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Julia Altshuler

wrote:
> Hi guys,
> I wondered about people who hire cooks to get out of the holiday
> cooking, and I recently started a website called licensedtocook.com.
> Its a website for foodies (like me) who love to cook and may even be
> willing to do it for extra income but just don't want the stress of
> starting or managing a cooking business. What I want to know from users
> of this post, is if there are many other people out there who would go
> for this.

You have a good idea, but everything about your website and post are
jumbled. I think you would have gotten more answers to your post if
people had a clearer idea of what you were asking. Let me try to
separate it out for you.

1. There are plenty of people who would love to hire a private chef for
special occasions. Instead of hiring a catering company that has an
off-site kitchen, people could hire one or two people to come in and
cater the party. A private chef might also come in to cook for a family
with a new baby or where someone is elderly or ill and therefore unable
to cook for themselves. The chef might cook and serve one meal hot, or
s/he might come in and make several meals to be put away for later. Or
a private chef might cook in a situation where there are many guests.
The private chef might cater a large party, make a special dinner for
small dinner party, etc.

The private chef is a nice word for it, but you might also think of it
as domestic help, housekeeping, maid service, elder care, or nanny, all
depending on which mix of cooking, cleaning, prepping, and shopping is
to be done. The food is paid for directly by the client; the chef makes
an hourly wage. The chef might go shopping for the client, but the
client reimburses the chef for the food having looked at the receipts.

Personally, I wouldn't be interested in that service at this point in my
life, but I can imagine others who would be.

2. There may well be plenty of people who would love to work as private
chefs. There are advantages such as flexible hours, added money as part
time help only for the holidays, an opportunity to pick and choose
clients, a chance to hone cooking skills. No license is needed the way
inspections are needed for an off-site commercial kitchen. That's
confusing matters.

Again, I'm not personally looking for that sort of work at this point,
but I have done private cooking in people's homes, and it was a good job
in a lot of ways. I also had my complaints about it.

3. There is a need for a clearing ground to bring these people
together. That's where your web page and service come in. Chefs might
not want to advertise. Customers might not be sure that such a service
exists or how to find it if it did.

If you're going to make money with this, you need to:

A. Add value so that the chefs and clients can't get by without you.
You might supply the advertising. You might offer business advice to
the chefs in terms of how much to charge, bulk discounts on food. The
chefs might work for you, and you might handle all the administrative
work of taking client calls, planning menus, billing, paying the chefs,
taking out for taxes, doing background checks. While there's no
across-the-board license to work as a chef, you might institute
standards for your employees in terms of degrees from a
cooking school, having passed a local certification test for sanitation,
maybe have your own certification process.

B. Figure out where your cut comes in. You might take a percentage of
the total bill or make a one-time job service fee.

I hope this helps.

--Lia