On this week’s Chefs Without Restaurants podcast I have chef Pailin Chongchitnant, host of the YouTube channel Pailin’s Kitchen, and author of the companion website Hot Thai Kitchen. She recently released her 2nd cookbook, Sabai: 100 Simple Thai Recipes for Any Day of the Week. This episode is for you if you’ve wanted to learn to cook Thai food.
On This Week’s Podcast
This episode is a primer on Thai food and cooking. She dispels some Thai food myths, and shares her top five items for stocking a Thai pantry at home. We discuss why she was compelled to write another cookbook, and she shares how she grew her YouTube channel to over 1.5 million subscribers and almost 170 million views.
As always, the episode link is below, and the podcast is available on all platforms (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast, Pandora)
Relevant Links and Where to Learn About Pailin Chongchitnant
On this week’s podcast, I discuss the dangers of free work for personal chefs. As a personal chef, my business is centered around providing my clients with a restaurant-style experience in the comfort of their own home. This includes personalized menus, table service, and even bringing my own cooking equipment and dishware. However, one mistake I made in the early days of my business was thinking that attending events and giving out free food was a good way to market myself and attract paying customers. In this post, I’ll share some of my experiences with this approach and why I believe it ultimately doesn’t work.
The Problems with Free Work
One of the main issues with doing free work is that it can be difficult to effectively showcase your skills and services when you’re limited to a small, sample-sized portion of food at an event. My business is based on providing an in-home dining experience with personalized menus and table service, which is not something that can be easily translated to a six-foot table in a mall on a Sunday afternoon. Additionally, the caliber of food I’m able to give away for free is not going to be on par with what I’m able to serve at a full-scale dinner event.
Another issue with free work is that it can be time-consuming and costly. For example, I once paid to have a table at an event and gave out hundreds of portions of free food, only to have people come by, grab a bite, and move on to the next table without taking a business card or showing any real interest in hiring me. Similarly, I was once convinced to do a dinner on a boat, which involved a lot of time and effort setting up and preparing food on a grill. While I had hoped to get some exposure to food media and potentially land some gigs as a result, the event ended up being a disaster and I didn’t end up getting any new business out of it.
The Better Alternative
Simply put…Don’t do it. After experiencing a number of failures with this approach, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not necessary (or even effective) to do free work in order to succeed in business. I’ve found that my skills and services are valuable enough that I don’t need to give them away for free in order to attract paying customers. Over the past five years, my side hustle has become my primary source of income, and I’ve been able to build a successful business without having to attend expos or work for free.
Final Take-away
Doing free work as a personal chef (or in any creative or service-based business) is not a successful marketing strategy. While it may seem like a good way to get in front of potential customers, it’s ultimately time-consuming, costly, and might not effectively showcase your skills and services. Instead, focus on the value you can provide to your clients and charge accordingly. This will not only help you build a successful business, but it will also help you attract the right kind of clients who are willing to pay for your services.
Relevant Links and Where to Learn About Chefs Without Restaurants
Chef Carla Hall was a contestant on Bravo’s Top Chef and Top Chef All-Stars. Carla spent 7 years co-hosting ABC’s Emmy award-winning, popular lifestyle series “The Chew”. She’s been on multiple Food Network programs, was a judge on Netflix’s Crazy Delicious, and is a culinary contributor to “Good Morning America”. She’s the author of four cookbooks, in addition to a number of cookbooks put out by The Chew.
On This Week’s Podcast
On this week’s podcast, we discuss her Top Chef experience, and why she wanted to return for Top Chef All-Stars. We talk about the transition from catering to food media, licensing her recipes, and chef-in-residence programs. This is also a mini-Masterclass in biscuit-making. She talks about what makes a good (and bad) biscuit, and gives lots of actionable tips.
As always, the episode link is below, and the podcast is available on all platforms (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast, Pandora)
Relevant Links and Where to Learn About Carla Hall
Sponsor- The United States Personal Chef Association Over the past 30 years, the world of the personal chef has grown in importance to fulfill dining needs. While the pandemic certainly upended the restaurant experience, it allowed personal chefs to close that dining gap. Central to all of that is the United States Personal Chef Association.
USPCA provides a strategic backbone for those chefs that includes liability insurance, training, communications, certification, and more. It’s a reassurance to consumers that the chef coming into their home is prepared to offer them an experience with their meal.
Call Angela today at 800-995-2138 ext 705 or email her at aprather@uspca.com for membership and partner info.
Sponsor-meez Still keeping your recipes in docs? Doing your costing in spreadsheets? You should try meez—the recipe tool designed for chefs by chefs. Founded by professional chef Josh Sharkey, meez transforms your recipe content into a powerful digital format that lets you organize, scale, train, and cost like never before. See why meez is loved by over 12,000 culinary professionals. Sign up for a free account today at getmeez.com/cwr.
This week’s Chefs Without Restaurants podcast is a solo episode (find it here). I teach you how to grow your personal chef business with Airbnb, VRBO and other vacation properties. This has been where the majority of my business has been coming from for the past five years.
I’ve talked about it as part of other podcast episodes but thought it warranted a standalone episode. If you want to make more money cooking as a personal chef or caterer, tune in to find out my top tips for acquiring more customers staying at rental properties.
For more advice on growing your personal chef business, here’s an episode with chef Steven Lash where we talk about the personal chef business. Do you have tips you’d like to share on how to grow your personal chef business? Let me know. Connect with me on one of the platforms below.
Relevant Links and Where to Learn About Chefs Without Restaurants
Sponsor- The United States Personal Chef Association
Over the past 30 years, the world of the personal chef has grown in importance to fulfill those dining needs. While the pandemic certainly upended the restaurant experience, it allowed personal chefs to close that dining gap. Central to all of that is the United States Personal Chef Association.
Representing nearly 1,000 chefs around the US and Canada. USPCA provides a strategic backbone for those chefs that includes liability insurance, training, communications, certification, and more. It’s a reassurance to consumers that the chef coming into their home is prepared to offer them an experience with their meal. USPCA provides training to become a Personal Chef through our Preparatory Membership. Looking to showcase your products or services to our chefs and their clients, partnership opportunities are available.
Call Angela today at 800-995-2138 ext 705 or email her at aprather@uspca.com for membership and partner info.
This is by far one of the easiest breads to make. I started making focaccia at the beginning of COVID. Thankfully I have a lot of chef friends who kept my pantry stocked with flour and yeast. While I’ve made a similar one before, this was the first time I’d made a whole-wheat focaccia. I chose the Silver Bread Flour from Deep Roots Milling in Lowesville, VA. It’s their organic redeemer hard red winter wheat. It baked up really nicely, with a slighly tighter crumb than I usually get when using a white bread flour.
550g bread flour (whole wheat, white or a blend) 5.5 g (1 ½ tsp) kosher salt 6 g (2 tsp) instant yeast 5 g (1 tsp) granulated sugar 410 g (420ml) lukewarm liquid (1 bottle pilsner beer + 52 g filtered water- see notes) 4 T olive oil, divided 1 ½ T EverythingSpice (such as the one from Spiceology) 1/4 tsp smoked paprika fleu de sel salt olive oil pan spray
Method
Heat the water and beer to 110 degrees F. Place the flour, salt, yeast, and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. Slowly add the warm liquid. Knead for 5 minutes on medium. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour on the counter, then move to the refrigerator and let it sit overnight. Remove the dough from the fridge. Spray a 1/4 baking sheet with pan spray, then rub 2 T olive oil on the pan, making sure to get the sides coated too. Add the dough to the pan, and stretch it gently with your fingers. Allow it to come to room temp, rest and rise for an hour. Then stretch it again and let it rest for another hour. Preheat the oven to 425 F. Pour 1 T olive oil on top of the dough and spread it all over the top. Sprinkle smoked paprika on top. Top the dough evenly with the everything spice. Using your fingers, press about 20 indentations evenly into the dough. Drizzle with the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Top with fleur de sel or Maldon salt. Bake until golden brown, around 30 minutes. Let cool just slightly before transferring the focaccia to a wire rack to cool. Notes- I used 1 standard bottle of beer. It should give you 358 grams, which is why I added the very specific 52 grams of water, to bring it up to a total of 410. For this bread, I used a pilsner, but feel free to use a pale ale, wheat beer or even use all water if you prefer.
