Personal Chef Success Stories [2025]
If you’re looking for a career that allows you to work within your own schedule, look no further. Becoming a personal chef means setting your own hours, planning your own schedule, and taking on as much or as little work as you want.
Not everyone has the time to prepare meals for themselves. If you love cooking, you can start a personal chef business in your area and earn a good income from the side gig. The side hustle can fit into your schedule easily, and you can offer delivery and pick-up or curbside options to ensure more people are buying your services.
Personal chefs can work at various locations, including their client’s homes or restaurant kitchens. They may have regular clients who call on them to prepare meals for them weekly, or they may get called in to prepare meals for special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays.
In this list, you'll find real-world personal chef success stories and very profitable examples of starting a personal chef that makes money.
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1. Chefs Resources ($60K/year)
David Buchanan, a professional chef, came up with the idea for Chefs-Resources.com because he wanted easy access to culinary knowledge he had learned.
After starting the website as a personal resource in 2005, he added content, studied SEO, and eventually monetized the site through paid subscriptions, resulting in revenue of $44,800 in 2020.
How much money it makes: $60K/year
How much did it cost to start: $50
How many people on the team: 1
Chef David Buchanan generates over $6,000 per month through his website Chefs-Resources.com, which provides professional chefs with free and paid access to detailed culinary information and kitchen management resources such as Excel sheets, resulting in gross revenue of $46,000 to date and a subscriber growth rate of over 1300% from 2015 to September 2021.
