- I definitely believe cooking is my blood.
I feel like cooking chose me.
Food is life.
Food is everything.
Hi, my name is Ayo Cherry,
and I am a private chef.
I started cooking when I was eight
and luckily I got to work at my aunt's restaurant.
And then my grandmother is a phenomenal cook.
She taught me literally everything I know.
My private chef journey started a little crazy,
I began working with a personal trainer
who was preparing meals for his clients
and he asked me, would I like to prepare
the meals for his clients.
And from there, I got a lot of other personal trainers
and I was preparing food for everyone.
And the chef friend of mine asked me
if I would like to cook for Lil Wayne one day.
I went and I tried out
and he liked the food, luckily.
I made a well done steak and some potato chips. (laughing)
And all of a sudden I was a private chef to a celebrity.
Having your own business feels a lot like
what I hear people with children say about parenting.
It's rough, there are days I hate it,
I don't know what I'm doing, but you love it
and you get up and you just keep doing it.
And then eventually like good things happen.
My workspace is peoples' homes.
Cooking in someone else's kitchen
is a lot of trial and error
because no one has as many things as I do.
It's a lot of adjusting to the situation.
The first time we go somewhere,
I bring everything I have because you just never know.
My kitchen is organized by my things,
my clients things, I have more spoons
than any one individual should need.
I have a lot of spatulas.
I just have multiples of a lot of things.
And I basically set up everything I need
for meal prep in one area.
And I section off my things about spices, sweet and savory
to refrigerators, and quite frankly,
I need a third and maybe a deep freezer.
A typical week for me starts on Friday.
Friday's admin day,
we do all the invoices from the week before,
we create menus, we write prep lists
and we really get ready to move into the week.
Saturday is a free day for me,
I try to keep one solid day for myself.
Sundays I go grocery shopping,
I buy everything to get me through Monday
and ideally in a perfect world Tuesday
On Mondays, I wake up around 4:00 AM.
I prepare vegan meal prep for two separate clients
and that's 10 meals each.
I drop one of them off,
I drop the second one off.
And then I go to the grocery store
to get anything extra that I need from my clients
that I cook for after my drop-offs on Monday.
Tuesday, I do the same thing.
I cook for a family of four.
I wake up, I go to grocery store, I cook for them.
Wednesdays I wake up, I eat, I drive an hour from my house.
I stopped at the grocery stores
and any market for whatever along the way.
And then I cook for a family of three,
dinner and then I meal prep for them for them
for the following day.
On Thursdays, I go back to my same clients from Monday
and I complete the rest of their week's worth of meals.
Then I go home and I pass out
because that is the end of the week. (laughing)
It is a lot.
Personal time is difficult to work out.
My friends are always fussing at me,
like, what are you doing?
I'm like, I'm making a menu.
If I have a long car ride somewhere,
I'm going to find some time to write something,
send a text, work in some sort of way.
The door of clients rotates a lot in the beginning
because you're trying to figure them out,
they're trying to figure you out.
Sometimes your culinary style
just simply doesn't match for someone.
And it's a lot like being in relationships.
Sometimes they're just not your people.
Catering for events is my time to shine.
We put on like this display for their families.
It's always so pretty and it's always so extra.
I put like gold leaves on the turkey,
like there's usually a lot going on
but I always have this thing with my clients where I'm like,
like, are we showing out or are we just keeping it cool?
Because that lets me know like what level
of event we're having.
This most recent Thanksgiving for my clients
I made Southern food.
They had family in from the UK
and they don't really have Southern food there obviously.
So I made a huge Southern feast,
there was a baked mac and cheese because of the,
there was air fried chicken.
I know from on Southerners are rolling your eyes,
you'll be fine, it's L.A.
It's air fried chicken,
I did some air fried Turkey wings, and legs and breasts.
And you know, just broke down the whole turkey.
And did collard greens and green beans.
And, you know, just mashed, sweet potatoes,
mashed potatoes, just all the classics.
And we also added a rack of lamb to Thanksgiving,
which isn't typically a Southern classic, but it's good.
And Thanksgiving is all about what's good.
I feel like I care on an almost
maternal level about my clients.
I like to add touches that I know will excite my clients.
Something else I like to do for clients
is make sure it looks really appetizing
because you eat with your eyes first
and meal prep can get really stale.
So I really go out of my way to make a fully composed dish
and make sure it's pretty,
and there are colors
and use some like really good knife cuts and give them,
you know, some stuff's sliced on a bias
or some really pretty peppers,
instead of just green peppers, you know,
just going the extra mile so it looks visually appealing.
You are feeding people's families.
It's not a small task.
And I do take a lot of pride
in the amount of knowledge I have
to make sure this food is like nourishing,
is correctly prepared, it tastes good.
You know, food is something that brings us all together
and you are literally responsible for creating that moment
for your clients every single day.
When I labeled the meal for meal prep,
I leave them instruction
on what I think would be the best way to reheat it.
It does really help to know like,
hey, we have an air fryer,
if we put half of this meal in the air fryer,
we can put some of it in the oven
and it'll get as close to the texture and freshness
as it was when it was prepared.
It is difficult when you are a private chef to say, no.
It is difficult to say no to opportunities.
It is difficult to say no,
especially when you're in someone's home and in their face.
(laughing)
It is hard to go from haha hehe, here's some rose,
here's your food, no you can't call another 10 people.
It is a difficult thing to set those boundaries.
It is difficult to make sure I have time for me time.
I'm slightly getting better at it
but it is a very difficult thing to say,
hey, I'm not going to work. I'm going to do nothing.
That is a hard thing to do
without feeling super guilty about it.
So being a private chef always has
a multitude of opportunities,
you know, you're not just in people's homes doing meal prep.
You could be traveling with a client,
I've flown on my client's private jet
with them to Australia.
You could also be working, you know, overseas for people.
There's a lot of different opportunities
in the private chef world.
I physically don't think I could do this forever.
The hours are long, you know,
you're carrying a lot of stuff.
So after this, I think I could do a cookbook
or I can have a food truck.
I have a lot of ideas in my head
but I'm pretty much open to whatever
the universe has for me.
My advice to any young chefs
who are interested in the private sector
is talk to other private chefs.
And when I moved to Los Angeles,
I leaned on for many chefs here.
And the amount of help you get from other people
in your sector is invaluable.
Even before a private chefing,
I think starting in a restaurant teaches you
so many of those basic skills you need
that will help you through anything,
no matter what you end up doing.
So if you love food, I say, go for it.
I mean, you're creating happy moments for people.
There's nothing better than that.
(upbeat music)