How to Price Meal Prep and Private Chef Work (UK)
Cornerstone private chef guide. From one cook session to a defensible price per portion and per plan.
The short answer
Price meal prep by costing the shop for one cook session, adding containers per portion, then adding the travel and kitchen hours you spend whatever the portion count, dividing by the portions produced and applying your margin. The hours are most of the cost, and the drive is the one almost everyone absorbs.
Step by step
- Cost the shop for one session. The actual list for that client, including the jar of something you bought for one dish and will not use again.
- Add containers per portion. Tub, lid, label, sleeve. This scales with the plan, so it belongs per portion.
- Count every hour of the booking. Shopping, driving each way, cooking, plating and the cleardown. The cooking is rarely half of it.
- Add the travel itself. Mileage as well as the driving time. A client forty minutes away is a materially different job from one ten minutes away.
- Divide by portions, then apply your margin. You get a price per portion. Multiply back up for the plan total the client actually sees.
Worked example: a twenty portion weekly plan
One cook session at the client's home, including the shop and the drive.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Shop for the session | £68.00 |
| Containers, 20 at 65p | £13.00 |
| Shop, cook and cleardown, 5 hours at £18 | £90.00 |
| Travel, mileage and driving time | £18.00 |
| Total for the booking | £189.00 |
| Cost per portion | £9.45 |
| At a 40% margin | £15.75 |
| Plan total quoted to the client | £315.00 |
Cut the same plan to twelve portions and the cost per portion rises to £12.30, because the drive and most of the session do not shrink. Quoting the twenty portion rate on a twelve portion plan gives away a quarter of the margin.
Why it matters
A private chef's costs are dominated by hours that do not look like cooking, and by a drive that is identical whether the client wants twelve meals or twenty. Costing the booking rather than the food is what makes the difference between plans visible before you quote rather than after.