Do you wake up in the morning stressed-out by all the challenges in your busy life? Do you have too much on your plate between work pressures and getting the family fed at dinner time? The answer is probably a big fat YES and the last thing you want to worry about is getting dinner on the table at the end of your hectic day! And maybe you even have a child with every food allergy known to man that exacerbates the “what’s for dinner conundrum”. So what to do?

We as Personal Chefs get it! We have helped solve the what’s for dinner problem for many busy families including those on special diets. We understand how challenging in can be for someone with special dietary needs to find the right ingredients when it comes to food shopping and meal planning. And the very thought of dining out when a family member has food allergies can be a risky proposition, let alone getting a healthy meal.

We want to help out and fill that void. You deserve to eat well and healthy! When you work with a Personal Chef, we can seamlessly fit into your lifestyle and create highly customized meal plans that cater to your specific dietary restrictions whether you’re on a mild ketogenic or gluten-free diet. We can do it all from food shopping to clean up!

A meal delivery service is certainly an easy and attractive option, but the term has been so broadly used it can be confusing. An actual meal delivery service delivers fully prepared, ready-to-eat meals. These are usually ready to heat and eat and are often in tupperware containers; they might be delivered frozen. In recent years, meal kits have become popular; and many refer to them as “meal delivery services” even though they are quite different as cooking is required. Here we are only looking at true meal delivery services delivering fully prepared meals.

The oldest form of meal delivery is classic pizza delivery … or Chinese food, sub shops, etc. More recently you can order prepared meals from many restaurants using delivery services like GrubHub or DoorDash. Are you expecting a healthy meal? Hardly.

As we have become more health conscious, the personal chef has stepped in to serve that need; yet there are also wide variations in options offered by personal chefs. Many meal delivery services present a number of chefs from which you can choose to find the entrée that best suits your palate. This is probably the simplest option to consider because all you do is tap the app at lunch time and voila, the dinner meal is at your door that evening. You’ll need to ask these questions though:

1. Does the meal delivery service cook highly customized meal plans based on your preferences?
2. Can they help you monitor the nutritional values on a strict ketogenic diet that requires less than 4 grams of net carbs per serving?
3. Can a meal delivery service prepare a strict gluten-free diet?
4. And what about the variety of menu choices? Do you have a say with a meal delivery service? What if you don’t like what’s on the menu for that day? With a Personal Chef this is never a problem because they can prepare anything you want when you want it exactly how you want.

These are all very critical questions you need to weigh.

The terms Personal Chef and Private Chef get thrown around a lot these days and are often used synonymously. What’s the difference between the two? Simply put… A Private Chef cooks exclusively for one family while a Personal Chef cooks for many families typically one per day. Often times a Private Chef lives in their client’s home preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner on a daily basis. A Personal Chef, on the other hand, comes into your home to prepare one or two weeks worth of meals that are stored in the fridge or freezer to be enjoyed at later time that is convenient for you.

What Value Do Personal Chefs Provide?

The biggest benefit to hiring a Personal Chef is time and money saved which leads to a stress free life when it comes to putting dinner on the table every night. A Personal Chef or Private Chef will do your weekly menu planning, meal prep and food shopping and store them in your fridge or freezer to be enjoyed at your leisure.

What Are Personal Chefs Expert In?

Personal chefs are experts in all things when it comes to meal planning and have very close working relationships with their clients as a result of their expertise. They have to consider all of their clients’ needs from food preferences, customized weekly meal plans to strict dietary guidelines. It’s very important that a Personal Chef abides by their clients’ preferences to ensure their health and safety and most importantly to keep them happy. It’s critical that Personal Chefs have nutritional knowledge as many of their clients are on very strict diets.

Expertise of a Personal Chef:

• creating a customized meal plan
• food shopping (at markets, grocery stores, etc)
• shopping for specialty items (organic, gluten-free, nut-free, etc)
• putting food away and storing properly
• stocking the pantry with the healthy items
• expert skills with safe food handling to avoid cross contamination
• providing easy-to-read re-heating instructions for clients
• cleaning up and proper sanitizing
• keeping informed with nutritional information
• diligent with listening and understanding client needs
• improving culinary education and techniques
• seamlessly fitting into your family schedule and lifestyle

Can A Personal Chef Help With A Paleo or Keto Diet?

When you start a labor-intensive regime like a vegetarian, paleo or keto diet, you’ll need to cut out all sugars, processed ingredients and carbohydrates, and you may spend a large part of your day searching for recipes, food shopping, meal planning and finally eating. If you’re like most working professionals, this kind of a time commitment can be a deal breaker. Your goal is to eat healthy and get more fit but you might not have the time or wherewith all to execute your well intentioned plan. Plus, can you be sure it won’t take precious time away from your work or your loved ones? So what do you do? You hire a Personal Chef who is expertly trained in a variety of diets where they will support your transition toward a specialized diet easily and deliciously!

Do Personal Chefs Offer Catering Services?

The answer is yes! By nature, many Personal Chefs are very creative individuals who love preparing beautiful food spreads. How often have you dreamed about hosting a gorgeous dinner party only to have it turn into a nightmare when you considered all the time and work involved. Scary thought right? Many Personal Chefs offer catering services for special occasions like dinner parties, birthdays or anniversary celebrations. Like a catering company, a Personal Chef may manage a team of cooks and act as a caterer. As a caterer, the Personal Chef and hired assistants will prepare foods that will be served to guests whether it is a sit down dinner party or a buffet.

Do Personal Chefs Offer Cooking Classes?

Yes. Many Personal Chefs offer cooking classes as a way to help companies do team-building activities with their employees to develop camaraderie. And in the privacy of your home, you too can host a cooking class/dinner party among your friends where you can learn that impressive French Soufflé that you’ve always wanted to master. Or perhaps you want to literally sharpen your knife skills for those days when you do prepare a meal at home? A Personal Chef can help you do it all when it’s convenient with your schedule.

A Personal Chef Gives You Peace of Mind

When you work with a Personal Chef your life will be simplified in so many ways! We’re pros and we can collaborate with you to make meal planning, food shopping and special diets easy to manage. Personal Chefs can help you eliminate the daily stress of figuring out what’s for dinner, or teach you how to stock your pantry with healthier oils and seasonings. If you’re on a keto diet we can calculate the nutritional ratios of fat to carbs to proteins in a snap to help you stay on track. We can even educate you on healthier food choices when it comes to meal prep and food shopping for organic ingredients.

How Does a Personal Chef Compare with a Meal Prep Package?

A popular time saving option is a meal prep package like Blue Apron, Sun Basket, Hello Fresh, and Purple Carrot. These kits are designed for those who really enjoy cooking but don’t have time to do the meal planning or food shopping. All the ingredients come pre-measured and packaged with easy to follow recipes so you can prepare a delicious healthy meal in 30 to 40 minutes. They tend to cut your total time in half, but there’s no easy customizing. With a personal chef service, there’s no need to plan, shop, or cook; reheating and serving should take 5 minutes. And your personal chef will customize it however you want!

Let’s Get Personal

A Personal Chef service is all about you! So whether you travel a lot for your business or you have a family of 4 with erratic schedules, your Personal Chef can fit into your life and work around your busy schedules to create a meal service that fits into your life style. That’s putting the “personal” in Personal Chef. Every situation is different and the bottom line is that the a Personal Chef service is more affordable than you might think!

Our Bay Area Personal Chef Collective Is Here to Help!

Now that you know what a Personal Chef does, why not consider contacting our collective of Personal Chefs? We understand the daily challenge of putting a healthy meal on the dinner table that everyone will enjoy. We can offer you a portfolio of Personal Chefs and Private Chefs who specialize in meal planning, special diets, meal delivery, catering and cooking classes. If you still have questions or are not quite sure what you need, we are happy to help you figure it out.

Give us a call and let our Personal Chefs help you put the fun back into playing with your food!