For line cooks, sous chefs and paid home cooks
How to Become a Private Chef: Free Guide
What it pays, what you need, and what a real week looks like, from a private chef who left the line in 2019.
Seven parts. One day off to read it.
- 01
What a private chef business actually is: the five kinds of private chef work and which two to build.
- 02
What it actually pays: the pricing structure, real ranges by city size, and the replacement math that turns the idea into arithmetic.
- 03
What you need before your first client, and the six things you do not.
- 04
What a week actually looks like: the meal-prep day hour by hour, menus that survive reheating, the dinner-party day.
- 05
The client relationship: the first conversation, the five-line proposal, raising your price, the referral question.
- 06
The seven mistakes that end private chef businesses in year one.
- 07
The first 90 days, honestly.
Chef Daniel Lubin
PRIVATE CHEF, DALLAS-FORT WORTH,
2019 TO NOW
Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland, 2018. Banquet chef at a AAA Four Diamond resort after that. My own private chef practice in Dallas–Fort Worth since 2019, where my highest-paying client pays $875 a week for meal prep. I wrote this guide because nobody in a professional kitchen ever explains how the money works when your name is on the business.
It is not for everyone.
This is for you if:
- You cook for a living now, in a restaurant, hotel, catering or somebody’s home.
- You have thought about going private but nobody has ever shown you the numbers.
- You would rather see one real number than ten motivational quotes.
This is not for you if:
- You want recipes. The internet has them.
- You want a passive-income fantasy. This is cooking, for money, for real people.
- You want to open a restaurant or a food truck.