Private Chef Search for Estate and House Managers

The principal may be the one who eats the food, but the search usually lands on your desk. You write the brief, you schedule the trial around a household that does not pause for it, and you are the first to hear about it if the fit does not hold.

This page is about how a search runs when an estate manager, house manager, or chief of staff owns it. The cooking standard does not change. The logistics around it are yours, and we work to them.

What stays with you, and what comes off your desk

Yours. The brief, the house standard, the calendar, and the decision about who meets the principal. Nobody outside the residence knows how the household actually runs.

Ours. Sourcing, screening, references, and the administration attached to all three. We approach the market, call every reference rather than a sample, and present three to five chefs, each of whom you could put in front of the principal without qualification.

Reading twenty résumés is not a good use of a day you have already committed elsewhere. Our page on how we vet private chefs sets out what happens to a candidate before you see them.

The brief only you can write

A job description tells us what a household wants. You can tell us how it lives, which is the part that decides fit.

• Service pattern. A full-time chef generally cooks about two hot meals a day, usually lunch and dinner, with breakfast left prepared or grab-and-go. Where your household departs from that, say so early — it changes who is right for the role.
• Standing constraints. Allergies, a medical diet, a kosher kitchen, a principal who eats on a fixed clock, a child’s schedule that sets the rhythm of the day.
• House style. Plated and formal, family-style, or something closer to a restaurant pass. Chefs read these very differently.
• Kitchen reality. Equipment, storage, whether a second cook is available, and who else uses the space.
• Travel and residences. How often the household moves, and whether the chef moves with it.

The more of this we hold at the start, the fewer candidates we send who are plausible on paper and wrong in the house.

Fitting a chef into a structure that already works

A new chef is not only a new cook. They are a new occupant of a shared kitchen, a new voice in the service, and a new line in a staffing chart that currently functions.

Three things tend to decide whether that goes well.

Where the chef sits. Reporting to you, reporting to the principal directly, or something between. We tell candidates plainly which it is, because ambiguity here is the most common reason a placement comes apart for reasons that have nothing to do with the food.

Who holds provisioning authority. Budget, accounts, card, and who approves an unusual order. Chefs arriving from restaurant kitchens are used to owning this, and some households prefer it stay with the manager.

Whether the role is senior to other staff. A chef directing a kitchen assistant or a second cook is doing an estate chef job, and should be screened and paid as one.

Trial logistics in an occupied house

We recommend a full one to two weeks of the chef working in the residence before any offer, rather than a tasting. The point is to see service under the household’s real conditions: a changed headcount, a late return, a delivery that did not arrive.

You will be the one scheduling it, so a few practicalities are worth settling before we introduce anyone:

• Which week genuinely works, including whether the principal is in residence for part of it.
• Where a non-local candidate stays, and who books it.
• What the chef is told about the household before arrival, and by whom.
• Who gives feedback at the end, and in what form.

Most fit problems that would otherwise surface in month three surface in week one instead. That is the whole argument for a trial of that length.

Compensation, terms, and the guarantee

For the caliber of chef ultra-high-net-worth households expect, a full-time private chef’s salary typically runs $160,000 to $190,000 a year before bonuses, adjusted for market, residence count, and travel. Our full cost guide covers the components beyond salary — benefits, employer payroll taxes, and housing where the role is live-in.

A full-time private chef is generally a W-2 household employee rather than a contractor, and providing accommodation does not change that. Our guide to what belongs in a private chef employment agreement covers the terms worth settling in writing: schedule, travel, provisioning authority, confidentiality, and how the arrangement ends. Have counsel familiar with household employment in the relevant jurisdiction review the final document.

Every placement carries a 90-day replacement guarantee. If the fit does not hold inside that window, we run the search again and place another chef at no additional placement fee. Since we were founded, four placements have not held within the window, a retention rate above 99 percent. Our fee is a percentage of the chef’s first-year compensation, with terms shared on inquiry and confirmed in the engagement agreement before any work begins.

Timeline, honestly

In an active market a curated shortlist usually reaches you within one to two weeks. The full search runs anywhere from one to two weeks up to a few months, depending on how narrow the brief is and whether a relocation is involved.

If you are working to a date, give us the date. It is easier to say early that a brief and a deadline do not agree than to discover it in week six.

Opening a search

Where a family office sits above you in the process, our page on private chef search for family offices covers the reporting and approval side. The full range of what we place is on the placement services page.

To open a search, or to pressure-test a brief you are still writing, start a conversation. If it is useful, our list of questions to ask when interviewing a private chef is a reasonable starting point for the interview you will run yourself.