What a Wealthy Household Wants From a Chef

A private chef spends years learning to cook, so it is easy to believe that a household pays for the food. The food is what the chef hands over, and it has to be good. Even so, a wealthy client pays for what having your work says about them. For a household with a chef, that is a family that eats well every day, with nobody at home running the meals.

Imagine a household chef named Mirela Corrin who cooks dinner for one family four nights a week. In January, Mrs. Ashcroft calls her. She owns an architecture firm, her husband travels most weeks, and their children are 10 and 13. She says she wants the family eating properly again.

Mirela has a dinner party to prepare that afternoon, so she gives her usual answer. She trained in restaurants, and she cooks everything from scratch with what is in season. Each Friday, she will send a menu with two dishes to choose from for each night. Mrs. Ashcroft books her for Monday to Thursday.

The food is the best the family has eaten at home. Still, at 11 on Sunday night, Mrs. Ashcroft is picking the next week’s dishes. Most afternoons, a text from Mirela arrives between her meetings. “The market has no turbot today. Halibut or sea bass?” She answers each one.

In May, a colleague asks about her chef. “Her food is wonderful,” Mrs. Ashcroft says. “But I still think about dinner every day. I just do it on my phone.” In June, she tells Mirela that the family will manage on its own for the summer. In September, she hires the chef her colleague uses.

Suppose instead that Mirela asks one more question on the first call. “Who thinks about dinner in your house now?” Mrs. Ashcroft laughs. “I do. I plan on Sunday night, I order the groceries from my desk, and on a bad day we eat cereal at nine.” She adds that she wants the four of them at the table by seven on the nights her husband is home.

“Is there any cooking you enjoy doing yourselves?” Mirela asks. Mrs. Ashcroft thinks. “The kids make pizza with their dad on Saturdays. That stays.”

“Then I’ll take the weeknights off your hands completely,” Mirela says. “I’ll plan, shop, cook, and clean up. The week’s menu goes on the fridge on Monday, and you can cross out anything. If something changes during the day, I’ll sort it out and tell you at dinner.” Mrs. Ashcroft books her.

In March, the market has no turbot, so Mirela makes the sea bass and mentions it as she serves. The children ask for the chicken from the week before, and it goes on the next Monday’s menu. In May, a colleague asks Mrs. Ashcroft about her chef. “I haven’t thought about a weeknight dinner since January,” she says. The colleague asks for Mirela’s number.

Mirela cooked just as well in both versions. In the first, she sold the Ashcrofts her cooking. So she kept asking Mrs. Ashcroft to make the choices that came with it. Every menu choice and every text handed a meal back to Mrs. Ashcroft to manage. In the second, Mirela heard what Mrs. Ashcroft wanted off her hands, and she took all of it. She left alone the Saturday pizza, the one part the family wanted to keep.

So a wealthy household that hires a chef is not buying the food alone. It is buying a family that eats well every day, with nobody at home running the meals. Here is why the household pays for that, and what three people who cook for clients have said about it.

A household cares about its meals, and would rather not run them

Meals matter to a family in a way that most chores do not. They are part of how the family stays healthy, and often the one time of day it sits down together. A household that hires a chef has not stopped caring about food. That is the course’s view, drawn from what the people below say about their clients.

Running the meals is a job of its own. Someone has to decide what the family eats, plan the week, shop, cook, and clean the kitchen. Wealthy clients often feel short of time, and every one of those tasks takes some of it.

So a chef who cooks well and hands the rest back has taken one part of the job. A chef who takes the whole of it gives the family back the time the meals used to take. The cooking is how you get them there, and it still has to be good.

A personal chef says his clients pay to stop planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning

David Boyd is a certified personal chef who owns Down to Earth Cuisine. In 2024, GOBankingRates quoted him on what his clients pay for. They spend $2,400 to $3,200 a month, he said, “on giving themselves time back in their day.” In his words, “This is done by not having to menu plan, shop, cook, or clean.”

He also said who gets the most from it. “People who value their time and health enjoy our services most.”

Boyd described his service by the four jobs his clients stop doing, and only one of them is cooking. The clients who enjoy it most, in his experience, value their health and their time. The meals look after their health, and handing over all four jobs gives them back their time.

A chef of 14 years plans every meal, and his employers sit down without knowing what is for dinner

One private chef has cooked for the same multi-millionaire’s family for 14 years. He described the job, without giving his name, in a piece for VICE. “My employers make virtually no demands of me as to what they want to eat,” he said. “Most of the time, they don’t know what they’re eating until they sit down.”

He makes “all of the decisions having to do with menu planning and shopping.” Once in a while, the family asks for something special, but “other than that, it’s all up to me,” he said.

He also described what the family gets. “Just think about how nice it would be to have really good food, done the way you like it, three times a day, five days a week.” His employers often tell him that a restaurant meal “wasn’t as good as what you make us.”

He also said that his employers are unusual. “Few people would be willing to trust someone that much with their diet, so I’m definitely an outlier in the industry,” he said.

Measured against this lesson, his employers have handed him the whole of their meals, even the choice of what to eat. Most households hand over less. So take over as much as a household wants to hand you, and ask how much that is.

A chef who cooks for private events says families hire help with meals they care about

Jason Hernandez works with Blade & Tine Culinary, whose team cooks for private events. In March 2026, Cater+Event quoted him and others in the trade in an article about private chef work. He described why people hire someone to cook for them.

“Maybe they’re not the best cook, or maybe they want to focus on time with their families,” he said. In his words, they hire someone “not because they don’t want to, but because maybe they want to spend their time in a more valuable place in their eyes.”

He also warned chefs who are new to the work. “For those that think it’s just going to be cooking cool food, there’s a lot more that goes into it than that.”

In Hernandez’s view, families hire a chef so that they can spend those hours somewhere else, often with each other. A chef who thinks the job is the food alone has missed what those families are paying for.

Why taking over the part a household wanted to keep goes wrong

Imagine a personal chef named Lisbeth Yarrow who cooks a week of meals in the Greaves family’s kitchen every Monday. She has learned that households want their meals off their hands, so she takes on as much as she can. Mrs. Greaves plans the week’s menu herself, from her shelf of cookbooks. One Monday, Lisbeth tells her that she will plan the menus from now on. “One less job for your Sunday,” she says.

Mrs. Greaves thanks her. Each Monday after that, Lisbeth arrives with her own menu, and Mrs. Greaves’s cookbooks stay on the shelf. In April, Mrs. Greaves tells Lisbeth that she will not need her after the end of the month. “I hired help with the cooking,” she tells a friend. “Not someone to decide what we eat.” She hires a chef who cooks from her menus.

Lisbeth was right to take work off the household’s hands. Her mistake was taking a part that Mrs. Greaves had not offered. Planning the menu was the part of the meals Mrs. Greaves enjoyed, and Lisbeth did not ask before she took it.

The version that works asks first. “Which parts would you like me to take, and which do you want to keep?” Mrs. Greaves keeps the menu, and Lisbeth takes the shopping, the cooking, and the cleaning up. “If there’s ever a week you’d rather I plan,” Lisbeth says, “just tell me.” Mrs. Greaves goes on planning the menus. In August, the family’s busiest month, she asks Lisbeth to plan them.

Deciding what a family eats is not overstepping

Many chefs have learned to send a menu for approval and to check before changing any dish. Deciding what a family eats can feel like overstepping, and a text to ask can feel like good service.

The decisions you make are the ones the household handed you, and each household decides how many that is. The VICE chef’s employers handed him all of theirs. Mrs. Greaves kept the menu, and Mrs. Ashcroft handed over everything except Saturday’s pizza.

Each household can also take back any decision at any time. Mrs. Ashcroft could cross out any dish on the fridge, and the children’s request for the chicken went on the next menu. The rule is the same as for any client. Make the small choices yourself, show the client what you chose, and make it easy to change.

How to take a household’s meals off its hands

1. On the first call, ask who in the house handles meals now. Ask which parts they would like to stop thinking about, and which parts they enjoy. Write down the answers. For example, a chef who cooks for a retired couple three days a week can ask, “Who decides what you eat now? Is there any part of it you’d miss if I took it over?”
2. Take over the parts the household names, completely, and say how the family can change anything you decide. For example, a household chef who takes over the shopping can say, “I’ll keep the fridge and the pantry stocked. If you ever want something that isn’t there, text me and it’ll be there the next day.”
3. When something you chose has to change during the day, decide the change yourself. Tell the household in a sentence when you serve the meal. That is the course’s suggestion, because a question in the afternoon hands the meal back to the household to think about. For example, a chef who planned to grill and sees rain coming can roast the fish instead. Then she can say, “It rained, so the fish is roasted tonight.”
4. Leave alone the parts of the meals the household keeps. You can offer once to make them easier, and then let the answer stand. For example, a chef whose client bakes bread on Sundays can ask, “Would you like me to add your flour to the weekly order?”
5. Once a month, ask whether there was anything about meals that the family still had to think about. That is the course’s suggestion, because only the family can tell you what it still deals with. For example, a chef who cooks for a family of six on weekdays can ask, “Was there anything about meals this month you’d rather I handled?”
6. Rewrite the first sentence about your work so it names what the household no longer has to do. Cross out the cuisine and the technique. For example, a household chef’s “seasonal menus, cooked from scratch in your kitchen” becomes “I cook for families on weeknights, so nobody at home has to plan, shop, or clean up.”

Next: You will see how to move a household from paying by the event to a retainer, without making the talk about cost.