Both put a great meal in front of your guests. But a private chef and a catering company are built for different kinds of evenings — and picking the wrong one is usually about scale, not quality.
The Core Difference
A private chef cooks live, on-site, in your kitchen — shopping, prepping, cooking, plating and serving in real time, for your specific table. A catering company typically prepares food off-site (often in bulk) and delivers it, sometimes with staff to set up and serve, sometimes not.
When a Private Chef Makes More Sense
- Small, intimate groups — typically 2 to 12 guests, where the experience of watching and tasting freshly cooked courses matters.
- A chalet or holiday apartment — where there's a kitchen to use but no interest in cooking on holiday.
- A personal occasion — an anniversary, a birthday, a proposal — where the menu can be built around your story and preferences.
- Dietary precision — a chef cooking to order can adapt a dish per guest far more easily than a pre-plated catering tray.
When Catering Makes More Sense
- Larger events — weddings or parties of 50+ guests, where volume matters more than a live, tableside experience.
- Buffet-style service — guests serving themselves over a longer window, rather than a seated multi-course dinner.
- Limited kitchen access — venues without a usable kitchen on-site.
Catering scales a menu to feed a crowd. A private chef builds an evening around a table.
Price & Flexibility
Per-person pricing for the two can land in a similar range, but a private chef's price typically reflects a fixed, intimate guest count with full table service included — while catering pricing usually shifts more with order volume and service level (drop-off vs. staffed). If your group is small and you want a genuinely personal evening, a private chef tends to deliver more per franc; if your guest list runs into the dozens, catering is usually the more practical fit.
If a private chef sounds like the right call, the next guide walks through exactly how a booking works from first enquiry to the last plate cleared.