What's a chef to do?

Paul

Paul

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Staff member
If you are an experienced chef and respected to the point of having unsolicited job offers, and you are looking to get into something new, what are some interesting possibilities outside of working in someone else's restaurant? What are the up and downside of the obvious things like opening your own restaurant, food truck, catering? Other?

 
Located here in Northern California. Can you expand on how consulting would work?

Like who the clients would be and how you'd develop clients and revenue from that?

 
Personal chef? Teambuilding cooking events like Parties That Cook (link)

I've used PTC for events and it was a blast. Would do it again in a heartbeat.

Classes at Sur la Table?

My nephew has a catering biz in the east bay he does in addition to his FT job, I don't know how he does both(!), but not sure how fulfilling it would be if one was seeking to be adventurous with food.

http://www.partiesthatcook.com/

 
I read about some of the best chefs here acting as consultants with start-up of new restaurants

Advising & helping develop menus, etc.

 
With out a doubt, my vote is the Farmer's Market.

I love my job at the FM. It is a happy place. I make chicken, tuna, potato salads, fruit salsas, fresh salsa, whatever I feel like making. I have loyal customers that buy unusual things I come up with because they trust me. The vendors I work with are all nice people. It is like an extended family. There are things like health permits to deal with, but if you know people with commercial kitchens, it would be fine. You could do prepared foods or prepare food at the market. I have sold salads, soups, salsas, pickles, burritos, bowls, etc. Whatever I feel like making. Hummus is a good seller too. You can be as creative as you like. It can be quite lucrative especially if it is a big market.

 
I looked into commercial kitchen space locally with him. Here is a summary:

They require long term commitments. I've seen from 2-10 year commitments being required to get in. Seems ridiculous to me but I guess in Sonoma County you have a lot more demand than supply with all of the food/wine culture and industry. He's looking at a minimum of about $1,000/mo just to use a commercial kitchen part time plus BYO Liability Insurance. Not sure what that costs but is another requirement. It is not unreachable but it just seems that for that amount of expense up front you already need an active base of customers to justify the expense. We discussed using the facilities of friendly chefs /restaurants but he felt that it was a burden to them to set aside dedicated refrigeration space and chefs generally having a proprietary sense of their kitchen. Also the margins being very thin here between the economy, taxes and high cost of supplies it would place some added risk on them. Also insurance issues here...
I'll discuss the FM idea with him.

 
He's done events like this with a teaching element including guest lecturer

at a local culinary school. Also this sort of thing at wineries. I'll run it by him, thanks.

 
I would talk to vendors at the FM and see if they would be willing

to share/rent some space for you. I know in San Diego, there were people who would rent out kitchens so that people could get their health permits, and then cooked out of their homes. If you are cooking on site, there would be different requirements. You might check into that too.

 
I have a insurance policy that covers a million in liability

and it cost me around $100. When I was in San Diego it cost under $300 a year. It's not that bad really.

 
Well I hear Facebook's executive chef passed away, I know a chef

who closed his restaurant, did consulting and is now cooking for Google or Apple, not sure which one. He calls it the hitech corporate conglomerate. He loves it but that's on the peninsula.

The pop up option seems popular, as do food trucks. you need a lot of capital and a lot of PR and social media to get that off and running.

 
Corporate folks love their chefs...

For awhile there G**gle had The Grateful Dead's chef working for them - and the food was always really good! That set the standard for wanting good food on campuses.

Many (most? all?) of those onsite cafes here in Silicon Valley are run by Bon Appetit Management Company - an onsite restaurant company providing cafe and catering services to corporations/universities.

http://www.bamco.com/

 
Another idea: Corporate Chef

I was once a Corporate Chef. The corporate offices of a major company had a kitchen/dining room for when they needed to entertain clients or for fancy private parties- and for when the boards had meetings, dinners, etc. The reason I mention it is that I could have used the kitchen for my own food production business if I had wanted to- when I wasn't doing small functions for the company. I started making pasta in my spare time and thought I might get it to the point of selling to outside sources but the corporate-types all bought it out from under me before I could get it out of the building smileys/smile.gif It was not my passion to make this bigger so I went another direction. But it is another possibility for your friend.

 
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