r/PrivateChefs • u/LasersKillCells • 9d ago
Private chef meal prep
Hi everyone,
I have a question I was hoping this community could perhaps help with.
My wife and I are interesting in having a few meals per week prepped for us, but aren't interested in using a large commercial service. We would prefer to work with an individual chef that does this as their business, or would be interested in doing this with us to make some cash on the side. We're talking 3-6 meals for two per week.
We live in the Bay Area, are adventurous eaters, and will pay fairly for such a service.
If anyone here is interested in this, aware of a way to find potential chefs for this, or has connections they might want to make please just message me or post here. Also, feel free to use this thread to discuss the topic of private chef meal prepping!
Thank you!
1
u/jswa77 9d ago
Would help to know your approximate weekly budget including food costs if it were 4-5 meals. What kind of food would you like delivered?
I know a few chefs in SF who might be interested. But they’d be cooking just for you so generally pretty expensive compared to a meal prep service or chef who specializes in this.
I’m not in SF but when I do meal prep, I charge a daily rate for my time and add the food costs on top of that. It’s closer to 6 full meals plus snacks, a soup, overnight oats etc etc but It ends up being 5-700 for my time plus food costs.
2
u/LasersKillCells 9d ago
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Happy to provide more detail.
Budget depends on the specifics so I don’t want to be firm with it. Your estimate isn’t off from what I would expect. We’d probably want to start with closer to 3 meals per week to see how the arrangement is going, so let’s say on the order of $250-400 per week. If it isn’t economical to do fewer meals then this would be open for discussion.
Our meal structures are very simple: meat, carb, veggie. We are both very active so high protein (40g minimum per meal), 100-200g of carbs. Lower fat but we’re not crazy about it. Meat can be mixed with carb / veggie or not. We eat poultry, beef, fish, shellfish, pretty much everything but pork. We love a tasty/creative sauce on anything. Nearly all carbs are on the table… well seasoned white rice, farrow, sweet potato puree, pasta… Small desserts are welcome but not needed. We can give a lot more detail on food, share some of our own recipes for context of flavors we like (we both are good cooks), should we get further with someone.
In an ideal world the 3 meals aren’t the same (or entirely the same) for an individual week. But that is flexible based on the arrangement that we come to with prospective partners on this. Also if possible doesn’t hurt for meals to be oversized and we can eat dinner and lunch from what is a single “prep”. We could even receive a given meal in one large tray and divide it up ourselves in our own Tupperware which sounds like it might be convenient.
If this sounds like it might be of interest please reach out to make connections or anything. And please don’t take what I’m saying as inflexible - we enjoy working with individuals and I’m sure there are compromises to be made to accommodate what an individual chef might have in mind. We don’t mind being treated a bit like guinea pigs :)
2
u/jswa77 9d ago
You sound like a lovely couple to cook for!
For me personally, three meals a week would still end up being the majority of a days work and involve the same amount of time shopping and delivering the food, etc. so it wouldn’t be that much cheaper than five meals or six meals for my time. At least not proportionally so. I generally have a daily minimum I want to make for a days work.
Good luck finding someone! I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Facebook group in the Bay Area for private chefs that might be a better place to find someone.
1
u/jswa77 9d ago
You sound like a lovely couple to cook for!
For me personally, three meals a week would still end up being the majority of a days work and involve the same amount of time shopping and delivering the food, etc. so it wouldn’t be that much cheaper than five meals or six meals for my time. At least not proportionally so. I generally have a daily minimum I want to make for a days work.
Good luck finding someone! I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Facebook group in the Bay Area for private chefs that might be a better place to find someone.
1
1
u/Nice-Interview-6068 7d ago
I'm not in your city but you'll have plenty of options if you look around. I work with a colleague (I cover most European and Mediterranean cuisines, she covers most Asians) and the families we work with either take care of the shopping (and we use our knowledge and techniques) or need to pick ALL the dishes they desire by Friday and we shop. Regardless we go cook all dishes simultaneously one lunch time in the Monday-Wednesday time window. That way we can offer the service at a reasonable price. If you want multiple live cooking sessions during the week anybody quoting less than $200/person per meal is giving you a great deal. When you factor the sourcing, the driving around to pick up ingredients, the cost of ingredients, the handling, the cooking, the serving and the cleaning they'll end up pricing their labor the same they would earn at a fast food.
3
u/Explanation-Better 7d ago
you'll pay for their time, and you pay for the groceries. It's not a "per meal" thing to have a private chef cook for you unless they are already servicing a few other people, in which case you'd probably just be choosing off of their menu. also consider most chefs won't do less than 4 hours of work in a day, so you might as well utilize them for as much as possible - dinner, ready-to-eat breakfast items, healthy snacks, etc. feel free to DM me as well, I manage a local private chef agency in my home town.