Personal Chefs Are Stirring it Up in St. Louis

Back in the thirties there seemed to be a lot of movies made about rich folks. Maybe it was because of the tough economic times that we needed to get a glimpse into how “the other half lives.” The story, many times a comedy, was usually broken down by gender and age. The man was older and most often some sort of business tycoon. When he wasn’t at the office or the bank, (it seemed that a lot of folks ran banks back in those days), he was at home lounging around in his robe and slippers, smoking a cigar or pipe and drinking brandy from a snifter. The woman of the house was the social gadfly. Champagne was her drink of choice, and her cigarette always had a holder. If she had any kind of job at all, it was to supervise the help: usually a cook, a maid, and a butler. Sometimes the butler would cook and the cook would serve, but neither seemed willing to stoop so low as to perform the cleaning services of the maid. The children, if there were any, were usually spoiled, lazy and rotten, and always seemed to be getting into some kind of trouble. If they were very young, a nanny was more often than not raising them. It made you wonder how anyone grew up to be a prosperous citizen of the 1950’s.

The personal service business of today seems more specialized than it was back in the thirties. Now we have personal shopping assistants, personal trainers, and people who groom and walk your dog. And it seems, in some areas at least; you don’t have to be terribly rich to afford these services. Take the business of being a personal chef, for example: According to the United States Personal Chef Association, the industry is a relatively young one, but it is growing rapidly. It is a $100 million dollar business today that is expected to grow to $150 million in the next five years.

A lot of people entering the field are professionals whose jobs have been downsized for one reason or another. They have taken their love of cooking and an average starting investment of around $2,000 for pots and pans and utensils, and turned it into a second career. Chefs are paid a flat rate per cooking session, do the grocery shopping with the client’s money, and furnish their own tools. The business model is more attractive financially than opening a restaurant, because the overhead is practically nil in comparison. There’s no rent to pay, utilities, food or labor cost.

The cost for a family of four averages out to be about $500 plus the cost of the food. The food prepared will usually last about 10 days. That’s about $50 a night plus the cost of the food. Not terribly bad to feed four people; if you take your family out to eat at a moderately priced restaurant three or four times a week, you’ll probably end up spending at least that much, maybe more. The focus today is not only to save time by hiring a personal chef, but also to get fresher and healthier foods prepared on a regular basis.

Right now, most of the personal chefs in the St. Louis area rely primarily on word of mouth for their advertising, so you may have to ask around a bit to find one. “The Food Fare-e” is the brainchild of personal chef Lynn Thilman, and is based in Edwardsville, Illinois. On the Missouri side of the river, Pam Smith runs a service called “Your Home Bistro.”

If you don’t feel like spending the money to have a personal chef come to your house to fix a week’s worth of meals for your family, you might want to pick something up at one of the gourmet meals to go catering places around town that prepare individual meals. Or, if that’s still too much, one of the grill guys at the local McDonald’s will probably drop by and whip you up a custom hamburger for about 20 bucks.