Hire a personal chef in the UK

18^th October 2021

The editorial unit

The editorial unit

18 October 2021

When planning a special event, cooking and serving the food is one of the most daunting tasks to face. Even making food for an average house party can be a headache. And if someone organises a big event, professional catering assistance becomes absolutely indispensable.

Fortunately, it is easy enough to find catering services to take care of the table, shifting the focus to treating the guests and enjoying the party. Here’s an overview of the services provided by catering companies, the advantages of hiring a chef and the most significant factors determining the personal chef prices in the UK.

Personal chef services

A chef can be invited alone or as part of a freelance team. Alternatively, it’s possible to order services from a catering agency, which will probably be better prepared and equipped to provide the full range of services than a typical freelance professional might be.

A relatively new option, rapidly gaining popularity in the UK, is the event planning marketplace. Besides catering for the event, it’s possible to book the transportation, entertainment for the guests and even order event filming and video editing afterwards.

When searching for a catering service, it’s important to distinguish between private and personal chefs. The former cook for a single client or a family on a permanent basis and sometimes even live in the client family’s house. This article focuses on personal chef services, which are considerably less expensive, but stresses that catering agencies typically provide both options upon request.

Personal chefs cater for individual or regular events and typically provide the following services:

• Planning the menu based on the client’s particular requests

• Shopping for the ingredients and delivering them to the site

• Performing the logistical and accounting operations required for proper organisation of the event

• Cooking and serving on-site

• Cleaning the place afterwards

Personal chef prices

There are plenty of catering service providers in the UK, and the prices vary a lot as a result. In most cases, however, one can expect to pay between £180 and £250. The costs incurred will generally depend on the following factors:

• Amount of work
  The costs will vary, depending on the number of people at the event, the number of dishes per person and the total effort required to offer guests an adequate service. Thus, there will be a considerable difference between serving a few snacks to a small family gathering on a picnic lounge and catering for lots of guests at a wedding function in a large venue.

• Type of cuisine
  Clients wanting to throw a Swahili party, for example, should expect it to cost a lot more than typical Continental cuisine. For one thing, they will need a chef who can make Swahili dishes, which is an exotic skill. In addition, he or she will need to know where to procure the rare ingredients, and these will also cost much more than cucumbers and tomatoes.

Apart from that, the more particular and peculiar any dietary requests are, the more effort it will probably take to shop for the ingredients and prepare the meal, which will affect the total costs in the end.

Benefits of hiring a personal chef

There are several reasons why applying for catering services is better than cooking for yourself:

In the case of a large-scale event with many attendants, it is not even a question of an advantage, but an inevitable necessity, since most people will probably not be able to manage it by themselves. In any case, it is better not to play cook while one’s guests enjoy the party, especially if it is the host’s birthday, after all.

Personal chefs will take care of the preparation logistics, the accounting and the smooth execution of the task, and all three are needed to pull off an event well and not waste money. Besides, professional caterers will arrange a much more appealing presentation than an average person ever would. Finally, they will clean the place when the event is over, and anyone who has ever had to clean their house after a birthday party will know that this may well be the best advantage of all.

Conclusion

Now that it’s clear how catering services operate and why it may be better not to economise on them, especially when planning a big event, it is time to compare personal chef prices to find the ones that suit best. It’s easy to find them on catering agencies’ official sites, and there are plenty of those in the UK.

The editorial unit