How Much to Charge as a Personal Chef: Prices Per Hour and Month
To work out how much to charge as a personal chef, start from the income you want to keep, add your business costs and a tax set-aside, and divide by the hours you will actually bill. The answer depends on which hours you bill. In the illustrative example below, a chef who wants to keep $55,000 a year needs $90 an hour if only kitchen hours are paid, or $45 an hour if every hour is billed. At the kitchen rate a weekly meal-prep visit is a $470 service fee, a month of four visits costs the client $2,746.00 with groceries and travel, and a dinner party is $135 a guest.
None of these are market prices. Every figure belongs to one made-up chef and is there to show the method; replace each one with your own.
The personal chef pricing formula
revenue needed = income to keep / (1 - tax set-aside) + business costs
hourly floor = revenue needed / hours billed in a year
meal-prep fee = kitchen hours x hourly rate + containers
client's week = service fee + groceries (+ shopping fee) + travel fee
dinner party price = (food + your hours + assistant + rentals) / guests
Groceries are kept out of the service fee. The client pays for the food; you charge for the work. That keeps your price from moving every time the grocery bill does.
Step 1: personal chef prices per hour
The example chef works 48 weeks a year, cooks 20 hours a week in clients’ kitchens and sets aside 25% of profit for tax. The set-aside is the chef’s own choice, not a tax calculation; the quarterly estimated tax calculator works through that part.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income you want to keep | $55,000 |
| Profit before a 25% tax set-aside | $73,333.33 |
| Business costs for the year | $9,000 |
| Revenue the year needs | $82,333.33 |
| Cooking hours: 20 a week x 48 weeks | 960 |
| All hours: 40 a week x 48 weeks | 1,920 |
| Floor if only cooking hours are billed | $85.76, $90 rounded |
| Floor if every hour is billed | $42.88, $45 rounded |
The cooking hours are not the whole week. These are the example’s other hours:
| Hours a week outside the client’s kitchen | Hours |
|---|---|
| Menu planning | 4 |
| Grocery shopping | 6 |
| Driving between jobs | 4 |
| Cleaning your own kit | 3 |
| Email, invoices, marketing | 3 |
| Total | 20 |
That is 20 hours outside the kitchen against 20 inside it: 50% of the week. Spread over kitchen hours only, the year needs $85.76 an hour; spread over every hour, $42.88. Both floors bring in the same $82,333.33 year. The difference is where the other hours go. At $90 they are folded into the kitchen rate; at $45 they are billed on their own and the client sees them on the invoice. A chef who quotes $45 but only bills kitchen hours brings in about half the revenue the year needs. The same arithmetic for any service business is in the freelance hourly rate calculator.
Step 2: a weekly meal-prep visit
The example client gets 20 portions a week. The chef spends 5 hours in the client’s kitchen and bills them at the cooking-only rate of $90, because planning and shopping are not billed separately on this job.
| Line | Working | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen hours | 5 x $90 | $450.00 |
| Containers and labels | $18.00 | |
| Service fee | rounded up to the next $10 | $470.00 |
| Groceries | $165.00 + 10% shopping fee | $181.50 |
| Travel fee | see below | $35.00 |
| Client pays for the week | $686.50 |
The client pays $686.50 for the week. The service fee works out to $23.50 a portion, and $34.33 a portion once groceries and travel are in. The example adds a 10% shopping fee to the $165 grocery estimate; set it to zero if you pass groceries through at cost.
Across all 8.5 hours the visit takes, including 3.5 hours of planning, shopping and driving, the chef keeps $59.24 an hour after containers. That is less than the $90 on the invoice and more than the $45 every-hour floor, which is the right test: compare a job’s pay per hour worked with the every-hour floor, not with the rate you quoted.
Personal chef prices per month
A weekly client pays by the month in practice, and a month holds four or five of the same weekday:
| Line | Four visits | Five visits |
|---|---|---|
| Service fees | $1,880.00 | $2,350.00 |
| Groceries with shopping fee | $726.00 | $907.50 |
| Travel fees | $140.00 | $175.00 |
| Client pays for the month | $2,746.00 | $3,432.50 |
The five-visit month comes to $3,432.50. Quote the weekly price and bill the visits that happened. A flat monthly fee built on four visits gives away a fifth one several times a year.
Private chef prices: a dinner party per guest
Events bill every hour, so the example uses the $45 every-hour rate for its 14.5 hours of menu calls, shopping, prep, service and cleanup. The party is 8 guests at $22 a plate, with a 10% markup on food.
| Line | Working | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Food | 8 x $22 a plate + 10% | $193.60 |
| Your hours | 14.5 x $45 | $652.50 |
| Assistant | 6 hours x $25 + 10% | $165.00 |
| Rentals and extras | $60.00 | |
| Everything the price covers | $1,071.10 | |
| Per guest | rounded up to the next $5 | $135.00 |
| Event total | $1,080.00 |
The event total is $1,080, and the chef takes $540 at booking, a 50% deposit. After food, the assistant and rentals, the chef’s own hours pay $46.83 each. Food is only 16% of the price; your hours and the assistant’s are more than half of it. If food cost per plate is the number you work from, the menu pricing formula post shows how a food-cost percentage turns into a plate price, though a dinner party is mostly priced on hours.
Hours do not shrink in step with guests. Work the sheet again for a smaller party instead of dividing this one.
The travel fee
The example client is a 24-mile round trip, 50 minutes of driving. The chef includes 10 miles free, charges $0.70 a mile for the rest (the chef’s own car cost, not a government rate), bills drive time at 50% of the $45 rate and adds $6 parking. That is $34.55, rounded to $35 a visit. The full cost of the trip is $60.30, so the fee recovers 58% of it. The free miles and half-rate time are a discount the chef chose to give; know its size.
The insight: a standing client is worth a discount
The example offers a weekly client 5% off the $470 fee, making it $446.50 a week, and charges one-off cook days 20% more, at $564. The one-off looks better until the hours are counted: it needs 5 more hours for a consultation, a new menu, an unfamiliar kitchen and the replies and quotes it took to find the client.
| Standing weekly client | One-off cook day | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per visit | $446.50 | $564 |
| Pay per hour worked, after containers | $50.41 | $40.44 |
The standing client books 40 weeks a year, worth $17,860. Matching that with one-offs takes 32 of them and 92 more hours of work. The discount buys the chef the hours it costs to keep finding new clients.
How these were calculated
Revenue needed is the income to keep divided by one minus the tax set-aside, plus yearly business costs. The hourly floor is that revenue divided by hours billed in a year, rounded up to the next $5. The meal-prep fee is kitchen hours times the rate plus containers, rounded up; groceries, a shopping fee and the travel fee are added on top. The dinner party price is food with markup, your hours at the every-hour rate, the assistant and rentals, divided by guests and rounded up. Pay per hour is what is left after pass-through costs divided by every hour the job took. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program, and the two agree to the cent. All inputs are illustrative, not market rates or grocery prices. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.
To run this on your own year, clients and receipts, the pack below has the same calculators linked together, plus a recipe cost per serving and a weekly income sheet.