Most families come to this decision the same way. Not because of a dinner party, but because the weeknights have stopped working — the shopping, the deciding, the cooking around schedules that never quite align.
What the role actually covers
A full-time private chef takes the household’s food off the family entirely. In practice that means:
- Roughly two hot meals a day, usually lunch and dinner, with breakfast prepared in advance or left grab-and-go. Three cooked meals daily is a demanding exception, not the standard.
- Menu planning built around who is actually home, what has been eaten recently, and what the week looks like.
- Provisioning — shopping, supplier relationships, specialty sourcing, inventory, and managing a food budget.
- Service and cleanup, including the kitchen itself.
- Coordination with the rest of the household on schedules, travel, and guests.
Our guide to what a full-time private chef actually does sets out the full scope. Cooking is roughly half of it.
Cooking for children, and the thing to screen for
This is the part households most often get wrong, and the part we screen hardest.
Cooking for a seven-year-old with a narrow palate and two adults who want something considered — at the same meal, from the same kitchen, without either feeling like an afterthought — is a genuine skill. It is not implied by a Michelin résumé. Some superb restaurant chefs are frankly poor at it, because nothing in that career ever required it.
What good looks like: a chef who widens a child’s range gradually rather than either capitulating to plain pasta or staging a nightly standoff. Who cooks one meal with intelligent variations, not two separate dinners. Who treats a child’s dislikes as information rather than an obstacle.
We raise this specifically during assessment. We also recommend watching for it during the trial, when the household is at its most ordinary — which is exactly when it shows.
When a full-time role is the right structure
Three signals, and households that have all three do well:
The need is consistent, not occasional. Full-time works when you eat at home most days. If the real need is a few dinners a month, the structure is wrong regardless of budget.
The household can carry an employee. A full-time private chef is generally a W-2 household employee. That means payroll, an employment agreement, and provisioning accounts. Our guide to what belongs in a private chef employment agreement covers the terms; a household payroll service handles the rest.
Someone will give direction. The most common cause of a placement drifting is nobody telling the chef what is working. It takes very little — a few minutes a week — but it has to come from someone.
If you are weighing full-time against something lighter, full-time versus part-time sets out where the line falls.
What it costs
Compensation for the caliber of chef our clients expect typically runs $160,000 to $190,000 a year before bonuses, shaped by household complexity, entertaining, travel between residences, and market. Benefits and employer payroll taxes sit on top, as does a one-time placement fee — a percentage of the chef’s first-year compensation, with terms shared on inquiry.
Our cost guide breaks down each component, including the ones easy to miss when budgeting for the first time.
How the search runs
We define the brief with you — how the family actually eats, ages and palates, dietary requirements, entertaining, travel — then source, assess, and present a shortlist rather than a stack of résumés. References are verified in every case, background checks run at your request, and every placement is tested with a one- to two-week full-time trial in your own kitchen before any commitment.
Every placement carries a 90-day replacement guarantee. Since we were founded, four placements have not held within that window.
To begin, tell us how your household eats — the weeknights, not the dinner parties.
This is one of the searches we run most often — and far from the only kind. Executive Chefs at Home places private and estate chefs nationwide and around the world. See all our markets, or tell us where you are.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is a full-time private chef worth it for a family?
- It depends on consistency of need rather than family size. Households that eat at home most days, manage varied dietary requirements, travel between residences, or entertain regularly get the most from a full-time chef. Where the need is genuinely occasional, a full-time role is the wrong structure.
- What does a private chef do for a family day to day?
- Plans menus around the family's tastes and schedule, provisions and manages the kitchen's inventory, cooks about two hot meals a day — usually lunch and dinner, with breakfast often left prepared — handles service and cleanup, and coordinates with the rest of the household on schedules, travel, and guests.
- Will a private chef cook for our children?
- Yes, and how well they do it is worth testing specifically. Cooking for children with narrow palates alongside adults who want something more considered is a distinct skill. We raise it during assessment and recommend watching for it during the trial rather than assuming it follows from fine-dining experience.
- Can a private chef handle a child's food allergy?
- Yes, and at this level it is expected — separated preparation areas and equipment, verified ingredient labels rather than assumptions, and knowledge of the household's emergency protocol. Where an allergy is severe or a diet is clinically prescribed, tell us at the brief stage; it changes who we approach.
- How do we know if our family is ready for a full-time chef?
- Three signals: the need is consistent rather than occasional; the household can handle the administration of an employee — payroll, an employment agreement, provisioning accounts; and someone in the family is willing to give the chef regular, specific direction. Families that meet all three do well.