. Gift certificates for them are popular gifts for new moms or sick people, Graham said. Metuchen resident Nancy Jones bought a package of meals during the holidays. She and her husband ate some, and she sent the rest to her 24-year-old son and his roommate, bachelor apartment dwellers. "I felt like a princess," said Jones, a human resource management consultant. "It's just so nice to come home to." Susan Kelly, a homemaker and mother of four from Edison, uses it as a treat for her and her family, ordering two weeks of meals every three months. It's also a way to introduce new foods to her children. "It's a good option, we're finding," she said. "I find that we don't spend any more than we would on take-out." Flemington resident Gregg Innamorato, a veteran restaurant cook who recently launched a personal chef service, said people often are fearful of how much it costs. But in Central Jersey, it costs an average of $325 for 20 adult dinners, or $16.25 each -- about the cost of dining out at the average restaurant. Malhotra, who started her service three years ago, said customers ultimately are buying themselves some time. "The people who use it regularly are people who need someone to offer them back their time," she said. "That's really what we end up selling them." Said Kitchen Magician owner Kathy Tropeano: "Most of my clients say I buy them family time. That is what is really great. That's why I like doing it." Terri Needham can be reached at (908) 707-3186 or tneedham@c-n.com. To find a chef: The following Web sites feature directories of personal chefs: - www.hireachef.com - www.personalchef.com/findmain.htm - www.deliverme.com/services.php - www.pcnchef.com Sample weekly menus, by Deena Malhotra, owner of My Chef in Montgomery: Ethnic menu: Day 1: Broiled salmon with parsley garlic aioli and roasted new potatoes. Day 2: Marinated flank steak and pasta with roasted vegetables. Day 3: Braised Chinese chicken with fragrant brown rice. Day 4: Chicken enchiladas suizas. Day 5: Vegetarian paella. Low fat menu: Day 1: Fresh greens, grilled tuna with rosemary butter, fragrant brown rice. Day 2: Turkey cutlets with cranberry and orange, and roasted vegetables. Day 3: Chicken marbella and Spanish rice. Day 4: Savory polenta and stuffed chicken breast with portabello mushrooms. Day 5: Orzo with chervil, turkey vegetable herb loaf. from the Courier News website www.c-n.com
By Amy Martinez, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer BOCA RATON -- When you think about it, the "oldest profession" probably runs a close second to cooking for someone else, an activity that only now is receiving professional status. After years of operating in the shadows of restaurants and even caterers, personal chefs last month got a public nod from the venerable American Culinary Federation, which finally declared their profession a real one. "We've been a fad, a trend, those new kids on the block, anything but a legitimate career path, until now," said Candy Wallace, director of the American Personal Chef Association in San Diego, Calif., one of three national organizations dedicated to the profession. "We're now part of the mainstream." The acceptance of personal chefs is a sign of changing times and one that is predicted to open the door for thousands of people who have a passion for food and a desire to run their own business without a lot of overhead. In the next five years, Wallace predicts, there will be 25,000 personal chefs, about twice as many as there are today. The growth makes sense, she says, given the need for nutritious meals served in the home to an overworked, overweight nation. "Finally, I'm doing something that I enjoy getting up and doing," said Ira Michaelson of Boynton Beach, who has spent much of his working life running sundry businesses and cultivating a talent for cooking. "Not only do you get to indulge yourself in cooking, but you also get to work with people one-on-one." Michaelson became a personal chef in January after the economic recession hit South Florida's hospitality industry especially hard. First, he was laid off by the Marriott Hotel in Delray Beach; then global food management company Sodexho withdrew a job offer. The 45-year-old Michaelson, a native of Long Island, N.Y., found the American Personal Chef Association on the Internet, and soon Your Personal Gourmet was born, promising "incredible meals" made to specific tastes and dietary restrictions. In June, Michaelson organized the South Florida chapter of the APCA, hoping to help others get started. "We don't work weekends and nights and Mother's Day and Father's Day and other holidays. We get to have a life," he tells would-be colleagues. Wallace says APCA was overwhelmed by requests for personal chefs shortly after Sept. 11, when eating at home became a priority for many, and "business," he says, "hasn't slowed since." Even the summer, typically a sluggish time of the year, has produced new opportunities. "We've become quite popular in upscale resort areas," Wallace said. "People want to come in from an active day at the beach or wherever and find a meal waiting for them." Michaelson, typical of most personal chefs, charges from $300 to $400 for four meals serving five people each. Although that might sound like a lot of money, APCA says that it's a cost savings for families who eat in restaurants and buy takeout at least three times a week. Money aside, Michaelson says, it takes time to build a reputation. So far he has just one regular client, a family of five west of Boca Raton, and does the occasional in-home cooking class and supermarket demonstration. He is also part-owner of a landscaping service. "I know some personal chefs out there who are discouraged because they don't have any clients after six months," he said. About half of all personal chefs fail within their first year, largely because they don't promote themselves enough, according to the United States Personal Chef Association in Albuquerque, N.M. The 5,000-member USPCA recommends joining civic organizations, advertising in community newsletters and offering cooking tips on TV or radio to attract new business. David MacKay, who founded the organization 11 years ago with his wife, Susan, says being a personal chef is no different from running a any other business -- except, of course, that you need a passion for food and a strong commitment to service. "If a client wants chitlins, that means you'd better get the pig boiling," he said. MacKay's organization trains about 60 new personal chefs a month at schools in Phoenix, Atlanta and Cherry Hill, N.J., where tuition ranges from $2,000 to $3,000. All told, personal chefs can expect to spend at least $4,000 to start, though that varies depending on how much training they need, MacKay says. Otherwise they should register as a business with the state, acquire a safe-food handler's certificate from the National Restaurant Association, buy general liability insurance and obtain a local occupational license, if required. Most personal chefs fall into one of two categories, MacKay says: the longtime restaurant cook who is tired of working 60 to 80 hours a week and wants more job satisfaction, and the so-called career changer who has always had a passion for food but isn't interested in climbing the hospitality ladder. A feeling of lost youth drove Nina Cioffi to enroll in cooking school after four years of managing a Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Gainesville, where she received a bachelor's in public relations from the University of Florida. "I felt I was missing out on my 20s. It was just a tremendous amount of work," says Cioffi, now 31 and the owner of Spatulas Personal Chef Service in West Palm Beach. Work hasn't slowed since she quit the restaurant business, she says, but she loves what she's doing and she's not as stressed. Last year, despite the recession, she earned about $100,000. Her clients include affluent professionals who don't have the time or the desire to cook, retirees with diabetes or heart disease, and weight watchers on high-maintenance diets such as The Zone and Atkins. "They look at it as a necessity rather than a luxury," Cioffi says. Joanna Davis hired Cioffi three years ago after her husband, Jack, underwent quintuple-bypass heart surgery. The Davises, who live in Jupiter's Admirals Cove, thought they would keep Cioffi on for a month or two as Jack recovered. But before long, they were hooked on Cioffi's homemade chocolate ice cream and low-fat, low-sodium dishes, such as chicken scaloppini and pan-seared trout with vegetable ragout. Cioffi now cooks at their house twice a week. "Her cooking is just wonderful," Joanna Davis said. "After a few months, my husband and I looked at each other and said, 'Do we have to let her go?' " Pascale Deighan, a personal chef in Stuart, earns considerably less than Cioffi -- about $30,000 a year -- but, then, she also works less. She takes off two months a year for vacation and puts in about 30 hours a week, giving her time to spend with her 5-year-old daughter, Morgan. Deighan grew up in the Brittany region of France, where she started cooking in her mom's kitchen at the age of 5, and considers food her destiny. "I'm born to do this," she says. She would like to open a French cafe, but that takes money she doesn't have yet. "This is just a great opportunity for me to be my own boss." On a recent Monday at about 8:45 a.m., Ira Michaelson strode in to the Albertson's supermarket at Linton Boulevard and Military Trail in Delray Beach. Carrying a shopping list, he loaded up on fresh vegetables, meats and poultry, and herbs, and left about 45 minutes later with $79.29 in groceries for the Pacconi family of suburban Boca Raton. By 10 a.m., he was standing in an immaculate kitchen in the Mizner Country Club, a 2-year-old crawling between his legs, a pot of water boiling on the stove and a bag of potatoes waiting to be peeled. By 3 p.m., he had left the kitchen as clean as he had found it. The refrigerator was stocked with plastic containers full of gourmet meals, including amaretto chicken, roasted pork loin stuffed with Italian sausage and French onion soup. Heating instructions were left on the counter. Heather Pacconi hired Michaelson after giving birth to her youngest daughter, Katie Rose, eight months ago. Pacconi looked at her 6-year-old daughter, Alicia, her toddler, Ashlyn, and her husband Tom, a Palm Beach Gardens business owner, and thought, "How am I going to do this?" "I was just overwhelmed," Pacconi says. "We came home from the hospital on a Thursday. My mom and grandma left on Monday, and by Tuesday morning, I was in tears." Pacconi called the Florida Culinary Institute, Michaelson's alma mater, and within days Michaelson appeared at her doorstep, pots and pans in hand. She planned to use him for a month but soon found him indispensable. The $300 a week she pays him is a bargain, she says, considering what she used to spend on takeout from Applebee's and T.G.I. Friday's -- although money, she adds, never was the issue. "He saves me so much time," she says. It's that desire for more time that guarantees personal chefs will be around even in recessions, says Wallace, of the American Personal Chef Association. "As long as people continue to work and eat, we're going to be busy. Time has become the new currency," she says, quoting trend-spotter Faith Popcorn. "Anyone who can put time back into your life is a good investment." Source: http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/epaper/editions/monday/business_d375bb7e63b102671060.html
BY ADAM WILCOX
Mary Lynn Vickers, The Phantom Chef, thinks personal chefs are a natural step from popular services such as personal trainers. Personal chefs seem to me to fit more with trends around saving time. Many folks hire cleaning services, and supermarkets are focusing more and more on prepared foods. It's the convenience that appeals to Diane and Paul Cunningham. Diane is a physician, Paul a materials manager, and they have five children. Diane likes cooking, but has little time for it. Her kids are active, and eat big meals. The solution, for the last several years, has been a personal chef (they've been customers of the Phantom Chef for six months). Once a month, Vickers comes to the Cunningham home for a long day of cooking. She plans the menus by phone, and then shops, cooks, packages, labels, cleans, and disappears. "I've never met her," Diane admits, "though of course we've spoken." Vickers comes and goes, generally leaving the kitchen in better order than she found it. The evidence of a visit from a personal chef sits in your refrigerator and freezer. There will probably be one fresh dish (fish, for example), several plastic containers in the fridge, and many more in the freezer. You also get simple cooking or reheating instructions. The Cunninghams will get five entrées, which become eight to 10 meals. The Phantom Chef also provides entrées for the Cunninghams' vegetarian daughter. Vickers is meticulous about billing, iteming all her time and costs. The Cunninghams' service costs about $350 a month, roughly $10 per entrée per person, using Vickers' quantities. That's comparable to good takeout, but the value is even better, because the Cunninghams get far more than five meals out of it. Plus, nobody has to pick up the food. All personal chefs mention flexibility as a major draw of the profession. Kim Ippolito, who runs Your Place Tonight Personal Chef Service, was a bench scientist at Rochester General Hospital before having a child. When she wanted to work again, she needed a job flexible enough to fit her lifestyle. She has about three clients every other week, and also does dinner parties. She also teaches cooking to kids at the Perinton Recreation Center. Patti Battista, the Delicious Gourmet, has other plans. A single mom, until a week ago she worked full-time in food service at SUNY Brockport. For years before that, she ran Battista's Pizza. She likes the variety and, again, the flexibility of the personal chef business. With six biweekly clients, two weekly, and dinner parties and showers on the side, she's giving it a go as a full-time gig. Mary Lynn Vickers is a retired engineer and project planner. For her, this is fun, a way to stay busy and vital. She loves food, and can put her planning skills to good use. Carol Fletcher runs Homespun Flavors (288-3910), but doesn't foresee giving up her hospital secretary job any time soon (benefits matter). She maintains just a couple of clients. Carol Dalrymple's Dinners Done is a fairly recent entry into the market. With a supportive husband, she's been able to get started without enormous pressure to make money immediately. Carol says she always learns something on the job, and finds providing a direct service very satisfying. You can get information about becoming a personal chef from the United States Personal Chef Association (USPCA) website, www.uspca.com. Legally, the only hurdle is to secure food-handling certification from the health department. To get a full catering license, your kitchen must be certified, which can be expensive. Personal chefs have to work in your kitchen, not theirs, although they have to bring their own equipment. Experience at restaurants, degrees from culinary schools, or training programs from one of the personal chef associations can also help. Vickers, Ippolito, and Battista are all USPCA graduates. Fletcher is currently completing the USPCA's home-study program. How about the experience? Like most personal chefs, the Phantom Chef starts by sending you an extensive food questionnaire. Filling it out, I imagined what a pain we must be (one person doesn't like one thing, another something else). But during the next step, an interview at our home, Vickers said we were easier than many clients. She brought a menu of eight possible entrées, from which we chose four. Then we agreed on a cooking day, and went back to our lives. The Phantom Chef arrived just before 9 a.m. on cooking day, already having shopped for groceries and meats (from Balsam Market, fish from Captain Jim's). She schlepped pans, bowls, utensils, and packaging materials, and got busy. I work in my home, and could easily have ignored her, but the whole process was fascinating. It was a big job, and Mary Lynn attacked it with precision. When she left around 3 p.m., I had a beautiful dish of lemon-thyme salmon ready to cook for that night. The parmesan-bread-crumb topping was delicious, and the fish came out perfectly moist. It was supposed to be four servings, but we had plenty for lunch the next day. In the refrigerator were four servings of pork chops with apples and sweet potatoes in an orange sauce. The sauce was great over rice for a couple of meals. After two weeks, we still have turkey soup. Each of the four, single servings is lunch for two of us (and our 3-year-old). A four-serving portion is still waiting. The fourth dish was baked chicken with tomatoes, black olives, and sautéed mushrooms that made for eight servings. We brought that to a family dinner. It ended up serving 13, with leftover lunches for six. From a quality standpoint, the salmon was exceptional, and the rest amounted to fabulous leftovers. That service cost $440, which is quite reasonable when you break it down. Using Vickers' 24 portions, it comes out to $18.33 each. But in reality, we got about 46, which is $9.57 per portion. My kitchen smelled fantastic and was cleaner when she left than when she arrived. Plus, the Phantom Chef left us a box of delicious cookies and a brand new sponge. I couldn't afford to do this often, but would definitely do it again to manage difficult times, like when people come to visit or for a special dinner party. The service would also make a fabulous gift for new parents. Imagine how much easier those first few weeks could be without any cooking. It's clearly an idea whose time has come. Source: http://www.rochester-citynews.com/gbase/Gyrosite/Content?oid=oid%3A1405
Cooking News Personal chef fills galley for ocean-racing crew 06/12/02 Molly
Kavanaugh The nine men won't see land for at least four days as they race across the Atlantic Ocean to Bermuda with nearly 200 other sailboats. The sailors need grub for the voyage, but these
men are a bit spoiled when it comes to on-board dining. The 52-foot boat named
Canvasback, owned by Lee Howley of Vermilion, has a fully equipped galley and a
crew member who likes to whip up gourmet dinners.
Problem is that for this 635-mile voyage, about three times longer than previous races the crew has sailed, Dr. Robert Biscup of Chagrin Falls will be too busy crewing to do more than toss a salad and make a sandwich. Can Mary Goodwin, Westlake caterer and newly certified personal chef, keep the hungry men happy with frozen food? Absolutely, she assured Howley, businessman and former co-chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. "I'm not serving hamburger helper and low-cost food," Goodwin said. Hardly. Goodwin has prepared entrees such as flank steak fajitas, braised Chinese chicken and three-cheese lasagna with Italian sausage. She froze the meals, which are now being shipped in ice-packed coolers to Newport, R.I. The race begins Friday. The food will be stored in the boat's freezer. Each entree will be moved to the refrigerator the day before it is served. Depending on instructions, the meals will be reheated in the oven, on the stovetop or in the microwave. Goodwin is also sending along side dish and wine suggestions. For instance, according to her recommendation, chicken parmesan would go nicely with cheese tortellini with basil pesto, and a bottle of Mondavi Fume Blanc. "We will certainly be first in food, if not in time," Howley quipped. Crew cuisine was not quite what 38-year-old Goodwin had in mind when she decided to become a personal chef last year. Goodwin has been a cook most of her life, inspired by the culinary talents of her mother, Kathleen Dillemuth. "Everything was from scratch. She never wasted a morsel. She is, to this day, the cleanest cook," Goodwin said. Goodwin, a Rocky River native, worked 10 years in New York City and the surrounding area where "food was life." Her husband, Rob, once happy with a McDonald's meal, was thrilled to eat good home-cooking. "He ate everything," she said. Like a lot of good cooks, Goodwin frequently volunteered to prepare special dinners for family and friends. When she moved back to Cleveland, she started a catering business with her mother. But catering tends to be a weekend business and with three girls, ages 6 to 10, Goodwin wanted to find another outlet for her cooking. A friend told her about the personal chef industry, which is a fairly new and rapidly growing career field. A personal chef typically cooks at the client's house, after selecting a two-week menu of entrees and shopping for all the ingredients. Goodwin was recently certified by the United States Personal Chef Association. Preparing meals for the sailors may land her a new clientele - boaters and cottage- goers. If nothing else, the assignment got her thinking of frozen meals she can take to her family's cottage in Huron. Goodwin admits she was little leery of quality frozen meals, but not anymore. "I am a true advocate," she said. "It's amazing how wonderful it is." She's anxious to hear the sailors' critique, but Howley told her not to worry. "In reality we are very serious sailors and food is secondary," he said. Mary Goodwin can be reached at 440-871-0198 or timetodine@core.com Contact Molly Kavanaugh at: mkavanaugh@plaind.com, 1-800-767-2821 Source: http://www.cleveland.com/cooking/plaindealer/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/living/1023874446174380.xml
Meals made like magic
“I’m often given as a gift,” Robin Grubard says, sipping coffee at a granite counter in the well-appointed kitchen of her Bethel house. “Usually to new mothers, too exhausted to cook.” Grubard is a personal chef, a genie in a bottle. Like magic, she appears in your kitchen while you’re at work or the movies or shopping or doing anything other than sweating over a hot stove. She prepares a slew of enticing entrees, stores them in your freezer, cleans up your kitchen and disappears. “I don’t even know she’s been there,” says customer Norma Losito of Bethel, “except when I pull in my garage and smell all those wonderful aromas.” Losito works for her husband’s business, Losito Electrical Contractors in Bethel. “I use Robin for meals two or three nights a week,” Losito says. “When you get home at around 7 p.m., you don’t feel like cooking. All I have to do is pick one of her meals from the fridge, reheat and enjoy.” Grubard, who is 32 and a 1993 graduate of Baltimore International Culinary College, calls her service Chef Robin. Her meals, she says, last in your freezer from three to six months. Grubard’s customers include dual-career couples, a bachelor, an elderly woman in an assisted living facility, a stay-at-home mother, and three Catholic priests. She cooks for the rectory of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Bethel. “Our cook died and we heard about Robin’s services,” says Monsignor Edward Karl of St. Mary’s. “It’s wonderful because we can heat up meals whenever we want. We put her marinated flank steak on the grill last night and it melted in our mouths. “Often each of us eats at a different time. When you’re a priest, you never know what your schedule it going to be.” A hectic or unpredictable schedule seems to be the main reason for hiring a personal chef. Most people who hire one are two-career couples age 30 to 55 with household incomes of between $70,000 and $150,000, according to David MacKay, president of the United States Personal Chef Association, headquartered in Albuquerque, N.M. “If people earn upwards to $200,000,” he says, “they can afford to hire a live-in cook.” The second largest market for personal chefs is the elderly, he says. “After that comes people recovering from a medical problem or people on special diets.” The USPCA was launched by MacKay and his wife, Susan Titcomb, both professional chefs, a decade ago with 15 only members. It now has 5,000. The number of United States households using personal chefs has swelled from a thousand a decade ago to 100,000 today. Grubard gives each of her customers a questionnaire to learn their food likes and dislikes. You can tell her if you hate peas or can’t stand cream sauces, if you like swordfish better than salmon, or don’t like fish at all. She then prepares a list of menus for your perusal. Choices might include Baked Pork Tenderloin with Caramelized Onions and Smoked Gouda, served with a crunchy broccoli casserole. Or you might choose her Mediterranean Beef Stew made with beef, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and fresh basil, served with spinach couscous. Vegetarian offerings include Wild Mushroom Risotto with a side dish of lemon-herb green beans. After firming up menus, Grubard sets aside a day to come to your house and cook. Well-equipped as her own kitchen may be, the cooking must always be done in the customer’s house, she says. “The State Health Department is very stringent about kitchens used for business purposes,” she says. These the rules don’t apply when you go to someone else’s house to cook. “Some personal chefs have horror stories about arriving at the job site and finding the customer’s kitchen filthy,” Grubard says. “I’ve never had that problem. All I ask is that people don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink.” She’ll probably be in your kitchen about five hours, she says, depending on the number of meals requested. She carries all the equipment she’ll need — chef’s knives, cutting boards, pots and pans, dried herbs, bottled spices and condiments — in her hatch-back car. Grubard shops for the groceries she’ll use right before she comes to your house, “so ingredients will be fresh.” While she cooks in your kitchen, you don’t have to leave the premises, but many people do. “Actually, most of the people I’ve done this for are at work while I’m cooking,” she says. After preparing the meals you requested, she puts each serving in a freezer container and leaves simple reheating instructions. Grubard’s 20-meal plan, with four servings of five different entrees and side dishes, costs about $22 a meal per person. That includes complete menu planning, all groceries, cooking, packaging and clean-up,” she says. “My meal prices get lower as more portions are added.” Her prices are a little higher than the national average, which McKay says is about $13 to $17 a meal. “That’s the price for the service, say, in a small town in the Midwest,” he says. “When you get into more metropolitan or affluent areas, the average price for the service is about $18 to $20.” “People think they can’t afford a personal chef,” says Norma Losito. “I’ve found it’s about the same as you’d pay for good-quality take-out, only you don’t have to go get it. And believe me, Robin’s cooking is definitely restaurant quality.” Unlike Grubard, half the members of the USPCA don’t have professional cooking credentials or experience cooking in a restaurant. They are people who’ve had other jobs, wanted to leave them, and decided to turn a flair for cooking into a business. Cathy Luce, who owns Magical Meals in Decatur, Ga., was a telecom consultant before starting her personal chef business. Julie Pietz of Dallas worked for an advertising agency before launching Gourmet Everyday. “Some personal chefs would not be able to handle a restaurant job as a professional chef because they don’t have the training,” McKay says. “But they’re not being asked to do that. They’re going into a home and simply cooking dinner for a couple or family. And most of them are very good at that because they have a passion for cooking.” “The personal chef business attracts women balancing a career and family,” Grubard says, “because the hours are very flexible.” The USPCA offers training and business tips and has a certification program for personal chefs. “We are not a franchise,” McKay says. “We are a trade organization offering education and support.” Grubard, who grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y., is a USPCA member and also a member of the American Culinary Foundation. While studying in Baltimore, she went to Ireland to study classical French cuisine under master chefs at the Deer Park Hotel near Dublin. After college, she worked for the prestigious Harbor Court Hotel in Baltimore, then as executive chef for that city’s One World Cafe, praised in the Zagat guide. When she learned of a teaching position at her alma mater, she jumped at the opportunity. “I love teaching as much as I love cooking,” she says, “so it was the perfect job for me.” She and her husband, Rob Wallace, a computer graphics designer for a Manhattan marketing firm, moved here a year and a half ago. “We’d been living in downtown Baltimore for quite a while and wanted to see some countryside,” Grubard says. She’s been teaching in Wilton’s Continuing Education Program — classes in making sauces, pastry and gourmet dinners. She’ll teach children’s cooking July 8 to 12. Sheila Wakoff, coordinator of the Wilton program, says, “Robin is such a good chef and such a good teacher, her classes are always very popular.” “Some say when you teach, you give away your secrets as a chef,” Grubard says, “But I don’t feel that way. I like sharing what I know, and invariably someone in one of my classes will tell me about someone who needs a personal chef.” Source = http://www.newstimes.com/cgi-bin/dbs.cgi?db=news&view_records=1&id=29508
April 8,
2002 Vol. 159 No. 14 It's 6 p.m. in Columbus, Ohio, and the Bacha family is famished. Sarah, 41, a marketing consultant, has been firing on all cylinders since 7 a.m., getting the kids off to school and then juggling phones, e-mail, paperwork and a lengthy strategy meeting. Her husband Jim, 47, has lumbered home after another taxing day as an attorney with American Electric Power Co. Will, 6, and Henry, 4, are antsy for parental attention. As usual, no one has had time to cook. What's a time-crunched family to do? Sit down to a freshly made, aromatic Burgundy beef stew, of course--unless they're in the mood for chicken Tetrazzini or black-bean soup with ham. "Mmmm. It smells great," announces Sarah to no one in particular, as she savors the steaming stew. The sumptuous dinner was the creation of the family's personal chef, Anne Hayward, 55, who left hours ago. The only evidence of her efforts is the tantalizing aromas lingering in the kitchen and the three weeks' worth of meals freshly stocked in the refrigerator and freezer. When the Bachas first used Hayward last October, they were ambivalent about hiring someone to cook for them. Would it be worth the expense? (Hayward charges $225, on top of the grocery bill, for about 15 family meals.) How tasty would the food be? Would friends in their neighborhood--affluent but hardly overrun by servants--view the Bachas with disdain? "It sounded pretentious," says Sarah. But she seldom has time to indulge her own passion for cooking, and Hayward's services give her more time with her family. "We're not rushing around every night to pull something together to eat." Even in a slumping economy, more and more two-earner families like the Bachas have been hiring personal chefs who do the shopping, cook in clients' kitchens and clean up after themselves. Five years ago, there were just a few hundred such workers; today an estimated 7,000 personal chefs are finding that demand for their services around the country is robust. Last year the American Personal Chef Association trained about 1,000 new chefs, twice as many as in 2000. Since Sept. 11, personal chefs have been inundated with requests for simple comfort foods like chicken pot pie and noodle soup. "People are still reluctant to go out to eat," says Candy Wallace, who heads the American Personal Chef Association. "They'd rather be home." Michael Zytowski, 33, a Long Beach, Calif., chef, agrees that current appetites run more toward pot roast than foie gras. "I haven't run into a client yet who wants Chateaubriand or lobster," he says. Personal chefs are different from private cooks, who usually work full time preparing gourmet meals for the wealthy. Instead, personal chefs are tempting two-earner households with customized menus at reasonable rates, typically $15 per person at each meal. The chefs are masters of efficiency, whipping up three or four weeks of meals in a marathon six-hour session and juggling a dozen or more clients. Hayward's business, Premier Concierge of Columbus, primarily consists of a Volvo station wagon brimming with knives, spice tins and cling wrap. Before the first cooking date, chefs and their clients address everything from calorie content to seasoning levels in devising menus that suit the household. When client families get home, they find a meal ready for the evening, as well as a refrigerator and freezer stocked with future dinners, each of which includes instructions for reheating. The process can save clients as much as 15 hours a week in shopping, preparation, cooking and cleanup time. But customers are not completely off the hook. Says Debra Ruder, 43, a communications specialist who lives in suburban Boston with her husband and two sons: "You do have to remember to take something out of the freezer the night before." Personal chefs hope to shed the perception that they are only for the wealthy. If you can afford a lawn service and housecleaning, they say, a personal chef is likely to be within your budget. "This has made a real difference in our family life. It's a relief not to have to worry about dinner anymore," says Cindy Abbott, 39, an attorney for Motorola who is the mother of two. The Abbotts spend about $300 for 10 meals that they eat over the course of each month, supplemented by takeout meals and Cindy's cooking. Like many clients, she finds that household spending on food has declined since the chef started work a year ago, because the family is eating fewer restaurant and takeout meals. One downside: diminished food quality from thawing and reheating. "We've found some things, like asparagus and pasta, don't work out so well with this process." Hallie Vanderhider, 44, a single mother of 15-year-old twin boys in Houston, hired a chef in January to prepare three family meals a week for $200, including the cost of the food. "Before this, sometimes all I had time to make was peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches," she says. Evenings with her kids are much happier, she adds. The three of them have reached a consensus on ingredients: no mushrooms, onions or artichokes. Says their chef, Jackie Alejo: "No problem." Vanderhider, chief financial officer for a money-management firm, has just one regret: "I wish I had thought of this sooner." Even people without families to feed are finding the service indispensable. Richard Rodriguez, 40 and single, got tired of subsisting on fast food. Last summer he hired a chef who cooks 10 meals for him about every two weeks for $280. "I used to think a chef was too ritzy for a middle-class guy like me," he says. "But I was wrong." Personal chefs tend to view their work as being as much about stress reduction as about food preparation. "Eating out gets fatiguing," says San Francisco-area chef Olivia Wu. "People want to be healthier. They want to go home, de-stress, cocoon and be comfortable." And some chefs are determined to improve kids' nutrition. "Some children don't even know what mashed potatoes taste like until I get there," says chef Hayward. "It kills me that French fries are their idea of what potatoes are." Still, old habits can die hard. Says Rodriguez: "Every once in a while I still succumb to a Big Mac attack." With Reporting by Leslie Berestein/Los Angeles and Laura A. Locke/San Francisco http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,221119,00.html
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Here you will find articles in various media about Personal
Chefs and the Personal Chef Industry.
BY ALESHA WILLIAMS 
AUGUST
14, 2002
