- 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)
