What’s for Dinner? Personal Chef Has a Gourmet Answer : Lifestyle: Harried baby boomers hire professionals to do the marketing, cook a couple weeks’ worth of gourmet meals, and leave them in the freezer. The service isn’t cheap, but it’s growing in popularity.

The latest trend for baby boomers struggling to squeeze more quality out of their quality time?

Personal chefs--they’ll do the shopping, cook a couple weeks’ worth of gourmet, low-fat meals and leave the food in the freezer to be consumed at will.

“It’s a business whose time has come. I don’t think this would have worked 10 years ago,” said David Mac Kay, executive director of the U.S. Personal Chef Assn., which in less than two years has grown to more than 300 members serving clients in 46 states.

In Spokane, Finnigan’s Feast personal chef service got started earlier this summer and is growing as fast as owners-operators Sara and Bob Finnigan can handle it.

“Everyone who’s tried it so far has become a long-term client,” Sara Finnigan said.

Finnigan’s Feast offers clients an extensive menu, including entrees as highbrow as minted lamb ragout and cranberry glazed pork, and as down-home hearty as chili con carne and turkey pot pie.

The service has a supply of recipes large enough to avoid repeating any for six months, “unless a client requests it,” Sara Finnigan said. “It’s a very personalized business.”

It doesn’t come cheap. A normal Finnigan’s Feast service of nine to 10 dinners costs $250, including groceries and preparation. To attract new customers, the service offered a $200 special in July.

Recipes and operational and marketing tips for Finnigan’s Feast and other such services come from the national association, based in Albuquerque, N.M. That’s where Mac Kay and his wife, Sue, relocated after several years of running the prototype service in San Diego.

Mac Kay, whose background is in electrical engineering and marketing, said it didn’t take long to realize they had hit on a marketable idea.

“We realized that this was a real niche, and found there was nobody around the country really doing anything like this,” he said.

The couple spent 1990 and 1991 writing recipes for dishes that would freeze well, training manuals and software packages for personal chefs. After about eight months of testing the concept in 1992, “we were ecstatic with the results and decided we would go national with this,” Mac Kay said.

“The range of people involved goes all the way from the homemaker in Kenner, La., to the (former) executive chef,” he said.

Potential service operators pay $99 to join the association, then buy one of three recipe and training packages, costing from $500 to $1,000.

Mac Kay said most personal chefs can count on an income between $30,000 and $50,000 per year.

The Finnigans, who are able to complete more services by working as a team, figure to make between $48,000 and $68,000, Bob Finnigan said. After two months in business, they served about 12 clients, and hope to bump that up to 20 or even 25, he said.

Client Beth Crafton said having a personal chef has eased stress on her and her husband, Doug, both of whom sell medical equipment. “We were spending a lot of money eating out. We’d get home from work, we’d both stare into the refrigerator and say, ‘Why don’t we just go out?’ ”

“Then you figure you blow $20 easily on something generic that really isn’t that healthy for you.”

Crafton said she appreciates the personal attention. “She comes into your home and she surveys you--’Do you like a lot of meat? Do you prefer low fat? Do you have any allergies?’--It’s quite a lengthy survey.”

Crafton said she also likes the heat-and-eat convenience, and the ability to store the meals until they’re ready to use.