— Deborah Trumble

Yeah, so I was a personal chef for years, years and years, um, and had a kind of a good list of clientele. Now, the way I was discovered by these individuals was by working at a whole food plant-based cafe, basically. Now this cafe was in a whole foods market in Austin, Texas. Um, and we did a hundred percent whole food plant-based, well that's not true. It was a raw and whole food plant-based. So we did raw food that contained oil in it. Um, and some of the meals that we did had oils in them cooked as well. But we did have a big emphasis on whole food plant-based as well. So that's probably what I would tell any, you know, inspiring chef to be able to do is to get a job at a restaurant, um, in the cuisine that you're most interested in. So finding a place that has whole food plant-based, or at least looking for a place that is, um, plant-based and, uh, working hours there, get it part-time job, you know, just to be able to kind of get in and get the experience with that really helps out a lot. Now because of that, just my cooking, you know, people saw what I could do, um, and liked it and wanted to be able to hire me from that as well. Now beyond that, um, I also kind of built up a reputation by, um, doing chef demos as well. So I would actually, I was at a certain time in Whole Foods markets. They had, uh, in-store chef demonstrations. And I would do those almost daily for whole Foods market. That was my job. Um, but we also had other people that would come in and do them like once a month or something like that. Um, and there were paid versions of this and there were unpaid, the unpaid ones are typically, uh, brand specific. So, um, say, I don't know, like there's a certain company that's trying to advertise, we'll just say, uh, cacao 'cause it came up earlier, right? So, um, you can approach that company and say, Hey, I'd love to be able to do a cacao demo and I'm gonna do a, you know, hands-on like, where I'm basically showing how to be able to cook an ingredient from beginning to end and come up with a final dish. And, um, through your expertise on that, it's great to be able to put in a resume, but it's also good to be able to see clientele that will watch you do these demos. Um, you can team up with different, um, you know, cooking schools where it's basically like their one-off kind of cooking schools where they'll have one event and say like, you know, like, sir Laab does like a lot of those. And there are a couple other venues that'll do, um, you know, cooking events like that where it's like they'll have a chef come in and do like, you know, a certain number of dishes and show people how to be able to cook those. Those are wonderful ways to be able to not only build your resume, but also build uh, you know, the credential, the experience to be able to kind of start out in your, uh, personal chef, uh, world. Now that being said, um, you know, starting out as a whole food, as just as a personal chef, you want to not be like, okay, like here I am. I'm gonna charge you, you know, a thousand dollars an hour to be able to do this. You want to set the expectation at a certain level and say, this is what we're going to start at. And, um, you know, especially if you're learning, say we're gonna learn this together, so I'm gonna charge you X amount for the ingredients, then I'm gonna put a charge of how much it's going to cost me and my hours to go on top of that and start with that and give them that expectation. Like, you know, like, this is how much we're going to do, but as your skills, uh, increase, then you can increase your price to be able to match basically what kind of what you're doing for those. So, um, instead of, you know, putting, I don't know, like a third charge on top of your ingredients or something like that, um, you can start to increase the amount of money that you're actually, you know, charging for your services. But just remember when you're first starting out, if you don't have the credentials for that, you want to be able to take baby steps to be able to get to that. So, um, just keep that in mind. Um, when you're starting out, um, you know, if you can and you can find a place that just does plant-based food, go work for them, you know, like that's a great way to be able to do it. That is how I, uh, you know, learned a lot. And remember, like to learn as much as you can from your peers. 'cause um, you will learn a lot from all the people that you work with. Uh, you know, as far as not doing any work with any kind of animal products can be tough sometimes in certain kitchens. Um, so if you're specifically like, I don't want to touch animal product at all, you have to look for specific, you know, places that'll let you just do that. Now, if you have a full-time job already and you're like, I'd like to do this, but I don't wanna do it full-time, consider volunteering hours to be able to do it and to be able to do it, uh, just to be able to learn. Now, depending on the size of the place, like if it's a big corporate company, they're probably not going to let you do that, but a lot of restaurants will if it's just like a one-off restaurant. So keep that in mind for all of those. It'll help you get the experience, help you get the, the credentials and the confidence to be able to start doing personal chef work.