New Long-Term Opportunities in Culinary Education: The Personal Chef Option   Did you know that you can be certified as a Personal Chef through the ACF? I must admit that this part of our profession escaped me totally. I knew that there was a movement to personalize small business cooking for clients, but I really kind of lumped them together with small caterers. I felt like probably restaurant owners and caterers were branching out in search of new market segments that could be mined for business.

The Personal Chef industry has expanded and morphed into a recognized career path. Apparently there is an increasing demand, which grows each year, for high-quality food and service brought or cooked directly in the home. Some reports even claim that a living can be made.

So who are the brave chefs and cooks that venture into other peoples kitchens and make dinner for the family? More and more culinary professionals, including recent graduates of foodservice-training programs, are choosing to become personal chefs. Instead of continuing or launching careers in institutional or restaurant cooking, they look to the personal-chef segment of the industry as the way to own a business. These chefs hope that this path will provide a creative outlet, plus a comfortable income without the demanding grueling hours and years of "paying dues" to the culinary field. This, at least, was the take of Candy Wallace who is the Executive Director of the APCI American Personal Chef Association (APCA)

LOL*, 30 years ago I to felt that I could excel in a Chefs career without “paying the dues” insisted on by an older generation. The truth is, that anyone making a success of their career will do it by hard work, perseverance and they will pay dues whether they want to or not. Happily, the two Personal Chefs that were found in Nashville, did not say a word about avoiding hard work or career dues. Both talked about the passion they had for food and its preparation. Notably, both had exchanged their careers as engineers, one in telecommunications and one in aerospace, for the kitchen. Julie Cicero, raised in New York, is the daughter of a professional chef. TasteBuds, her three-year old company grew from her obsession with food and time spent in the Opryland Hotel Kitchen. Keith Anderson came from California; his Company, Panhandler Chef, grew out of his time at the Culinary Academy at Greystone in wine country.

So, what is a Personal Chef if it’s not a small caterer? According to Keith the Panhandler Chef, the principle difference between a personal chef and a small catering operation is that the personal chef uses the client’s kitchen whereas a caterer has a licensed inspected kitchen that complies with codes. Julie agrees, but has recently had her eye on obtaining a catering kitchen, saying that it would definitely make the job a little smoother not having to schlep her cookware around. City and State regulations prevent individuals from cooking in their own un-inspected, not-up-to-codes kitchens and transporting that food in the performance of commerce. Most all Chefs agree that this restriction is a good thing.

Other aspects of the Personal Chef business include a type of micromanagement of their cooking process. They design the menu, sell and market their services, do the grocery shopping, schedule the preparation, serve the product, and clean their own equipment. The food industry, especially a restaurant, has always been unique in that it is one of the few businesses where raw materials are purchased, warehoused, manufactured, packaged, sold by a sales force, delivered, and consumed by the end-user all under one roof. The personal chef industry compresses this process further from one roof into one person. A principle challenge for these personal chefs is the marketing and sales of the service. The public’s acceptance of the idea is not a problem, most think that the idea is sound, sometimes the price can blunt their enthusiasm. Not that the price is excessive, or that the services provided isn’t worth the charges, but rather there is not a good understanding on the part of the public of how much money and time they already expend on their meal preparation and dining.

The clientele is surprisingly diverse in their numbers, which is to say that there are an equal number of singles, couples, and small families which make up the consumer ranks. The age demographic of the customers runs between the late 20 y.o. to 60’s. with reasonable disgressionary income. Evening meals are the principle business, with a dinner party thrown in weekly. The local retail up-scale food markets are the suppliers, allowing the chefs to shop and hand pick their ingredients. The menu offerings reflect the current trends in upstream (upscale mainstream) dining. There are ethnic fusions, the obligatory Italian, Asian, Mid-Eastern, Latin American, American, a bit of Mama’s stuff and vegetarian.

Here, I am stealing a few words from the schpiel of the American Personal Chef Institute (APCI), headquartered in San Diego. It functions as an education branch which offers its members opportunities to start or improve personal-chef businesses based on highly effective, proven techniques.
"We realize that new businesses are started every day by people who are willing to track down all necessary details and learn by trial and error. The facts are, however, that many such operations fail quickly or struggle for long periods while the kinks are being worked out. Those stumbling blocks can now be avoided."

Candy Wallace believed that external validation of the personal chefs was required before they could achieve stature among their culinary peers. That recognition occurred at the ACF 2002 national convention in Las Vegas, a certification agreement between APCA and ACF led to announcement of ACF's two new certification designations for personal chefs: Personal Certified Executive Chef (PCEC) and Personal Certified Chef (PCC). Both are built upon APCA training programs developed and taught since 1995.

Both Chefs found here in Nashville belong to the APCA and are a welcome addition to the ranks of culinary professionals in cooking and hospitality community. They are:

* LOL – laugh Out Loud