What do you do being a chef?

Meal planning service has become more and more popular in China. It includes enjoying a homemade meal by the chef sent to the customers' home. What do you think of such services in China and what factors popularized this trend?

• Private catering is becoming more and more popular in Chinese catering market now, which is a kind of customized catering to provide meals according to the personal needs. What is the latest development, the latest trend of private catering in China?  Door-to-door chef service, which is sending a chef to the customer's home to make the meal, is a main form of private catering. What are the changes of the trend of door-to-door chef service? What factors can contribute to the popularization of the door-to-door chef service?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    What are the current challenges in such kind of business? How could the catering company overcome them? How do catering companies or restaurant provide the meals? Having the set package or just design the menu based on the customers' needs? Looking forward to your replies.

• Answer:

  We have that here in Miami. It's called "cantina". They will deliver meals to your home every weekday for a weekly rate. You can generally pick from two entrees, 4 sides, and two desserts each day. It's mostly designed for single men, and caters to the factory/warehouse worker demographic. But a lot of people/families use it at least some of the time. The challenge for the business is that people with more options will get tired of it after a month or two. To be successful you need a core customer base of those single, relatively low wage workers. And then you need to get a fairly constant and growing number of the other customer types - they won't be the same customers all the time, but the number should stay roughly the same. There are variations of this specializing in healthy or gourmet foods. But they tend to be expensive, so they are susceptible to economic fluctuations.