Baltimore-based entrepreneur owns and operates her own personal chef

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Aug 13, 2004 by Elizabeth Rossi

Laura Cotton threw in the towel on a 12-year career as a health care executive to shop, cook, clean and do the dishes - but she's no homemaker.

She's a Baltimore-based entrepreneur and full-time personal chef who owns Laura L. Cotton Personal Chef Service and is president of the Chesapeake Chapter of the United States Personal Chef Association.

The administration side of health care can be a negative environment, she said. There's a lot of pressure, and it's pretty depressed. I needed to be in a more positive environment on a daily basis.

So five years ago, Cotton traded mountains of paperwork and grouchy colleagues for the company of other second-career professionals who prefer a different set of job hazards - including chili-juice burns, screaming smoke alarms and hungry dogs that steal dinner rolls.

The career move allowed Cotton to get paid to do what she loves - cook.

A day in the life

Personal chefs usually handle one client per day, and Cotton likes to get an early start. When her alarm sounds at 7 a.m., she ventures into her home office to type up the day's menu, descriptions of each item, re-heating instructions and a draft of the menu for the next cook date.

Around mid-morning, after rush hour, Cotton heads to the grocery store - usually two or three of them.

I'm picky about what I get, she says, insisting on fresh ingredients and refusing to make substitutions.

Cotton arrives at a client's house around noon and begins preparing eight to 10 recipes. From start to finish - unloading the groceries, setting up the kitchen, cooking the food and cleaning up the floor - she spends about two-and-a-half hours at the client's home.

The cost of a plate of food ranges from $12 to $18 depending on how much is prepared in a single day. The more meals Cotton cooks, the lower the cost per plate. She usually prepares 10 nights of dinners for each client.

The cost is roughly equivalent to what many families spend on a dinner out, but personal chef clients skirt the hassles of traveling to a restaurant, waiting for a table and risking poor service. And the clients don't have to pay a tip.

Their only burden is providing plenty of freezer space and a clean kitchen. And for personal chefs, it's these little things that count.

My clients have pristine kitchen counters waiting for me, said Cotton.

Patti-Ann Josefson, owner of Patti's Pantry in Baltimore, said coming into a cluttered kitchen is the worst part of the job. Cleaning someone else's counters gets on my nerves, though she admitted it comes with the territory.

Cotton and most other personal chefs cram their car trunks full of their own supplies - from cooking utensils and aluminum foil, to dish towels, a rice cooker and olive oil.

Cotton cooks for four hours; packages the dinners; stores them in the freezer; leaves reheating instructions, fresh flowers and a welcome home note; and locks up the house.

In a little over eight hours, Cotton has compressed her client's dinner preparations to the 20 minutes necessary to warm the food and set the table.

Not all personal chefs cook in the client's home. James Davis and his son Bryan moved their Gaithersburg-based Really Good Food Co. into a commercial kitchen last August.

That allowed the father-son chefs to take on more clients as they added pre-packaged delivery service.

Now, the younger Davis said, the company is earning 50 percent to 60 percent more than it reported the same time last year. He declined to provide specific financials.

Personal chefs are responding to a growing demand across the nation for healthy food and the time to enjoy it, said Candy Wallace, executive director of the American Personal Chef Association.

With approximately 9,000 personal chefs - a population that is expected to explode to more than 25,000 in the next five years - and 72,000 customers nationwide, this segment of the food-service industry is the fastest-growing, said Brent Frei, director of marketing for the American Culinary Federation Inc.

These days, people don't have time to take care of themselves, Wallace said.

So Americans are increasingly turning for help to these professionals who love to do the things they loathe - plan meals, grocery shop and cook.

We feel like we are bringing Americans back to the table, Wallace said.

And it's their pleasure to do so.

Do what you love

With a passion for cooking, an entrepreneurial spirit and about $2,500 - for cooking supplies, a training class and marketing - just about anyone can start a personal chef company.

Cooking used to be how Josefson, a former finance manager for The Coca-Cola Co., relieved stress.

Now I'm doing it for a living, she said.

Josefson, who began operating Patti's Pantry this past spring, already has three regular clients. It's a far cry from the corporate world of meetings and schedules, hassles she was more than happy to abandon.

Personal chefs cite scores of bonuses associated with their jobs. They say they love the independence, creativity and flexibility of the job - and the facility to be just a bit nosy.