I am a caterer but I've been considering a personal chef opportunity during my slow days. I will be charging an hourly rate plus the cost of groceries. For the life of me I can't figure out how the grocery shopping thing works, it can't possibly be this hard! For all the personal chefs out there how do you:
a) Get the money from the client to go shopping? (We can assume I will be the one doing the shopping.) I can't see asking for a deposit before I go shopping and then adding or subtracting the remainder from my total fee, that's messy. But, I also can't possibly be expected to know EXACTLY how much groceries for any particular week will cost. It's not like anyone's going to hand me a blank check! Do you use your own funds and then get reimbursed? Having learned some things the hard way that sends chills down my spine!
and...
b) Do most of you shoot for an average grocery bill as a general practice just to be relatively consistent one week to the next? Like the way many of us in other jobs use a percentage of our total fee to dictate food costs? I know it depends on the style of food and the preferences of the client (like organic/conventional ingredients, super exotic fru fru stuff...) I can always ask my client to give me a weekly grocery limit to work within but when I ask these types of questions I always like to have a number prepared in my head so I can negotiate politely and fairly.
a) Get the money from the client to go shopping? (We can assume I will be the one doing the shopping.) I can't see asking for a deposit before I go shopping and then adding or subtracting the remainder from my total fee, that's messy. But, I also can't possibly be expected to know EXACTLY how much groceries for any particular week will cost. It's not like anyone's going to hand me a blank check! Do you use your own funds and then get reimbursed? Having learned some things the hard way that sends chills down my spine!
and...
b) Do most of you shoot for an average grocery bill as a general practice just to be relatively consistent one week to the next? Like the way many of us in other jobs use a percentage of our total fee to dictate food costs? I know it depends on the style of food and the preferences of the client (like organic/conventional ingredients, super exotic fru fru stuff...) I can always ask my client to give me a weekly grocery limit to work within but when I ask these types of questions I always like to have a number prepared in my head so I can negotiate politely and fairly.