Make it Personal: Learn Catering and Culinary Skills to Become a Personal Chef

As our lives become more hectic and busy, personal chefs are increasingly in popularity. People work long hours, and even those who work inside their homes are often unable to stop in the middle of whatever they're doing to make dinner. Many families are lucky if dinner turns out to be spaghetti, again, with sauce out of a jar. Our lives are fuller than ever, and that's opened the door for chefs with catering skills to become super busy themselves, with new careers that bring professional chefs right into your home.

Becoming a Personal Chef

To become a personal chef you need culinary skills, most likely honed in culinary school where you'll learn cooking theory, how to create menus, and perhaps even business management.

A background in catering could serve you well in your career as a personal chef; being a personal chef is definitely a related career. Caterers provide food for events, consult with clients on what kinds of food to prepare, and often handle other aspects of events, such as flowers, table settings, and linens.

Duties of a Personal Chef

Personal chefs meet with their clients to plan menus, usually a week at a time. They take into account food likes and dislikes, and allergies and illnesses from diabetes to high blood pressure. They use culinary skills to prepare nutritious, easily stored and reheated food for busy families, working singles, elderly clients, and people who just plain hate to cook. They also use their catering skills to handle arrangements from wine to aperitifs for their clients' dinner parties, freeing up the hosts to mingle with their guests.

Formal personal chef training is desirable for moving into restaurant or catering managerial positions or managing your own restaurant or catering business. Catering classes can teach you to plan menu items within your clients' budget. Culinary arts classes can teach you the basics of cooking. Supply the personal touch and your career as a personal chef could be set.

Source

International Catering Association