Book excerpt: Book & CD-ROM. According to the U.S. Department of Labor one of the fastest growing segments of the food service business is providing professional personal chef services. Personal chefs can expect to make between $100 and $400 a day every day. Until recently having a chef prepare food for you and your family was considered a luxury for only the wealthy. Today, many individuals and families have discovered that a personal chef service is an affordable, timesaving, and healthy alternative to the stress and time constraints of working to put a wholesome, economical, and tasty meal on the table every night. A personal chef offers a professional service of meal preparation. A client's individual tastes drive the creation of their customised menu. These personalised meals are prepared either in the client s home or your catering kitchen and then packaged, labelled, possibly delivered, and stored in the refrigerator or freezer. Most services include complete grocery shopping, customised menu planning, and storage in oven/microwavable containers. Families in which both spouses work, singles and couples who work long, hard hours, seniors who would rather not or cannot cook anymore, gourmets who love to cook but who do not always have the time, and individuals that have medical conditions, such as wheat/gluten intolerance, milk or other sensitivities, diabetes, or high blood pressure, who require specialised meals will seek your services. This book will not teach you how to cook, although there are some sample menus. What you will learn is all the aspects of starting your business, pricing your products, marketing your business, and conducting your day-to-day business operations. This comprehensive book will show you step-by-step how to set up, operate, and manage a financially successful personal chef business. The author has left no stone unturned in explaining the risky business of food service. The book covers the entire process of a personal chef business from start-up to ongoing management in an easy to understand way, pointing out methods to increase your chances of success and showing you how to avoid the common mistakes that can doom a start-up. The companion CD-ROM contains all the forms used in the book in PDF format for easy use, as well as a detailed business plan, which will help you precisely define your business, identify your goals, and serve as your firm's résumé. The basic components include a current and pro forma balance sheet, an income statement, and a cash flow analysis. While providing detailed instructions and examples, the author leads you through finding a location that will bring success (in your home or a rented kitchen), managing and training employees, accounting and bookkeeping procedures, auditing, successful budgeting, and profit planning development, as well as thousands of great tips and useful guidelines. You also will learn how to draw up a winning business plan, how to set up computer systems to save time and money, how to hire and keep a qualified staff, how to generate high profile public relations, and how to keep bringing customers back. In addition, you will become familiar with basic cost control systems, profitable menu planning, successful kitchen management, equipment layout and planning, food safety and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP), low cost marketing ideas, and low and no cost ways to satisfy customers and build sales. This book covers everything that many companies pay consultants thousands of dollars for. PCRs, as those in the business are nicknamed, will appreciate this valuable resource and reference it in their daily activities as a source for ready-to-use forms, Web sites, operating and cost cutting ideas, and mathematical formulas that can be easily applied to their operations.