Chefs Sara Nelson and David Levi are a husband-and-wife team and co-owners of Elves on Your Shelves Personal Chef Service. They live in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina with their three dogs and three cats.

Chef Sara is a self-trained cook. From the time she was a young girl, she loved being in the kitchen, creating breads, meals, and desserts for friends and family. One of her earliest culinary accomplishments, at age 10, was baking and assembling a cake in the shape of a castle - it looked almost too good to eat! In high school, Sara and her best friend spent dateless Saturday nights assisting her friend’s mother with formal gourmet dinner parties.

Upon graduation from high school in New Jersey, she ventured south to Duke University, where she received her Bachelors of Science degree in Zoology. Turning away from her earlier aspirations to become a veterinarian or a physician, she embarked on a career path that would lead from the animal health industry to environmental consulting, and finally to the pharmaceutical industry.

After 14 years in pharmaceuticals, Sara decided to take control of her own destiny. Together with her husband David Levi, Chef Sara started Elves on Your Shelves Personal Chef Service in the summer of 2002.

Chef David spent his early years on the campus of Virginia Tech, where his father was a professor of chemistry. At the age of 10, he was unceremoniously uprooted and swept northward to New Jersey, where he spent the next 7 years trying to be a Yankee. As soon as he graduated from high school, he hightailed it back to his native Virginia, where he attended Randolph Macon College and majored in chemistry. A Masters in Forestry from Virginia Tech followed.

After beginning Ph.D. studies, David realized he wasn't having fun and took time off to find himself. What started as a brief interlude at Pyewacket Restaurant in Chapel Hill turned into a 20 year career and was the introduction to what has become a lifelong infatuation with food. During those years, David built a log house in the woods, cleared space for a garden, and made the growing and preparation of fresh, healthy, and tasty food a major focus of his life.

Next came an infatuation with Chef Sara and, as they say, the rest is history. He had found his soul mate and a creative cook who loved food as much as he did.

A move to Durham followed. Again David put in a garden, and he has since spent many happy hours in the kitchen with his beloved Chef Sara.

The nearly simultaneous closing of Pyewacket Restaurant and merger of Sara’s company with another large pharmaceutical company provided the impetus for Chefs David and Sara to do what they like best - share their love of food with others. The aim of Elves on Your Shelves Personal Chef Service is to provide busy people with the pleasure of a healthy, preservative-free, home-cooked meal and enable them to have more quality time for family, friends, and leisure pursuits, and to provide nutritious and delicious meals for people with special dietary needs. They are constantly on the lookout for lighter versions of favorite recipes, and are exploring the world of vegetarian and vegan cuisine.