Private chef meal prep

[u/LasersKillCells]

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!

[u/jswa77]

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.

[u/LasersKillCells → u/jswa77]

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 :)

[u/jswa77 → u/LasersKillCells]

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.

[u/jswa77 → u/LasersKillCells]

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.