Home for dinner

Holly Wright of Estes Park encapsulates her business ? The Personal Chef ? in a paragraph.

?If you?re buying a week?s worth of groceries and you?ve got a family of four, that adds up to about $200. What I say to them is ?if you give me that, I?ll do all the grocery shopping for you, I?ll cook the meals and I?ll clean the kitchen.? I do all the prep work. Everything?s done all the way to their plate. They have a fresh-cooked meal that?s tailored just for them. They don?t have to go out and their kitchen?s clean.?
A personal chef service differs from a caterer, said Ken Hulme of the Portable Gourmet, a Fort Collins-based personal chef.
Where the caterer has his own professional kitchen where he cooks everything, and then tries to keep it warm while ferrying it to the customer, a personal chef uses the customer?s kitchen.
Another difference is the one between a personal chef and a private chef. A private chef works for one person or family. Sometimes he or she even lives in the employer?s mansion.
Private chefs work for multiple clients.
The personal chef service is not a new concept. It?s been floating around for almost 10 years, existing in a sort of commercial limbo. Never really catching on, never dying out.
That may all change, with the biggest factor being time, or rather, the lack of it. ?It extends beyond not wanting to cook,? said Barb Lance of Loveland, whose business is simply called Your Personal Chef – Barb Lance. ?Sometimes you just aren?t able to cook.?
The main client for a personal chef is someone who simply doesn?t have time. Hulme puts the profile this way: ?We look at people with incomes of about $50,000 a year and who eat out four nights a week,? he said. ?We are entirely affordable to them.?
Wright, who owns Le Petite Cuisine, says most of her clients are doctors. Lance counts a chiropractor, a high-tech executive and, in one case, a contracting family, among her clients. Wright has a client in Dallas that pays her to fly into the city once a month, do a month?s worth of cooking, labeling meals, putting them into her freezer and flying back.
That?s a pretty extreme case. ?I?ve heard of it but I really don?t know of anyone around here that does it around here,? said Adrienne Andrews, the head of the Greeley Restaurant Association. Andrews named one firm that she thought might be a personal chef in Greeley but had lost track of them because they had dropped out of the association.
But the popularity of the personal chef service should rise.
?It?s still fairly small,? said Wright. ?But it?s economically sound to someone. The biggest preconceived hurdle is that this is a service only for the wealthy. That?s wrong. I have single mothers. Believe me, you can afford a personal chef.?
Wright puts the costs of her meals around $3 to $5 per person. Lance puts her costs around $9 a meal. Hulme and his wife, Linda, prepare two weeks of dinners at a single fixed price of $350.
Typically, upon hiring a personal chef, the chef sits down with the customer to discuss likes and dislikes; whether the customer favors food spicy or bland, and other particulars that help dictate the menu.
Hulme has a four-page food questionnaire that he runs prospects through. After the initial consultation, the personal chef draws up a menu and sends it back to look over; Wright sends hers by e-mail.
Once the parameters are set, the chefs begin cooking. Hulme, for instance, says a client of his will not eat the same meal for at least six months.
All three of them are betting the service is going to catch on. Lance used to be a chef in a restaurant, Hulme was a science and technical writer and Wright used to be a software developer. They all very much like the idea of being out on their own.
?I?ve got a little Durango and I carry all my stuff in it,? Wright said. ?I have all my pots, utensils, food processors in there. I?m quick, efficient and all you need to have is a sink that?s hooked up to the water. If you have a microwave, great. If you don?t, eh. I can work around that.?
Lance has what she calls a ?little rolling cooler? and she brings all her own tools with her. She does not want a storefront location, period. Hulme says he has what he calls a ?small footlocker. Well, it?s not really a footlocker. It?s about the size of one and it?s made out of plastic. When you pick it up it sure feels like one though.?
Hulme credits the U.S. Personal Chef Association, a trade organization with a culinary school based in Phoenix, Ariz., for teaching him everything about getting his business going and making it pay. He attended the organization?s two-week course, which doesn?t seem like a long time until he talks about it. ?Basically, you learn cooking and freezing techniques,? he said. ?You learn what will freeze well and what won?t. I?ll give you an example. You take two potatoes. You wrap up one whole and you make mashed potatoes out of the other one and wrap that up. Now, which one is going to turn into messy, white glop first?? If you said, the mashed potatoes, you?d be wrong. ?That?s what I would?ve thought,? he said. ?But it?s the whole potato. Whole potatoes don?t freeze very well.?
Lance used to be a restaurant chef, creating menus and ordering food and doing all the duties that go with the territory. ?I like being my own boss and I?ve met some incredible people. I?ve got liability insurance ? I teach cooking classes at ?A Taste of Class,? which is a cooking store here and I?m a sales rep for a salad dressing company. Things are pretty good.?
Hulme is something of a jack-of-all-trades and says he first learned cooking from television chefs like Martin Yan or Jeff Smith. Lance learned in the restaurant business. Wright is a full-throttle foodie. She is extremely personable, holds cooking classes, answers cooking questions almost as if she expects them and was once under consideration as the host for a local cooking show. She can talk about the different types of chocolate the same way an exhibitor at a gun show can talk about the different types of bullets. ?I?m kind of selective, but all of the clients I have are beautiful people,? she said. ?I have turned down lots of clients for one main reason and that was because they seemed extremely difficult to work with. I just love food.?

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