You're stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic at dusk on your way to pick up your child from day care. It's been a long day, filled with meetings, phone calls and e-mails.

You rack your brain, trying to remember, "Is there something in the freezer I can throw in the microwave?" "Can I stomach dialing for pizza, again?" "Aw, heck, maybe I'll splurge on another dinner out...," but all you really want is to go home, kick off your shoes and sit down to a nice home-cooked meal.

It may sound like a fantasy, but lots of Washington women are living it these days--by hiring a personal chef sometimes to take over the time-consuming job of planning, shopping for and cooking nutritious and delicious meals.

"It's an extension of the entire personal-service industry," said Candy Wallace, founder and executive director of the American Personal Chef Association, based in San Diego, CA. "People are working extended hours, driving horrible commutes, and no one is at home to take care of a family's needs."

"We Sell Time"

"Mom and Grandma are back in the workplace," she continued. "Meals now are geared toward convenience, but what people have not realized is that the more meals are geared toward convenience, the less nutritious they are. That ‘dinner-in-a-bag' just like real home cooking? There's nothing real about it!"

Once considered a luxury (not unlike hiring a maid service to clean your home), hiring a personal chef today is considered by many to be a real time-saver, cutting down the time it takes to look up recipes, plan meals, shop for food and coordinate everything so that it lands on the table when the family's stomachs start to growl.

"It sounds luxurious," admits Wendy Perry, a personal chef in Zebulon, NC, who heads up the Personal Chef Network. "So much of what we do is sell time. When people sit down and factor out the time it takes to make shopping lists or grab take-out, and you've got kids to pick up or take here or there, get the dishes cleaned up and then it's bedtime--there's no family time left."

A Personal Chef Boom

It's a booming business, one that Entrepreneur magazine ranks sixth among home-based businesses for 2004. It's a job that can be as flexible as you want to make it and so has attracted lots of mothers who don't have time to work in a restaurant to its ranks.

"I started my business at the end of 1998," said Perry. "I had a small catering business, and one of my catering clients decided she wanted a personal chef. I really didn't know what I was doing at that point. I eased into the process."

Her client was trying to lose weight using the Weight Watchers diet and "finding it really difficult to plan the meals, shop, do the points," Perry said.

Today, Perry's roster of clients runs the gamut--from seniors to singles. "I have senior clients, not quite ready for an assisted-living facility, who need help," Perry said. "I've had children call me from across the country asking me to cook for their parents here [in North Carolina]. I cook for a lot of single folks. They might go to the gym and then come home, and it's just too time-consuming to cook a meal."

"I have one single guy who works the night shift, and he said ‘I'm so sick of restaurants, I think I'm gonna scream!'" Another client is a single mother with three teenaged daughters. "She likes to have some supplemental meals," Perry said. "She said it forces her family to sit down and have dinner together."

Personal chefs aren't just for busy families on the go. They're also for two-career families without children, mothers-to-be, new parents, singles, seniors or anyone on a special diet--from South Beach to Atkins to organic.

"The largest [client] group is working professionals--husbands and wives with or without children," said David McKay, a personal chef for the past 13 years who also heads up the U.S. Personal Chef Association from Rio Rancho, NM.

"It's the busy professional who is out of the house at 7 a.m., fighting traffic and not home until 7 p.m. It's the ‘I'm a shaker, and I'm a mover, I'm getting home, and I don't feel like going back out, I don't feel like fast-food' person--the perfect client for a personal chef," McKay said.

The social aspect of going out to a restaurant will always be there, McKay noted, but when a busy professional gets home at the end of the day, she isn't always going to be in a mood to go out. "She'll think, ‘I'm too tired.' If you hire the personal chef service, you have great-tasting food, created the way you've asked them to."

Wallace echoes those sentiments. "The biggest bulk of our business is two-income professionals who want to stay healthy and don't want to eat junk and need someone to take care of them," she said, pointing out that while fine-dining restaurants use fresh ingredients to prepare meals, many of the casual restaurants do not.

"There, the soups are dehydrated, the sauces come in cans--if you think you're eating fresh foods, you're wrong," she said. "You stand in line, you hope your server isn't having a bad hair day. Instead you could be curled up in the corner of your couch in your ‘jammies.' [Hiring a personal chef] is meant to support these two-income professionals, not from a culinary standpoint but from a lifestyle standpoint."

Too many parents are coming home from busy days, feeding their children "stuff that comes out of a jar, a can, a box," Wallace said. "I tell my clients, ‘If you're feeding your children convenience foods, by the time they're 10, they'll glow in the dark!'"

When hiring a personal chef, a client should sit down and discuss "what she likes to eat, her food sensitivities, allergies, textures she doesn't enjoy, medical parameters," Wallace said. "Let me design a custom program for her and reassure her that every meal is prepared from all-fresh ingredients."

How Much Does It Cost?

Is it expensive? On average, dinner for four, with an entree and side dishes for one week, in the D.C. area runs between $250-$500, according to D.C.-area personal chef websites that offer pricing information. Costs will vary depending on the menu, number of portions, size of portions, number and kinds of side dishes and desserts.

Wallace says it's not costly when you consider the money people spend to eat out or the wasted food "they bought over the weekend with the intention of cooking it." You might be saving your health and sanity too, she pointed out. "You're no longer eating additives, you come home, warm your food and enjoy it; you are not only eating beautiful fresh food, but you are reducing stress levels and enjoying more time."

Working as a personal chef, Wallace pointed out, is "a great way for chefs of a certain age to continue to cook for a living without having to quit because they want to have a child or get married. It's a valid career path. They have the same passion for cooking, but they don't want to work nights, holidays and weekends. It's a way for them to have their own businesses."

Being a personal chef also works for women who "don't need the adrenaline or the chaos of a restaurant. They can work while the kids are at school."

Wallace's group, the American Personal Chef Association, is affiliated with the American Culinary Federation in St. Augustine, FL. The ACF offers third-party certification for personal chefs. The U.S. Personal Chef Association offers a certification course as well.

Personal Chef Q&A

So, you're tired of unhealthy meals, and you've made the decision to see what this whole personal chef thing is all about. What do you do now?

First, you want to find someone who is in the area. You can do that by word-of-mouth, looking at advertising and websites, and searching the sites of one of the three national associations (see websites below). Then schedule a face-to-face meeting to determine what you want to accomplish. Do you want to lose weight? Have you been diagnosed as diabetic? Do you want your children to learn how good food is prepared? Are you a senior who wants to stay in your home as long as possible?

Secondly, a personal chef should sit down with you and discuss allergies or sensitivities to tastes and foods you don't enjoy. What kind of containers do you want your food packaged in? When heating up your prepared meals, are you a microwave person or a "simmer-on-the-stovetop" gal?

You should ask a personal chef if she has a municipal business license (city and county ordinances vary, and it depends on where the chef is doing the cooking), a safe-food handling certificate, and remember to ask for a copy of her general liability insurance coverage.

"People are trusting us to listen to their needs," Wallace said. "All a client should have to do is get home, pour a glass of wine, and eat with her family."

Mary Ann Barton is a freelance writer based in Arlington, VA.

U.S. Personal Chef Association: www.uspca.com/

Personal Chef Network: www.pcnchef.com

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Four Janes Catering & Personal Chef Service, LLC
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