Personal Chefs Offer New Twist on Home Cooking

Personal chefs, once the province of the rich and famous, are seeing booming business in the kitchens of the middle class.

The demand for these mobile cooks is being fueled by the increasingly harried lifestyles of workers as well as the growing number of people who can afford the luxury of hiring someone to prepare meals that cost up to $20 per serving.

Some 100,000 Americans now use personal chefs regularly, up from about 1,000 a decade ago, says the U.S. Personal Chef Assn. in New Mexico. The trade is one of several cottage industries in personal services that have been boosted by the robust economy in recent years, including online takeout delivery and mobile dog-grooming services.

“We are witnessing an unprecedented demand by the U.S. population for ways to simplify their lives,” said Jeffrey Shuman, a professor of entrepreneurship at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. “It’s going from the affluent to the upper-middle-class to the middle-class on down.”

And as long as the economy stays strong, experts see that trickle-down trend continuing. But, said UCLA management professor Eric Flamholtz, “If the economy sours, all these personal chefs might find their businesses as solid as a collapsed souffle.”

The chefs trade group, with 4,000 members, says most of its clients are two-earner households with a combined income of at least $80,000.

Typical are families such as Keith Henry and Denise McKenzie of Baldwin Hills. Between them, the late-30s couple put in 110 hours of work--she as a lawyer, he as a researcher at a think tank. That leaves them scant time to spend with their 2-year-old daughter, Zoe, or for hobbies such as reading and exercising.

Enter Cindy Krapek-Ishihara. Toting groceries and her own knives, pots and pans, Krapek-Ishihara visits the couple’s home twice a month while they are working. When she’s done cooking, she cleans up the mess, labels the entrees and puts them in the refrigerator and freezer with heating instructions.

“This has definitely taken a major burden off our shoulders,” said Henry, who’s partial to Krapek-Ishihara’s Middle Eastern stew over couscous. “It means more time with Zoe.”

Clients prefer personal chefs over takeouts or restaurant deliveries because of the convenience and quality. They know that whenever they’re ready to eat, they can have gourmet meals that were prepared just the way they like them.

Beyond that, a big reason personal chefs are so busy is the hectic work lives of many Americans. From 1977 to 1997, the average workweek lengthened to 47.1 hours, an 8% increase, according to the Families and Work Institute, a research outfit in New York City. In fact, U.S. workers now labor longer than anyone in the industrialized world, putting in nearly two weeks more per year than the runner-up Japanese, says the International Labor Organization.

Most personal chefs have at least two things in common: a love of cooking and a desire to be their own boss. And not surprisingly, many personal chefs took on that job for the very reason their clients hire them--to make their lives easier.

Becky Trowbridge, 40, of Dana Point, used to work as an environmental consultant. She earned $60,000 a year, but her job exacted a heavy toll. A self-described “on-the-go, active, physical person,” Trowbridge hated spending 50 hours a week at a desk staring at a computer.

So in 1996, she quit and joined the growing ranks of traveling chefs. She named her enterprise Marvelous Meals. These days she puts in four-day, 32-hour weeks and takes home nearly $50,000 a year.

Clad in black chef’s pants decorated with colorful chili peppers, she recently zipped through a client’s kitchen, sauteing garlic and ground turkey for a pasta dish, and peeling shrimp and chopping parsley for a creamy bisque.

“People love me for what I do for them,” said Trowbridge, who has 15 clients and occasionally has to turn away work. “The job satisfaction is so high I can’t even tell you.”

Chefs charge $8 to $20 per meal per person, according to the industry trade group. For a family of four, that means a workweek’s worth of dinner can run $160 to $400--comparable to eating out at a good restaurant.

“This is slightly more expensive than buying it by the bag,” said Patrick Putnam, a 53-year-old financial consultant in Irvine who found his personal chef online.

But Putnam says it’s worth it for him. Besides saving him time, he says his personal chef has helped him get rid of a bad habit: eating junk food. Nowadays, Putnam is likely to dine on turkey barbecue meatloaf. “That’s far more nutritious and tasty,” he says.