Stop Selling Food, Sell This Instead
I didn’t start out as the best cook but my rebooking rate was 80%. Why? Because being a personal chef isn’t just about the food! Sure, the food has to be good enough that the client will rebook, but food is just one part of it.
What actually gets you in the door of your client's home? It’s what you’re REALLY selling. You’re not just a food provider–you’re a solution to their problem.
Listen to this episode to learn how to position yourself so you’re not competing with food. Let’s be real. You can get food anywhere. A vending machine, restaurant, take-out, etc. It’s time to stop competing with food and start selling what really matters to your client: feelings of comfort, being taken care of, luxury, health and wellness, relief, and time.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
Why you don’t have to be the best cook around
What matters more than the food you cook in a personal chef business
Real-life examples of how to be a solution to your client's problems
How to stop competing with food
How to start selling “intangibles” to make more money in your business
Once you position yourself as a solution to your client's problems, you’re on your way to becoming a fully booked personal chef.
Featured on this Episode:
Ready to book your next summer sizzling client? Click here for my guide on how to get your next 5 clients!
Interested in becoming Fully Booked? Check out my A-Z program on how to market, sell and set up your cooking practice so you can become fully booked - Join the Waitlist HERE. Course is scheduled to open mid-September 2022.
Take a listen to to podcast, and leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcast, take a screenshot of your review and a surprise will be headed your way!
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Hey, guys. Welcome to this episode of The Chef with Purpose podcast. With me, Stephanie Heller. Today we are talking about what you are really selling. And I'll give you a hint before we even start. It is not just food. So if you think you are just selling food, this episode will be an eye opener. There are so many well meaning cooks, chefs and home cooks that fall into the trap of relying so much on the actual food as the product that they never are able to become profitable and in demand as they had hoped. So much of that has to do with understanding what you are really selling. So let's dive in. Food is one part, obviously, of the service and what you're offering is. And yes, your food has to be good. It has to be good enough so that people will book you again. But there's this whole part that happens before the client or the prospect even tries the food. So focusing on that so much before we get it in their hands or in their mouth to taste is where a lot of shots fall short, and I want to reverse it all for you and go back to the point before that. So good food has to be part of the delivery that you're doing, obviously. So they book you again, but it won't get people in the door because they haven't tried the food yet, and it won't get them knowing about you or talking about you. What gets people seeking you out is their problem, not your delicious food. I want to say that again, and I want you to really, really understand and hear what I'm saying. Instead of being you right now as the cook and as the provider, the service provider, the technician, I want you to dive into your clients brain for a second. We have to pretend to be them for a minute, because what their problem is is what's getting them to seek you out, not your delicious food. So they're not just seeking food. They are seeking a solution to their problem. If they were just seeking food, their problem would be hunger. And if their problem is just hunger, there's a million ways that they can eat right now. Like in your town, in your neighborhood, there's literally probably 100 ways that they can eat. And some of them are going to the food store, making food themselves, buying ready made food, going to take out, doing a meal delivery service, like a box delivery, drops off at your house, ingredient kit meal delivery, where they're sending you the ingredients and you're making it yourself. Or they could go to a restaurant. Those are just like, seven ways that I listed, that if their problem is just hunger, they can solve it. So the things that I listed above solve the problem of hunger and not having food. If you start out thinking that you're just selling food, you're putting yourself in direct competition with these hundreds of food places in your area. I don't want you to do that. That is the long, hard way and won't provide you with the income and the life that you want. This is why I don't really teach meal delivery, and I discourage personal chefs from doing straight up meal delivery. Because you are competing just on food. You're putting yourself in direct competition with those seven other places that I mentioned just on food. So if the problem isn't just food, which we just realized can be solved 100 different ways, what is the real problem? And to figure this out, we're going to, like I said, go jump into your clients mind. If you do not have any clients yet, we're going to just pretend. And you can pretend that you're your client. You can pretend it's somebody you know. And I want you to really think, what is their real problem? So I'll give you some examples. What is the problem families face relating getting dinner to the table? So let's pretend your client is a family. Like, it's a mum and a dad and two kids. And their problem is getting dinner to the table every night. Here's the things that it entails. They have to go food shopping or have food on hand. They have to decide what to make. Maybe they need a recipe. Then they have to actually make it. They have to clean the pots in the pans. They have to pick up their kids from school. They're going to be tired and they want to do something else. So they're not motivated. So solving this family's problem is really the problem of not having time, not being motivated, not having healthy recipes or like, quick things to grab and eat. Going food shopping, wasted food and cleaning up. These are all the problems that they have with getting dinner on the table every night for their kids. That is the exact thing you should be selling. You're selling a solution to those problems, not just the food. Food is the way that we deliver. It's part of the execution and part of the deliverables or the tangible thing that they get. What you are really selling and what I want you to keep your eye on is something that we call intangibles of the personal shop service. These are things that you may not be able to touch or see or feel, but make a huge, huge impact in your clients lives. It is the actual reason why they're reaching out to you. Again. They're not reaching out to you because they're hungry. So food is not just the answer. We need to solve the bigger problem. So let's talk about what are these intangibles? Intangibles can be a couple of things, one or two that I focus on a lot. Our feelings, the feeling that your client will feel when they book you, when they watch you cook in their home, when they eat the food and some of the things that I know they feel, because how do I know this? Number one, I've asked my clients. Number two, I have felt this myself, being a client. And you should try this out for yourself, too, because if you don't know what you're really selling, it's going to be hard to sell it. So here's the intangible feelings that the clients feel when they book you, watch you cook and eat. The first is comfort. Second is they feel taken care of. They have a feeling of luxury. They may also have a feeling of health and wellness, of doing the right thing to take care of themselves. They also have the feeling of relief. This is really important. Comfort being taken care of. Luxury, health and wellness and relief. Those are the real things you're selling. So here's an example. I want you to be able to see this kind of visualize it in action. So let's think of a busy professional. This person owns a business. Maybe they're a doctor, maybe they're a lawyer. But their main focus is on something else, meaning their job or their business. So what is their real problem? Their real problem is time, because they want to be doing something else. They don't want to focus on food shopping, cleaning, deciding where to go, what to eat, to drive around. And then you, as the personal Chef, can provide a weekly in home meal service. Let's say the four by four. I'll explain this in another episode that's coming up. But let's just say this is weekly meal service. When you provide that weekly meal service, the client has food in their home for the entire week for lunches and dinners for four or five days. When that's done, here's what your client doesn't have to do. Remember, their main focus is saving time because they want to do something else. So when you're providing that service, the client does not have to food shop. They don't have to find recipes or decide what to eat. They don't have to cook, they don't have to package and label it, and they do not have to clean pots and pans or their kitchen, and they don't have wasted food. So one of the things we do in my program, the personal Chef's secret to fully Booked, is when my students are figuring out the core service that they want to offer. This multi meal service is one that I teach and that I highly, highly recommend. I have them go through and chart how long they think all those things are going to take. The food shopping, the finding of the recipes, the cooking, everything I just mentioned, and they put a number next to it. And then when we have them actually go do the service, we compare it. So for now, since I've done hundreds of these, I just put numbers next to each. So for food shopping, I'm talking about somebody who's not a chef, who does not do this for a living. Food shopping can take 2 hours. This is food for the entire week. Lunches and dinners for a family of four. 2 hours includes driving back and forth, making your list, picking out all the food and getting home, finding recipes an hour, cooking all this food, 5 hours. Packaging, labeling, putting it in the fridge an hour. Cleaning up your kitchen, all your pots and pans, sweeping the floor, an hour. And then the wasted food that you would have to throw out if you were not cooking. That definitely wastes time and money. So if you add all that together, that comes to 10 hours. So if you're busy professional is a lawyer. You just save them 10 hours a week by having all of this food done for them in their home, ready in the fridge. If that lawyer this is the fun part. If that lawyer makes $300 an hour, you just saved her $3,000 for that week. Because that's time they can spend doing something they want. And in return, they only paid 350 for the service, plus the cost of food. Now, that is an amazing return on investment. I want you guys to listen to that. Again, putting all those things together, charting them, seeing how much time it takes a non professional, and then just estimating it by what they're making per hour. Again, we're guessing you're giving them so much more value in exchange for what you're getting, for what you're charging. So that is an amazing return on investment. And I want you to dive more and really think about this after the episode as you go about your cooking services and in your regular life, what are you really selling? Once you really get a hold of this and understand this concept that it is not just food, food is probably 20% to 30% of what you're selling. The rest is selling time back to them. It's selling them those feelings, those emotions of being taken care of. It's selling them relief of never having to worry about this all week, and that they get to do what they want with their time. So it can only help your confidence with meeting people once you get this because you'll really feel connected with the value you're bringing. A lot of chefs that have a hard time with pricing also have a hard time with this because they cannot connect the price to the actual value that the clients are getting. And when you don't understand that connection yourself, it's going to be really hard to explain it and sell it to somebody else. So diving more into what are you actually really selling? Also helps you explain what you do and how you help them. And it also differentiates you. You stop competing on food. Remember in the beginning of this episode, we talked about all the different ways that people can actually get food right now, if they're hungry. We want to stop competition with food, with competing on food for those things, because you can't differentiate enough to stand out when you become a personal chef and you solve a real problem for your clients that they're having. Now, you are in a class all on your own. You compete with no one because you bring your unique personality, you bring your experience, you bring your demeanor and the way you are and your caring, and you're compassionate and how you help people. All of that puts you in a class on your own, and you stop competing on food. Once you do that, you create more and more demand by the value you bring, which is equal to the amount of problems you can solve. If the only problem you're solving is just food that has a perceived lower value. Why? Because you can get food anywhere. You can get food from a machine, at a vending machine. You can get food at a restaurant. It's everywhere. It is low priced, and the competition drives the price down even more. We don't want to do that. You want to get connected to how you can bring value to your clients, which equals directly the amount of problems you can solve. If you're solving the problem of time, you're solving the problem of they never have to go to the grocery store. They never have to clean a pot or pan. They don't have to clean up their kitchen. They don't need to sit on the Internet and look for recipes. They don't need to figure out how to cook something with no salt and make it taste good. You've solved all those problems. You're bringing more value. Food has nothing to do with that. Here's the honest truth. I was not the best cook. I was a good cook. Not the best. I was by no means this, like, superstar, A rated amazing cook. But my rebooking rate was over 80%, which means when I was in someone's home cooking, the chance that they rebook was 80%. For every ten clients, eight booked again. Why? Because I proved over and over that I can make their life easier. And I did this by solving their problems. If you do this too, you will have more clients than you know what to do with. So I want to leave you with this story. I was coaching somebody in my program the other day, and we actually went through this formula a little bit, like, what are you really selling? And he kind of had no idea what he was selling because we all when we start, we think we're just selling food. And once we went through all the problems that you're really solving and all the value that you're really bringing to your clients by solving these problems, he said, I provide so much more service than I thought, and I never looked at it in these many pieces. I want you to take time after this and look back at all you're doing and break it down in your clients mind and think of what you're really doing besides cooking food. Okay, guys, this is a great episode. I know it's a big concept. You can handle it. Once you get a hold of this idea and this feeling and how to explain it better, you'll have so much more ease in charging what you want of having amazing clients come to what will seem out of nowhere and things will get rolling like you cannot imagine. Alright, guys, see you in the next one. Bye.