Demand for Personal Chefs Heats Up

Borge Zierke’s future was pretty much settled when, at age 8, he got an Easy Bake oven for Christmas.

“I asked for two things that year,” he recalled. “A rifle and the Easy Bake oven. I think I got both of them.”

Now 32, Zierke has long since forgotten the rifle, but not cooking.

He owns a personal chef business for busy professionals, single parents, almost anyone too busy or too tired to cook. His office is the car he drives to clients’ homes.

It is loaded with pots, pans, cooking utensils, ingredients, cookbooks and whatever else he needs to whip up meals such as chicken lasagna casserole, stuffed manicotti and salmon corn chowder, among others.

Zierke also leaves fresh-baked bread, flowers or baked goodies behind as a treat.

He prepares each meal from scratch and packages and labels it for the refrigerator or freezer. All the client has to do is heat and eat.

“At the end of the day, it’s a pleasure not to have to figure what we’ll have for dinner, and then an hour or two later finally sit down to eat,” said Carla Bauer of North Liberty, a client of Zierke and his Chef’s Pantry & Provisions Personal Chef Service.

Once considered trendy or a perk for the wealthy, the personal chef business is gathering steam.

Zierke is one of 1,800 personal chefs around the country and Canada, according to David MacKay, founder of the U.S. Personal Chef Assn. of Albuquerque, N.M.

About 11 years ago, MacKay said, he “created a concept” to get his wife, Susan, out of the hectic restaurant business.

“I thought, ‘Hey, if the yuppies are paying to have maids come in to their house, they’ll pay to have personal chefs come in,’ ” he said.

In 1992, he started the association with five members. Today, there are conventions, training sessions, correspondence courses, certification and a bimonthly magazine.

At the present growth rate there will be more than 5,000 personal chef service businesses in the United States in five years, MacKay said.

“The reason why this is a business whose time has come can be directly attributable to the fact that there are millions of two-income families,” he said. “It’s no longer, ‘Mom wants to work.’ Many times Mom needs to work.

“Society and the way we have changed has produced the scenario that the question, ‘What’s for dinner?’ is a big problem.”

Alma Jewell of Orlando, Fla., said she doesn’t know what she would do without her personal chef, Linda Page, who runs Chef of Your Own.

“It is sanity--pure sanity,” Jewell said. “I didn’t even know people did this. When I found it, it was like, ‘Oh my God, somebody is doing this just for me.’ ”

Jewell said she pays $265, including groceries, for Page to come to her home once a month and prepare 10 dinners for her family of five.

“For us, it’s less than going out to eat,” Jewell said. “Price-wise, it’s an excellent deal. I don’t have to even go buy the groceries.”

Craig Mack of Edmonds, Wash., always wanted to run his own restaurant but knew he couldn’t afford it. So he did the next best thing: He joined the U.S. Personal Chef Assn., which charges a minimum annual membership of $49, and started Home Plate Personal Chef Service.

He started last October, has about seven clients in the Seattle area, and has met a half-dozen other personal chefs.

They get together regularly to share ideas and recipes and are doing joint advertising rather than competing with each other, Mack said.

Zierke, meanwhile, said all personal chefs have one thing in common.

“The No. 1 thing is that you’ve got to love food and love cooking it,” he said. “And for me, the part I like about it is pleasing people.”