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January 16, 2008 | Sarasota, FL
By MARSHA FOTTLER
In days gone by, the European aristocracy and rich
Americans almost always had a private chef or cook
attached to the household staff. This servant set the
menus with the lady of the house, prepared meals and
kept a budget. Today that luxury is not just an
entitlement of, well, the entitled. Anyone with
disposable income to dedicate to cuisine convenience
can hire a professional. We live in an age of the
personal chef.
Options are plentiful, customization is guaranteed and
the cost depends on how often you want to eat and how
elaborate you want your meal plan to be. In general,
the cost of a personal chef's dish is about what you
would pay for an entre in a nice restaurant, $30 or
so.
Blake Ellis opted for the life of a personal chef when
he left the restaurant world. The young chef began
cooking and baking at age 5 when he helped his mother
fix muffins at her day care center. While at Sarasota
High School, he took culinary arts courses at Sarasota
County Technical Institute and later was accepted at
the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde
Park, New York. He graduated with honors in 2005 and
was hired by the Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota, in the pastry
kitchen. With what seemed like a brilliant career
ahead of him, the 20-something chef made a bold career
decision. He walked away from the haute restaurant
kitchen to form his own personal-chef company called
Eloquent Entrees, which serves the Sarasota and
Lakewood Ranch areas as well as the barrier islands.
"For me it was a matter of culinary diversity," said
the chef. "I trained as a pastry chef, but I love
cooking, too. In the restaurant world I would have to
specialize, and I don't want to do that. I want to
cook and bake all kinds of food, use all of my
knowledge. Also, I like having my own food business,
controlling my own career."
Ellis took a personal-chef course and is now
accredited by the American Personal & Private Chef
Association. From that institution, he learned how to
finance, market and run a personal-chef business. One
of the smartest things he did, he said, was develop a
user-friendly Web site.
"About 50 percent of my business is from the Internet,
and a lot of those clients are tourists," he revealed.
"For instance, a family of five from New Hampshire
came to Siesta Key for Christmas. They saw my Web site
and from the Northeast hired me to cook their Florida
meals, including a big Christmas Eve dinner. They
wanted to eat well and not have to take three little
kids to a restaurant every night. ... I also did a big
Thanksgiving dinner for a family of 11 that was
celebrating a reunion in Sarasota."
Ellis' regular local clients tend to be young
professionals or families who do not want the hassle
of food shopping or meal planning. He also works with
people who have specific dietary restrictions or food
allergies. And his $125 gift certificate for "a
romantic dinner for two" prepared and served in the
recipients' home has been a consistent favorite. "It's
an easy gift to give someone for a birthday or
anniversary, and you know it will be appreciated," he
said.
Small dinner and cocktail parties round out his
business. Ellis can handle up to seven regular clients
at a time, not counting gift certificates or parties.
He always cooks in the client's home. He does the menu
planning, shopping, preparation and presentation, and
also packages meals for storage if he is cooking for
several days at a time in the client's kitchen. His
meals average $35 per dish (extra if you want
disposable packaging), but he prefers to offer a plan
of 10 meals for $375. This personal chef will even
suggest wine pairings for his dishes and buy the wine
if the client wishes.
There is a difference between a private chef and a
personal chef. A private chef cooks for one household
only and is often a live-in staff member. A personal
chef offers culinary services to several clients and
can cook either in their homes or in a central kitchen
for home delivery.
Gordon Lippe and Brent Williams, partners in Gordon's
Gourmet, offer a personal chef/catering service. They
prepare meals for clients in a central kitchen in
Sarasota and then deliver the goods on Monday,
Wednesday and Friday. A Gordon's Gourmet meal averages
$30. Everything is fresh, and clients may request
organic ingredients.
The company, which debuted in 2006, has positioned
itself as a purveyor of high-end, health-conscious
food prepared by experts. The chefs actually have
three businesses in one kitchen. They do customized
prepared meals for home delivery; they cater on site
for events ranging from a dinner for two up to
weddings for 500; and they supply aviation and yacht
meals. "About 25 percent of our business is with
planes and boats," said Lippe, "and while it's a hard
market to break into, it can be lucrative. But
preparing healthy customized meals for time-challenged
people or those with health or special dietary needs
is the core of our business. A lot of people up north
order our service for their parents here in Florida."
The chefs said they can accommodate about 100 clients
for the home delivery part of Gordon's Gourmet.
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Lippe noted that about 20 percent of their business
comes from their Web site and the rest from private
referrals. The chefs met at Bird Key Yacht Club, where
Williams had been the executive chef for seven years
and Lippe was the food and beverage manager. The
partners spent a year putting together a business plan
for Gordon's Gourmet before opening the kitchen. "When
you work in a restaurant, you cook for an unknown
audience," said Lippe. "But when you're a personal
chef you have direct and immediate contact with the
person eating your food. It's gratifying, and it's the
part of the business we like best, being able to cook
exactly what that client wants. Client satisfaction is
everything to a personal chef."
Judy Krohngold was a personal chef for seven years,
until she opened a retail store. She now operates a
card and gift shop on Pineapple Avenue in Sarasota
called Shop du Jour. The name is a riff on soup du
jour, which tells you Judy still thinks a lot about
food.
Krohngold cooked only in the kitchens of her clients,
who ranged from people recently released from a
hospital stay to those intent on eating healthier,
including some who were obese. She cooked for a
physician with a gluten allergy, for a family with
four young children and for professionals too busy to
be bothered with meal preparation. Krohngold said her
meals generally came out to be $35 per person.
"At my busiest period, I was cooking for six different
households," she said. "All of them quite different in
what they needed, but all the same in that I cooked
multiple meals in their kitchens, wrapped and stored
the meals for eating the following few days. I don't
like to freeze food; everything was for that week. My
niche was always healthy cooking, and I came to the
job through Weight Watchers, where I was a
facilitator."
Krohngold said she has fought a weight problem for
years and has learned tricks and strategies for eating
well while still maintaining her goal weight. "When I
took on a new client, I always started with a lengthy
interview so I was thoroughly prepared and they knew
too what they were getting into. Some people thought
eating healthy was meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and
it probably was when what they were routinely eating
for dinner was popcorn or ice cream." Some of
Krohngold's clients needed her services for only a few
months; others became part of her life for years.
"I also helped with dinner parties and usually even
stuck around to pass the hors d'oeuvres in a chef's
coat," she said. "Actually, I loved the aesthetic part
of the parties and I often did the event dcor."
Although she found being a personal chef was fairly
lucrative and satisfied her creative side, she
eventually gave it up. "It was just too solitary for
me," Krohngold said. "I'm single and I live alone and
I never saw most of my clients. We'd usually
communicate by note or phone. Many chefs go into this
kind of work to escape people and bustle, but for me
it became a lonely way of life. I needed more
interaction with people." Krohngold has that
connection with a wider public now with her boutique,
and she continues at Weight Watchers.
Many personal chefs specialize food for those with
weight problems or dietary limitations, catering to
vegetarians, vegans, macrobiotic eaters, or people who
suffer from allergies or health ailments that demand
the elimination of certain food groups. Other chefs
are hired by folks who want supreme convenience and
the sort of lifestyle that comes with being rich and
famous.
Larry Barrett, who runs Simply Gourmet catering
company in Sarasota, was a personal chef in Los
Angeles, where he cooked for Danny DeVito and Michael
Douglas, among other Hollywood stars and producers. He
tried being a personal chef when he moved to Sarasota
but abandoned it in favor of a catering service.
"Money was not an object in California," he said.
"Clients wanted specific culinary services, and they
didn't ask about the price of ingredients or costs
involved with preparation time. They just wanted the
best to impress. I found clients in this Sarasota
community more cost-conscious and in general not so
interested in out-of-the-box menu planning when
ordering meals just for themselves or their families.
Being a personal chef just wasn't something I could
make work for me here, although the demand for
catering for both small and large parties is very
strong, and I'm both busy and happy with catering."
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