People ask us why a personal chef costs more than a meal kit or a delivery service. Our founder, Leslie Chartier, answered that question this summer, and we’re sharing it here.

A pile of restaurant closure headlines landed in front of me this summer.

The first thing I felt was fear. Fear of the economy’s effects on food businesses, especially those owned by people like myself, solopreneurs with small teams.

But then I realized all the closures were chains – Smokey Bones (I used to love their ribs!), On the Border (one of the first restaurants my husband and I ventured into during the pandemic), and some Hardees. All chains. Some technical failures attributed to too much debt and problems with scale.

Restaurants have always been a strange competitor to personal chefs. There is a standard amount people are comfortable paying at a restaurant, and that is the lid we get measured against. We are always more expensive, because we are incredibly customized. People with very restrictive diets simply cannot eat at most restaurants, so we are a fantastic solution for them, but we are also very expensive.

In the pandemic, people were looking for delivery. They weren’t willing to overcome their fear of sitting next to people, and they also did not want people in their homes cooking. Delivery was the safe option. In the years since, many nationwide delivery operations, one of them right here in North Carolina, answered that very well and grew very quickly. They are streamlined, the Walmart of personal chef and restaurant food, and they can mail and deliver far more efficiently than any ten-person local personal chef business can. At a cheaper price.

So the pressure to drop my price never really lets up.

And I have been here before.

I used to own a restaurant, Café Chartier, in Lexington, South Carolina. What ended it was some very well meant but very bad advice that we followed. A consultant came in from a chain and told us to lower our prices for volume. We took the advice. We lowered our prices. We burned out, because we were a small team that couldn’t produce the volume, and we fell behind on everything and had to close.

Lowering prices killed us in the long run. The advice we were given might have worked for a business with a different structure, but it frankly ran us into the ground. We were human and didn’t have enough hours in the day to keep up with production at that scale.

My clients come to us after they’ve tried everything else; the grocery store meal kits; the mail-order meal kits, delivery. They come to me because they want something much more custom. Athletes want larger portions, more protein. Many aging clients can’t tolerate dairy, wheat, or need a Low FODMAP diet. Some want meals that remind them of their former travels or favorite food memories.

Others have a strong preference for the doneness of their vegetables – like Goldilocks and the three bears – some like them soft, others medium, others al dente.

No high-volume company with low paid staff can provide that level of customization. It isn’t something you can get from a series of clicks on a website. It takes a conversation with a real person, a chef who will remember it from that point on.

That’s why our prices are higher.

If that’s the kind of cooking your household needs, start with our food questionnaire or call us at 919-444-2840.