Working Families: Personal Chefs

It's 6 p.m. in Columbus, Ohio, and the Bacha family is famished. Sarah, 41, a marketing consultant, has been firing on all cylinders since 7 a.m., getting the kids off to school and then juggling phones, e-mail, paperwork and a lengthy strategy meeting. Her husband Jim, 47, has lumbered home after another taxing day as an attorney with American Electric Power Co. Will, 6, and Henry, 4, are antsy for parental attention. As usual, no one has had time to cook. What's a time-crunched family to do?

Sit down to a freshly made, aromatic Burgundy beef stew, of course--unless they're in the mood for chicken Tetrazzini or black-bean soup with ham. "Mmmm. It smells great," announces Sarah to no one in particular, as she savors the steaming stew. The sumptuous dinner was the creation of the family's personal chef, Anne Hayward, 55, who left hours ago. The only evidence of her efforts is the tantalizing aromas lingering in the kitchen and the three weeks' worth of meals freshly stocked in the refrigerator and freezer.

When the Bachas first used Hayward last October, they were ambivalent about hiring someone to cook for them. Would it be worth the expense? (Hayward charges $225, on top of the grocery bill, for about 15 family meals.) How tasty would the food be? Would friends in their neighborhood--affluent but hardly overrun by servants--view the Bachas with disdain? "It sounded pretentious," says Sarah. But she seldom has time to indulge her own passion for cooking, and Hayward's services give her more time with her family. "We're not rushing around every night to pull something together to eat."

Even in a slumping economy, more and more two-earner families like the Bachas have been hiring personal chefs who do the shopping, cook in clients' kitchens and clean up after themselves. Five years ago, there were just a few hundred such workers; today an estimated 7,000 personal chefs are finding that demand for their services around the country is robust. Last year the American Personal Chef Association trained about 1,000 new chefs, twice as many as in 2000.

Since Sept. 11, personal chefs have been inundated with requests for simple comfort foods like chicken pot pie and noodle soup. "People are still reluctant to go out to eat," says Candy Wallace, who heads the American Personal Chef Association. "They'd rather be home." Michael Zytowski, 33, a Long Beach, Calif., chef, agrees that current appetites run more toward pot roast than foie gras. "I haven't run into a client yet who wants Chateaubriand or lobster," he says.

Personal chefs are different from private cooks, who usually work full time preparing gourmet meals for the wealthy. Instead, personal chefs are tempting two-earner households with customized menus at reasonable rates, typically $15 per person at each meal. The chefs are masters of efficiency, whipping up three or four weeks of meals in a marathon six-hour session and juggling a dozen or more clients. Hayward's business, Premier Concierge of Columbus, primarily consists of a Volvo station wagon brimming with knives, spice tins and cling wrap.