They ring a doorbell carrying two crates and a cool box. In forty minutes the kitchen has to be organised; in three hours six people have to be served. They know neither the oven, nor the hob, nor the size of the pans, nor where the salt is kept. That is exactly the private chef's trade: delivering professional-standard work in a kitchen they do not control.
A service that happens at the client's address
Activity nomenclatures place this work alongside catering, and the criterion they use is revealing. The United Nations international classification defines the family by the provision of food services under a contractual arrangement with the customer, at the location the customer specifies, for a particular event. The French nomenclature lists weddings, banquets, cocktail parties, buffets, lunches and receptions of all kinds, carried out at the client's home or in a venue they have chosen.
A private chef belongs to that logic but pushes its constraint to the extreme. A caterer produces in their own kitchen and transports. A private chef cooks on site, in a domestic kitchen, usually alone, with no team and no second.
Everything is decided before ringing the bell
The difference between a successful evening and a difficult one is settled almost entirely in the conversation beforehand.
You need to know exactly how many guests, and at what time they will sit down. You need to know the dietary constraints: allergies, intolerances, religious prohibitions, dislikes, diets being followed. You need to agree on a realistic menu rather than a seductive one. You need to know whether service is plated or shared, whether there is an aperitif, whether children eat at the same time.
And you have to ask the questions clients never think to anticipate: how many burners actually work, is the oven fan-assisted and what size, is there room in the fridge for six plated starters, how many identical plates exist in the house, is there a dishwasher, a blender, a dish big enough.
That last set of questions shapes the menu as much as the client's taste does. An experienced chef does not offer a dish requiring four simultaneous burners in a kitchen that has two. They propose something else — and nobody notices a trade-off was made.
What you bring with you
A private chef travels with their trade.
They bring their knives, because no family kitchen has blades in usable condition. They often bring a board, scales, a thermometer, a piping bag, a few specific tools they know they will not find. They sometimes bring serving ware, when plated service requires it.
Above all they bring their ingredients, bought and prepared beforehand: whatever could be done in advance without losing quality has been — stocks, marinades, cutting, doughs, garnish elements. Transporting those preparations follows the same requirements as for a caterer: hot separated from cold, suitable containers, and the cold chain respected for the whole journey.
That upstream preparation is what makes the job possible. A chef who arrives with raw ingredients and two hours ahead of them serves late.
Working alone, without a safety net
In a restaurant a brigade divides the work: someone plates while another cooks, someone washes while service continues. In a private home there is nobody.
The chef therefore manages cooking, plating, the rhythm of the meal, washing up as they go and often the serving itself, all at once. They have to anticipate things a brigade absorbs naturally: not starting three things that finish together, keeping the single work surface clear because there is only one, washing during the lulls because there will be no lull later.
That calls for an organisation quite unlike a professional kitchen's: a written minute-by-minute running order, steps anchored to the service time rather than to the sequence of dishes, and a systematic safety margin — because an unfamiliar oven rarely heats the way you hope.
The meal happens in front of the client
This is the other big difference from conventional restaurant work: the kitchen is not hidden.
The client walks past, watches, comments, offers to help, introduces the chef to their guests. The job therefore carries a constant relational dimension a restaurant cook never experiences. You have to answer questions while working, explain a dish without lecturing, accept a conversation without losing track of a cooking time.
You also have to hold a boundary. The chef is in someone's home, but working: accepting a drink mid-service, being drawn into the evening or commenting on the house are professional mistakes, even when the client invites them. The right posture is easy to state and demanding to hold: warm, available, and entirely in your place.
Discretion extends the same principle. A private chef sees the inside of a home, hears family conversations, knows who entertains whom. None of that is repeated, published, or used as a commercial reference without explicit permission.
Hygiene in a kitchen not designed for it
A family kitchen has no dedicated work surface, no cold room, no separate hand basin. It has a fridge shared with the life of the house and a sink used for everything.
The five food safety principles published by the World Health Organization come into their own here: keep clean, separate raw and cooked, cook thoroughly, keep food at safe temperatures, use safe water and raw materials. In a domestic kitchen that becomes very concrete: bringing your own boards and dedicating them, cleaning and sanitising the work surface before starting rather than trusting its appearance, never setting a ready-to-eat preparation where raw products have been handled, washing hands at defined moments, and bringing a cool box rather than hoping for fridge space.
The international reference framework remains the Codex Alimentarius collection of codes of practice, developed jointly by FAO and WHO, whose general principles of food hygiene serve as the basis for every other text in the field. The obligations applying to a professional cooking in private homes — registration, training, transport and preparation conditions — depend entirely on each country's law. That is a point to verify locally before selling services, not to infer from practice elsewhere.
Allergies are not a menu detail
This is where the gap between amateur and professional shows most clearly.
A private chef cooks for a small number of people they know by name. They can therefore, and must, know exactly what each of them cannot eat. That means asking explicitly at booking rather than waiting for it to come up, asking again on arrival, checking the composition of everything brought including processed products, and avoiding cross-contamination by genuinely separating the preparations concerned.
A professional does not give medical advice and never minimises a request: if a constraint cannot be met safely, they say so and propose something else. Obligations on ingredient and allergen information vary from country to country; what does not vary is that a client must be able to get a reliable answer to "what is in it?".
Leaving without a trace
The last hour of the job is the one clients talk about most.
A private chef does not leave a house with a full sink. They return the kitchen at least as clean as they found it: surfaces wiped, washing-up done or stacked in a running dishwasher, bins taken out, the client's utensils back where they belong, leftovers packed and labelled with a note on how long they will keep.
That moment is neither incidental nor separately billable: it is what turns a good meal into a recommendation.
What is actually being charged for
A per-head price is the most common way to display the offer, but it hides a cost structure a professional must understand in order not to work at a loss.
There is the raw material, the only line genuinely proportional to guest numbers. There is preparation time beforehand, largely independent of that number — which is what makes dinner for four proportionally dearer than dinner for twelve. There is time on site, which includes setting up, serving and clearing. There is travel, shopping, and sometimes equipment hire.
A distant job, a multi-course menu, plated service or an unusual number of guests all shift these balances. A quotation that separates these elements protects both sides and makes discussion possible without haggling.
Presenting a private chef business
A client looking for a private chef has a specific occasion in mind: a birthday, a dinner with friends, a proposal, a family meal, a professional reception. They want to know within seconds whether you fit.
A professional presentation gives: your name and background in one credible sentence, the kind of cooking you genuinely do, sample menus with the number of courses, how many guests you can serve alone and from what point you bring help, the geographical area you cover and your terms beyond it, the notice you prefer, what is included — shopping, preparation, service, washing up, clearing — and what is not, how you handle allergies and particular diets, how to request a quotation, and a contact that answers quickly.
Two things make the difference. The area covered, because a private chef travels and the client wants to know immediately whether they qualify. And photographs of real work: plates you have actually served, ideally in a real meal setting rather than on a neutral background — that is what the client is buying.
Finally, state what you bring and what you expect from the client's kitchen. A professional who explains in advance that they need two burners and a working oven prevents most unpleasant surprises, and incidentally projects a trade under control.
In short
A private chef practises a cook's trade under a guest's conditions. They work alone, in equipment they are discovering, watched by the people they serve, with a menu agreed in advance and no possibility of sending a plate back to the kitchen. Their skill is as much relational and organisational as culinary.
Registration, hygiene and information obligations depend entirely on the country of practice: local rules apply. What does not vary is the nature of the work — you enter someone's home, you produce an occasion there, and you leave the kitchen cleaner than you found it.
Are you a private chef? Set out your menus, your area, your capacity and what your service includes: that is what people look at before writing to you.