Yeah, do they not see the massive conflict of interest? Even if we adjusted all the numbers to make sense, "your pay is X dollars, minus what you spend on our food" is just such a horrible strategy.
But itās not an entirely uncommon practice, Iāve worked a similar contract for a few weeks, but itās getting less common in my area. From the clients perspective, they are proposing a total cost they believe the entire service should cost or what they can afford, $400 in this case and then dividing that number between the two costs (food and labor), normally with little understanding of what labor and food costs should be for one week.
Chances are they'd ask for the receipt for the food and check it and reimburse exactly what the receipt says up to Ā£150, then the Ā£250 paycheck on top of that.
I can't even figure out what kind of person would do this. Like were they super insulated from spending woes and poverty? Were they wealthy and tight walleted? Have they never paid for their own food or stepped into a grocery store before? It's so absurd.
My favorite part of that joke is that the whole operation was a money laundering front and she genuinely had no idea what a banana should cost.
That and the recurring joke that her medication shouldn't be taken with alcohol but the face on the bottle was winking which made it more of a suggestion. So every time she took a drink on her meds she was winking (throughout the series, even before they revealed the joke).
This is written by the person in the household who doesnāt usually do any of the labor involved in planning, cooking or cleaning who greatly undervalues the contributions of the other partner who does do those things. I hope he learns something from this experience.
Sounds like someone from a developing country who thinks $250 for a *full day* (not 4-5hrs) of meal prep, shopping, cooking *and* total clean up - would be a *great* single day side hustle.
Look at ācompensationā.
Theyāre going to 1099 you on $400/wk, so you better have a single credit card just for the expenses incurred.
Then comes the quibble:
āJunior needs a better assortment of snacks. They have to be healthy, while duplicating the flavors found in commercial products. You claim to be a chef, so getting kale and carrots to taste and crunch like Doritos should not be that difficult. Oh and heās having 8 friends over for a birthday party. No increase of budget. Weāre overpaying for your services already.ā
I promise that no matter where you shop itās basically impossible to feed 3 people for a week for $150 right now, at any semblance of a healthy and varied diet. You can maybe do it if all you eat is PB&Js, cereal, and Mac and cheese.
EDIT: I guess what this post is asking for is $150 to cover just 4 dinners, which is more doable but still not super easy.
More than likely the person would get to the house on Saturday or Sunday and there would be a weekās worth of dishes and clutter theyād have to clean before getting started, then clean again before they leave.
If cooking in their home, I'd expect to have to clean up after myself. But by god that kitchen had best be clean with an empty dishwasher and kitchen waste cans when I arrive.
My guess is that they don't expect to get any of the money back. Or whatever is left over goes to the chef.
Pretty bad management, it's incentive for the chef to make meals with cheaper ingredients and pocket the difference.
I used to work for a head chef who thought this constituted staff meal, or yesterdays staff meal with added stock and re-reduced. Heād send us on break while he prepared lunch thinking none of us would notice. FOH wouldnāt believe the rest of us why we wouldnāt touch it, manager is pulling his hair out about people āpretendingā to be sick all the time so eventually we tell the manager to get strict about making head chef take his break first and suddenly FOH arenāt dropping like flies anymore.
I swear to god I once watched that man trim mould off of a steak before throwing it into the mincer. I did eventually walk out when I caught him defrosting and re freezing liver dated months ago, god knows how many times that shit had been in and out of the freezer.
My family of five (kids all under 8) and budgets hard as shit. I shop at Costco for almost everything. I spend 250 every two weeks and spend a lot of time figuring out how to accomplish that. So at least another 100 to 150 in just brain labor
We have to be pretty meticulous about food usage. Make sure fresh items like fruits and veg are eaten in a timely manner and as the second week rolls around use more dry goods to offset the decline in fresh items. Iāve found Costcoās produce to last longer for me so a big bag of asparagus will last an extra 5 days compared to Safeways bundles. The mixed greens seem to last a lot longer too.
Edit: me working in the restaurant and not needing to eat one meal at home 5 days a week helps too.
Ya I get like one splurge meal a week...usually some seafood or a steak ...but I'm talking prawns or a cheaper fish and maybe...just maybe....a nice NY. Other then that I am all about pasta, chicken, vegetables, and I keep a full pantry of spices for variety. 150 a week for 2 adults and a toddler?....why not just spend 400 a week and get Togo food from some not so expensive local places every day?
Dude my toddler, like MANY others eats his weight in fucking fruit and the expensive kind like berries as well..... Not to mention the wasted food that is inevitably on the floor that makes you cringe . I wish I could get away with $200 a week and I budget and bogo shop my ass off.
150 for my wife and kid for bare minimum. I donāt eat at home. I eat at work. Days off, I go visit work.
Depending on diet, going out to eat every meal is the same cost as cooking at home now without worrying about lost waste. Unless I have a chest freezer.
Dude, youāre not wrong. Sometimes you go to the store for one meal and end up spending 50 bucks on just that one preparation. The good news is, I do have leftovers i vac seal and freeze for future meals.
A leg of lamb is not cheap but, you can get lots of stew meat/stuff to grind/a big bone for stock. Itās like 6-8 meals in one go but for 50 bucks.
I do try to get the most out of everything I am buying because, spending cash on just one meal is ridiculous. I am not as poor as I once was but, I grew up poor enough to know you use everything and recycle what you can.
Weirdly, lamb has become cheaper than beef in SO many situations for me lately. LIke I can get an entire breastplate(both sides of the rib cage) for $15... It's like 2-4lbs of lamb meat once it's off the bone... But like it's fire on the bone so I just eat it like regular ribs lol. Got a 3lb leg with no bone the other day for $17.
Yeah, don't think they really understood what they were requesting in the ad. They are actually asking someone else to pay for their food for them.
This feels like a joke, or some cynical SAHP who created it because the working parent requested this, so when they get a response it's actually the other parent, or absolutely no response because it's crazy.
I'm a SAHF, and I spend about $300-$400 a week for my family of four with me, the wife, and a 9 and 7 year old. We eat well with quality protein, organic when I can with fruits/vegetables, whole grains, healthy snacks, good oils and spices/marinades/sauces etc. I clean, cycle dishes, do laundry, manage house repair/maintenance, tutor when I can, do a lot of the aftercare stuff for the kids, etc. I probably spend 50 hours a week on this. If we had to outsource this to people at rates in our area, were talking $40-50 an hour. That $8k-$10k a month on "labor."
No way I can knock out shopping for the week, cook, do meal prep for 7 days for the family in 4-5 hours on a weekend. That's 10-12 hours minimum if you factor in time to and from the store, actually shopping, organization, prep time, cook time, re-prep and package for the week, clean up, washing, put away, re-organization and reset for a single person to have to do all the work alone.
Depends on what they want.
I can make a giant pot of chicken thigh stew for like $40 if they want to eat that for 5 days. But if they're expecting something classy every night, then you'll have to get 'creative' and/or tell them that snacking is gluttony and they're going to hell.
Perhaps. I'm thinking a 3lb pot roast, with 24 oz of bone broth base, three onions, a lb of fingerling potatoes, a lb of carrots, a lb of celery, a head of garlic, stalks of rosemary a few bay leaves, good olive oil to sear, Montreal steak seasoning, Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, some fennel seeds, quarter cup of red wine. That one meal after buying it, prepared correctly, done right on slow in a crock pot adding ingredients as they should be, waiting on it on slow for 8 hours, then prep, pack, and freeze, then do a full clean Ć 21 is still a butt load of work, for 21 dinners that are exactly the same.
And let us all not forget the undisclosed dietary "restrictions". I'm thinking a gluten intolerance, someone being dairy free because, gas and two won't eat fish lol
Shit if this is near me I will actually do it one day if they accept my application. After I go shopping and start cooking 5 hours is up I'm gone. I'm in central FL
Sorry to disappoint everyone so far, but I āappliedā yesterday and havenāt received a response yet. However you all have my word that I will create a new post with screenshots of everything that happens if they do.
Send it to me too, I'll apply and tell them I require the full $400 compensation mentioned without taking $150 out for food!
"I think you made a mistake in your post, it says compensation is $400!"
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It's from CL Alamo Heights, San Antonio which had a median income of ~$149,000 in 2022.
I emailed them that I need $500 food budget and $400 for my labor for one day a week because I'm sure they would understand food and rent are very expensive.
The job description is straight from
ChatGPT, the tell tale it the double asterisk for the headers. Thatās standard GpT output when you copy and paste it without formatting.
Yessir.
I could not figure out at first why all of my company's hired writers starting using this bizarre and time wasting format all of the sudden.
Then one day I copy pasted the nicely formatted headers from chatGPT into a doc and it turned into this
Best part is, the chef is JUST cooking, and cleaning up after himself. That's 6 hours. They admit they spent two hours a week meal planning, and don't disclose how much time they spend shopping, just that they used to spent 20+ hours a week shopping and cooking. He brags about how it's only 15 dollars per meal, because the chef stretched it all so far, but doesn't mention portion sizes (probably VERY small for that price tag) and he considers muffins and "Egg bites" to be full meals. He also lumps snacks in with meals.
All of those food options are also super simple and commonly use very cheap ingredients.. so if you're gluten free, you're not getting anything that cheap.
That 6 hours of cooking and cleaning, that chef is getting about 40 dollars an hour. Which isn't a bad deal, since they're not meal planning (an extra 2+ hours of work) or shopping (an extra 2 - 4+ of work).
Of course, they also mention the chef brings the food over in tuperware and they finish it off.. so it's basically par-cooked meals that the family finishes off (even as far as adding the cheese themselves. which one might astutely realize means that the chef was probably cutting corners with toppings and such by not including those in their food budget), since this is in san antonio.
The people in OP's example obviously think "WELL IF THAT GUY WAS DOING IT FOR 4 PEOPLE FOR THAT PRICE, SINCE WE'RE ONLY THREE, IT WILL TAKE THEM LESS TIME, SO THE EXTRA TWO HOURS CAN GO TOWARDS MEAL PLANNING! GENIUS!" Without realizing that there's no difference between 3 people and 4 people as far as actually cooking the stuff.
The tweet guy also isn't accounting for the time they invested into researching their one child's "special dietary needs" in their time spent planning menus. He also thinks "Vegetables and meat are cheap!".. yeah.. if you get cheap cuts of meat, and canned veggies, haha.
He just got lucky with someone who was desperate (he "turned down" 12 other people before settling on this one) and... yeah, that chef is probably spending more than the budget, because they wanted the job for a side hussle.
This guys twitter is basically reposts (of himself?)
https://x.com/girdley/status/1659895497455468547
That's this post almost 1 year ago to the day, but many of his posts he's posted before. Very weird
You get fried rice for every meal and maybe soup if the budget allows. Snacks? That's the leftover fried rice you didn't finish because you did not budget enough to buy more.
Restaurant depot pricing in my area: 50lbs of jasmine rice $31
4.5 gallons of oil $36
Frozen peas and carrots 25lbs $28
Leg of ham 10 lbs $18
Box of soy sauce packets 500 $9
I pocket the rest for gas.
Lol, I give estimates to tightwads all the time for catering & home meal prep. Some of these morons are so out of touch it's hilarious. Like they think they can feed people for less than a couple of bucks a head and want multiple courses.
People like this are used to having immigrants clean their house for next to nothing. I guess they figure they can find someone in a desperate enough situation who will do the cooking for next to nothing as well
It doesn't matter how desperate you are if the result is a net negative of cash out of your pocket because the budget is to low to even pay for the ingredients. Also, some desperate person with no money isn't gonna have a kitchen to make 200 people worth of food.
It is! They want you to do all of this in one day per week. Meal plan, grocery shop, prep and cook, cool and package, and clean. Four days worth of breakfast and dinner for two adults and a child. All in 4-5 hours (preferably Saturday or Sunday, of course).
For me the time bothered me more, because it just shows how little the poster knows about how much time it takes to plan, shop, prepe, cook, and clean.
What it sounds like to me is that they want a meal service, just one that has a human figurehead attached for abuse and skapegoating. Just do what your neighbors do and buy a meal plan service. It will be boring, it will be overpriced, but you'll have more time and energy.
Pay your cooking staff better! Hell, pay all your staff better...
I think this is doable in 10-12 hours. 6 hours cooking and cleaning up (donāt forget you have to package it all up I guess), 2 hours shopping (depending on how far you have to go), 2 hours meal planning. Choose your hourly wage and multiply by 10-12
ETA itās probably tax free
Agreed. The degree to which you'd have to put stuff away, too... I guarantee they aren't rich/thoughtful enough to have a staff kitchen or anything resembling a BOH.
You're going to need to clean and get stuff away, out of sight, in like a home kitchen where the wife probably hosts parties regularly.
nah. you should be at least doubling your hourly wage for this calculation. indepdent contract work typically commands a 100% premium to account for the increased overhead costs and risk. in this case, that premium might be closer to 150% of your base pay rate, given the need for things like insurance.
This person likely already has some person in a bad situation cleaning their house weekly for next to nothingā¦ I agree they are likely wealthy and out of touch
You'd be surprised how stingy and out of touch rich people can be. They've never actually had to work for a living so they don't know what's normal. Also they didn't get rich by being generous.
Do they still sell the plastic grocery carts and fake food for kids to play with? Because that and a case of Ramen is what this person should get. $400 MINUS $150 for THEIR food?!
If it was $400 for compensation and then $150 for the food, so $650 in total, that'd be a lot more attractive. But $250 is doable if your expectations are moderated. $15.63/meal ($250/16) really depends on what they expect out of the meal from the cook. If they're happy with simple dishes that take less than an hour to do each, it isn't great money, but someone would be willing to do it. If they're expecting something that is impressive, no one with more than 2 brain cells would bite for that price. Especially because of clean up at the end.
The work itself really isn't bad if it's spread over two days and every one is realistic about what kind of meals can be stocked up on for a week and still be edible by the end.
One for shopping and discussing meal plans and some prep, another for the rest of the prep and cooking.
But if they're trying to cram it all into one day and also think that it can be done in 5 hours, they're fools unless stew and beans is their preference, lol.
Shopping and making sure that everyone is on the same page itself will take an hour or two. 3 hours for 4 days of food for 2 adults (8 breakfasts, 8 dinners, side plates for the rugrat, snack sets) is not happening unless you're happy with a bowl of slop.
400 in labor (and a higher food budget) would be reasonable for the dinners alone imo but for dinner, breakfast, snacks, with enough leftovers for other meals is not enough. Trying to buy that much food for <$150 is gonna be hours of clipping coupons, going to every store in town on its own. These people also seem pretty high maintenance so I would imagine its going to turn into more work than you would expect
This will 100% be more work than they are saying. It'll be just a little extra of this and that and less money than they said and pay you less, etc. This is a shit show
Theoretically the proposed wage is fine, except what they want is going to take far more than the handful of hours theyāre expecting to pay for AND anyone with the qualifications theyāre looking for is extremely unlikely to have their weekends free to dedicate to meal prep for $250.
$250 for 6 hours of shopping and cooking, once a week, is not bad.
But it's just that they're setting you up to rob you blind in multiple ways.
If you end up working 10-12 hours, they can frame it as "you're taking too long" instead of as the job being twice as time-consuming as advertised.
And 100% they want to hand you $400 on Saturday, so it's _your fault_ when there's only $117.31 left of your 'compensation' after you buy the bare minimum ingredients needed to not get fired.
Iām a personal chef, I charge $70/hour and typically will quote about an hour per dish plus around an hour and a half for menu planning/shopping.
The cost of groceries for five dishes (with leftovers) plus ābreakfast items and various snacksā (with five dishes already cooking, these will count as a dish each, so weāre up to seven dishes, if weāre just doing one snack plus one breakfast) is going to be around $400-$450ish. More if itās one of the first few services as Iāll be stocking their cabinets with spices, vinegars, oils, etcā¦
With the juggling of all these dishes Iād probably split my time, Iād start and finish four dishes, and while those are finishing up and being stashed in the fridge, Iām resetting everything, cleaning all my dishes, and starting fresh with the remaining three. Then I gotta make everything look nice and stash in the fridge, clean up again, write out an invoice with reheat instructions, And take out trash and recycling.
So all in all, even if Iām in a groove and moving quick, this is gonna be around a $950 day for these people. If traffic sucks or the grocery stores are understaffed or busy itās gonna be another hour so $1010.00.
These people canāt afford a personal chef š¤·āāļø
I started my business recently so my price will be jumping $5/hour yearly. Weāll see how things look in a few years but I probably wonāt charge more than $99/hour for what I do. Private parties, lessons, or private cheffing Iāll charge a bunch more for.
If the grocery store is right up the road and they want to eat the same easy three different things three times a day I think I could handle it on one of my days off.
So they want all their meals cooked days ahead of time? Do they have any cooking abilities, like can they pop something in the oven or follow instructions? They just want microwave dinners prepared by a guy off Craigslist I guess
Food prep alone in a kitchen after shopping for ingredients is 5 to 6 hours. Cutting, chopping, mixing. That's physical labor even with good processors or blenders. I cook a lot myself and I dated 2 chefs! Hours go by! Real food takes real time! This is a joke.
I love how they include the food cost in the compensation, like technically yes they are giving you that money but you don't actually get to keep it so it's a pretty big stretch to call that "compensation".
lol this is a big time joke. I am a private Chef and this kind of full service meal prep would run you at least $1400 for 4 full meals and extras BEFORE food.
Fuck outta here trying to prep a whole weekās worth of food in 4-5 hours never mind only spending 150$ per week. š¤¦āāļø
I get a bit of satisfaction knowing what a complete waste of time it was for the clueless couple who posted this. They actually thought this through, and came up with those numbers lol
$150 for an entire week of dinner and extra meals?! I guess it can be done, but theyāre going to really sick of alternating spaghetti and Top Ramen.
The time frame that they want 4 different meals, plus breakfast and snacks is unrealistic. As well as the grocery shopping done in that time frame. Selection of a menu alone would take at least an hour. All of this with dietary restrictions.
**IF** you could do this in 4-5 hoursā¦.
And
**IF** you could do it for $150ā¦
It could be worth itā¦ unfortunately, I seriously doubt either of those things are possible.
Try 800 per week and you buy your own groceries. I'd do that. For a friend. Who has just been in a terrible ice fishing accident and has lost the use of their hands.
Hold up, under compensation, did this individual really include the food cost budget as part of the compensation?? Did I miss something?
Nope
So, in the real world, compensation would be $250š
steep scary cobweb brave slap rhythm tender sleep shame pause *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Not to mention the idiotically low cost of $150 to cover all those meals / snacks for all those people. They eating ramen daily???
You get Beans, Rice, and Lentils for every meal forever.
Plus 4-5 hours isn't enough time to plan, shop, and prepare meals for a week.
We know that and so do the rich assholes who posted this. $250 for a day worth of work. Theyāll be getting a line cook from Red Lobster.
Ramen is cheap and quick to prepare (badly) MAKE BANK
No, it's 400 minus however much you decide to spend on the weekly food? So.....
Order some taco bell and portion it in plastic containers
Hope they like oatmeal porridge for 3 meals a day.
They might find an oat in the sawdust..
Yeah, do they not see the massive conflict of interest? Even if we adjusted all the numbers to make sense, "your pay is X dollars, minus what you spend on our food" is just such a horrible strategy.
But itās not an entirely uncommon practice, Iāve worked a similar contract for a few weeks, but itās getting less common in my area. From the clients perspective, they are proposing a total cost they believe the entire service should cost or what they can afford, $400 in this case and then dividing that number between the two costs (food and labor), normally with little understanding of what labor and food costs should be for one week.
Chances are they'd ask for the receipt for the food and check it and reimburse exactly what the receipt says up to Ā£150, then the Ā£250 paycheck on top of that.
I can't even figure out what kind of person would do this. Like were they super insulated from spending woes and poverty? Were they wealthy and tight walleted? Have they never paid for their own food or stepped into a grocery store before? It's so absurd.
"It's one banana, Michael, how much could it cost? $10?"
At least they could probably afford to make the family hot ham water now and again
So *watery*
My favorite part of that joke is that the whole operation was a money laundering front and she genuinely had no idea what a banana should cost. That and the recurring joke that her medication shouldn't be taken with alcohol but the face on the bottle was winking which made it more of a suggestion. So every time she took a drink on her meds she was winking (throughout the series, even before they revealed the joke).
This is written by the person in the household who doesnāt usually do any of the labor involved in planning, cooking or cleaning who greatly undervalues the contributions of the other partner who does do those things. I hope he learns something from this experience.
Sounds like someone from a developing country who thinks $250 for a *full day* (not 4-5hrs) of meal prep, shopping, cooking *and* total clean up - would be a *great* single day side hustle.
Look at ācompensationā. Theyāre going to 1099 you on $400/wk, so you better have a single credit card just for the expenses incurred. Then comes the quibble: āJunior needs a better assortment of snacks. They have to be healthy, while duplicating the flavors found in commercial products. You claim to be a chef, so getting kale and carrots to taste and crunch like Doritos should not be that difficult. Oh and heās having 8 friends over for a birthday party. No increase of budget. Weāre overpaying for your services already.ā
Yeah I can see it now. Also I just realized that the government is going to be taxing your 150$ food budget, out of your pocket.
No, you would include those as expenses on the Schedule C
Exactly! So many contradictory aspects to this.
It screams āI donāt have money, but I want to pretend Iām rich by having a private chef.. that I want to pay $250 a week.ā
Let alone the fact that they think $150 is enough to cover their expectations
The Chef shops at Aldi's to meet budget and they lose their collective crap, when they see it's not Whole Foods!
I promise that no matter where you shop itās basically impossible to feed 3 people for a week for $150 right now, at any semblance of a healthy and varied diet. You can maybe do it if all you eat is PB&Js, cereal, and Mac and cheese. EDIT: I guess what this post is asking for is $150 to cover just 4 dinners, which is more doable but still not super easy.
They'd probably want you to clean up the kitchen too
It's a whole requirement there! "Keeping the kitchen organised and tidy". So probably you have to keep ti tidy on your day off too :p
More than likely the person would get to the house on Saturday or Sunday and there would be a weekās worth of dishes and clutter theyād have to clean before getting started, then clean again before they leave.
If cooking in their home, I'd expect to have to clean up after myself. But by god that kitchen had best be clean with an empty dishwasher and kitchen waste cans when I arrive.
My guess is that they don't expect to get any of the money back. Or whatever is left over goes to the chef. Pretty bad management, it's incentive for the chef to make meals with cheaper ingredients and pocket the difference.
dependent grey plucky sharp rich plough nail humor merciful absorbed *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Food costs? No youāre covering all food costs
Maybe they're just hoping you'll steal food from the walk in at your normal job and use that?
Then they're getting the clearly rotten meat that chef let me throw out.
Just summon your inner Frank Costanza and over season the rotten meat, then cross your fingers that nobody gets fuckinā dysentery.
I used to work for a head chef who thought this constituted staff meal, or yesterdays staff meal with added stock and re-reduced. Heād send us on break while he prepared lunch thinking none of us would notice. FOH wouldnāt believe the rest of us why we wouldnāt touch it, manager is pulling his hair out about people āpretendingā to be sick all the time so eventually we tell the manager to get strict about making head chef take his break first and suddenly FOH arenāt dropping like flies anymore. I swear to god I once watched that man trim mould off of a steak before throwing it into the mincer. I did eventually walk out when I caught him defrosting and re freezing liver dated months ago, god knows how many times that shit had been in and out of the freezer.
No one is mentioning $150 a week isnāt exactly a lot to work with.
The food cost budget is fucking ridiculous.
I spend 150 a week on food alone
My family of five (kids all under 8) and budgets hard as shit. I shop at Costco for almost everything. I spend 250 every two weeks and spend a lot of time figuring out how to accomplish that. So at least another 100 to 150 in just brain labor
What do you do to keep it at 250 every two weeks?
We have to be pretty meticulous about food usage. Make sure fresh items like fruits and veg are eaten in a timely manner and as the second week rolls around use more dry goods to offset the decline in fresh items. Iāve found Costcoās produce to last longer for me so a big bag of asparagus will last an extra 5 days compared to Safeways bundles. The mixed greens seem to last a lot longer too. Edit: me working in the restaurant and not needing to eat one meal at home 5 days a week helps too.
Congratulations you got the job!
I routinely spend 50-60 per mealā¦
I am on a budget!!!!
It's for a church, next!
I get it! I know a single mom with a toddler and sheās up to $200 a week now.
Ya I get like one splurge meal a week...usually some seafood or a steak ...but I'm talking prawns or a cheaper fish and maybe...just maybe....a nice NY. Other then that I am all about pasta, chicken, vegetables, and I keep a full pantry of spices for variety. 150 a week for 2 adults and a toddler?....why not just spend 400 a week and get Togo food from some not so expensive local places every day?
That would be so much nicer than reheating a week old food
Dude my toddler, like MANY others eats his weight in fucking fruit and the expensive kind like berries as well..... Not to mention the wasted food that is inevitably on the floor that makes you cringe . I wish I could get away with $200 a week and I budget and bogo shop my ass off.
150 for my wife and kid for bare minimum. I donāt eat at home. I eat at work. Days off, I go visit work. Depending on diet, going out to eat every meal is the same cost as cooking at home now without worrying about lost waste. Unless I have a chest freezer.
Per meal or per serving? Like i'll def spend a ton making a lasagna but i wouldn't call a batch of lasagna a meal. Well i try not to, at least ha.
Garfield, is that you?
Meal, but feeding 6. I made Aram sandwiches tonight and it was $45. I classify lasagna as a meal, for my frame of reference.
Oh oh duh people have families. I'm so slow. I've lived alone too long, ha. What u said makes sense now.
Donāt worry, I was thinking the same thing haha
Dude, youāre not wrong. Sometimes you go to the store for one meal and end up spending 50 bucks on just that one preparation. The good news is, I do have leftovers i vac seal and freeze for future meals. A leg of lamb is not cheap but, you can get lots of stew meat/stuff to grind/a big bone for stock. Itās like 6-8 meals in one go but for 50 bucks. I do try to get the most out of everything I am buying because, spending cash on just one meal is ridiculous. I am not as poor as I once was but, I grew up poor enough to know you use everything and recycle what you can.
Weirdly, lamb has become cheaper than beef in SO many situations for me lately. LIke I can get an entire breastplate(both sides of the rib cage) for $15... It's like 2-4lbs of lamb meat once it's off the bone... But like it's fire on the bone so I just eat it like regular ribs lol. Got a 3lb leg with no bone the other day for $17.
Did you notice the food costs also come out of the weekly compensation?
Yeah, don't think they really understood what they were requesting in the ad. They are actually asking someone else to pay for their food for them. This feels like a joke, or some cynical SAHP who created it because the working parent requested this, so when they get a response it's actually the other parent, or absolutely no response because it's crazy. I'm a SAHF, and I spend about $300-$400 a week for my family of four with me, the wife, and a 9 and 7 year old. We eat well with quality protein, organic when I can with fruits/vegetables, whole grains, healthy snacks, good oils and spices/marinades/sauces etc. I clean, cycle dishes, do laundry, manage house repair/maintenance, tutor when I can, do a lot of the aftercare stuff for the kids, etc. I probably spend 50 hours a week on this. If we had to outsource this to people at rates in our area, were talking $40-50 an hour. That $8k-$10k a month on "labor." No way I can knock out shopping for the week, cook, do meal prep for 7 days for the family in 4-5 hours on a weekend. That's 10-12 hours minimum if you factor in time to and from the store, actually shopping, organization, prep time, cook time, re-prep and package for the week, clean up, washing, put away, re-organization and reset for a single person to have to do all the work alone.
Fucken mac and cheese and hot dogs every day might keep it under budget.
Nah man, rice & beans. You could get enough cals for 3 for 50$, then pocket the rest. Would only take a minimal amount of time to cook it up too.
Depends on what they want. I can make a giant pot of chicken thigh stew for like $40 if they want to eat that for 5 days. But if they're expecting something classy every night, then you'll have to get 'creative' and/or tell them that snacking is gluttony and they're going to hell.
Perhaps. I'm thinking a 3lb pot roast, with 24 oz of bone broth base, three onions, a lb of fingerling potatoes, a lb of carrots, a lb of celery, a head of garlic, stalks of rosemary a few bay leaves, good olive oil to sear, Montreal steak seasoning, Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, some fennel seeds, quarter cup of red wine. That one meal after buying it, prepared correctly, done right on slow in a crock pot adding ingredients as they should be, waiting on it on slow for 8 hours, then prep, pack, and freeze, then do a full clean Ć 21 is still a butt load of work, for 21 dinners that are exactly the same.
And let us all not forget the undisclosed dietary "restrictions". I'm thinking a gluten intolerance, someone being dairy free because, gas and two won't eat fish lol
IDK man, 150$ buys a looooot of rice 'n beans. That's what they'd be getting for that price from me, nothing but rice and beans. XD
God please dm me the link, I want to fake apply
Totally, only if you share their response with us
Promise
Please! Do us all a favor and update!
God damn I so look forward to the update. I'm legit going to actively look for it this week
!Remindme 1 week
You are the hero we need.
!Remindme 1week
Shit if this is near me I will actually do it one day if they accept my application. After I go shopping and start cooking 5 hours is up I'm gone. I'm in central FL
Put a crockpot of chili on low for the week.
And perpetual stew for next week. Just throw whatever shit you find in the back of the fridge in the pot and cya!!
Central Floridian as well š¤š»
Sorry to disappoint everyone so far, but I āappliedā yesterday and havenāt received a response yet. However you all have my word that I will create a new post with screenshots of everything that happens if they do.
Thank you for the update. Will be keeping an eye out for that!
Send it to me too, I'll apply and tell them I require the full $400 compensation mentioned without taking $150 out for food! "I think you made a mistake in your post, it says compensation is $400!"
Iām in. Gimme that link
!Remindme 24hours
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Please update us with the outcome
I hope the people who posted this on Craigslist see this and feel shame. This is fucking hilarious.
post to r/frugal and see if anyone confesses
People on frugal aren't trying to hire a private chef lol. Even if it's for cheap.
They do the bare minimum to survive lol, no chance they hire anyone for anything they can't do themselves.
It's from CL Alamo Heights, San Antonio which had a median income of ~$149,000 in 2022. I emailed them that I need $500 food budget and $400 for my labor for one day a week because I'm sure they would understand food and rent are very expensive.
150 bucks......you get nothing but white rice and chicken leg quarters.
Iām certain this is a result of this guyās Twitter thread: https://x.com/girdley/status/1791804687995519362?s=46
Wow, it has to be. Last tweet in the thread says, āIf you want the job description we used, download it by signing up for my newsletter āā
The job description is straight from ChatGPT, the tell tale it the double asterisk for the headers. Thatās standard GpT output when you copy and paste it without formatting.
Yessir. I could not figure out at first why all of my company's hired writers starting using this bizarre and time wasting format all of the sudden. Then one day I copy pasted the nicely formatted headers from chatGPT into a doc and it turned into this
I hope the guy's 'private chef' finds this thread and realizes he's being underpaid.
Best part is, the chef is JUST cooking, and cleaning up after himself. That's 6 hours. They admit they spent two hours a week meal planning, and don't disclose how much time they spend shopping, just that they used to spent 20+ hours a week shopping and cooking. He brags about how it's only 15 dollars per meal, because the chef stretched it all so far, but doesn't mention portion sizes (probably VERY small for that price tag) and he considers muffins and "Egg bites" to be full meals. He also lumps snacks in with meals. All of those food options are also super simple and commonly use very cheap ingredients.. so if you're gluten free, you're not getting anything that cheap. That 6 hours of cooking and cleaning, that chef is getting about 40 dollars an hour. Which isn't a bad deal, since they're not meal planning (an extra 2+ hours of work) or shopping (an extra 2 - 4+ of work). Of course, they also mention the chef brings the food over in tuperware and they finish it off.. so it's basically par-cooked meals that the family finishes off (even as far as adding the cheese themselves. which one might astutely realize means that the chef was probably cutting corners with toppings and such by not including those in their food budget), since this is in san antonio. The people in OP's example obviously think "WELL IF THAT GUY WAS DOING IT FOR 4 PEOPLE FOR THAT PRICE, SINCE WE'RE ONLY THREE, IT WILL TAKE THEM LESS TIME, SO THE EXTRA TWO HOURS CAN GO TOWARDS MEAL PLANNING! GENIUS!" Without realizing that there's no difference between 3 people and 4 people as far as actually cooking the stuff. The tweet guy also isn't accounting for the time they invested into researching their one child's "special dietary needs" in their time spent planning menus. He also thinks "Vegetables and meat are cheap!".. yeah.. if you get cheap cuts of meat, and canned veggies, haha. He just got lucky with someone who was desperate (he "turned down" 12 other people before settling on this one) and... yeah, that chef is probably spending more than the budget, because they wanted the job for a side hussle.
Noodle free Pad Thai....
Ordered with a side of pad Thai noodle. What the fuck are they on about?!
This guys twitter is basically reposts (of himself?) https://x.com/girdley/status/1659895497455468547 That's this post almost 1 year ago to the day, but many of his posts he's posted before. Very weird
You get fried rice for every meal and maybe soup if the budget allows. Snacks? That's the leftover fried rice you didn't finish because you did not budget enough to buy more. Restaurant depot pricing in my area: 50lbs of jasmine rice $31 4.5 gallons of oil $36 Frozen peas and carrots 25lbs $28 Leg of ham 10 lbs $18 Box of soy sauce packets 500 $9 I pocket the rest for gas.
Jesus, I forgot about gas. This gets worse and worse.
r/choosingbeggars will love this
Honestly, that is the sub I thought this was under until I saw your comment. Oof.
PB&J every day. Just varied. Sometimes, itās French toast. š
Yeah I was like, just make them boxed Mac and cheese every time
Raw, vegan french toast.
For that budget: Meals = PB&J Snacks = half a PB&J I'll make a bunch of sandwiches for 250. Where do I sign?
The fact that food costs are included in the compensation tells me everything I need to know
Was this ad written in 2005?
That should be $400 per day.
Itās for 4 to 5 hours of work, but thatās not really enough time to prepare four meals plus snacks and breakfast.
Plus they expect you to shop it all yourself. Someone should email them a realistic invoice for what they want.
Exactly!
Lol, I give estimates to tightwads all the time for catering & home meal prep. Some of these morons are so out of touch it's hilarious. Like they think they can feed people for less than a couple of bucks a head and want multiple courses.
People like this are used to having immigrants clean their house for next to nothing. I guess they figure they can find someone in a desperate enough situation who will do the cooking for next to nothing as well
It doesn't matter how desperate you are if the result is a net negative of cash out of your pocket because the budget is to low to even pay for the ingredients. Also, some desperate person with no money isn't gonna have a kitchen to make 200 people worth of food.
Plus shopping!!?! TRIPPIN
It is! They want you to do all of this in one day per week. Meal plan, grocery shop, prep and cook, cool and package, and clean. Four days worth of breakfast and dinner for two adults and a child. All in 4-5 hours (preferably Saturday or Sunday, of course).
Yikes.
Don't forget the $400 includes the food budget. So your pay is $250.
What the ad forgets to mention is thus is the premise for a really whacky reality tv show. Feed my family for a week for 150! Winner gets 250
$600 plus food cost. Minimum. And thatās an 8-10 hour day.
I'm trying to figure out which is the most insulting part of their post, the pay or the estimated time allotted for this work to be done.
For me the time bothered me more, because it just shows how little the poster knows about how much time it takes to plan, shop, prepe, cook, and clean. What it sounds like to me is that they want a meal service, just one that has a human figurehead attached for abuse and skapegoating. Just do what your neighbors do and buy a meal plan service. It will be boring, it will be overpriced, but you'll have more time and energy. Pay your cooking staff better! Hell, pay all your staff better...
I think this is doable in 10-12 hours. 6 hours cooking and cleaning up (donāt forget you have to package it all up I guess), 2 hours shopping (depending on how far you have to go), 2 hours meal planning. Choose your hourly wage and multiply by 10-12 ETA itās probably tax free
Agreed. The degree to which you'd have to put stuff away, too... I guarantee they aren't rich/thoughtful enough to have a staff kitchen or anything resembling a BOH. You're going to need to clean and get stuff away, out of sight, in like a home kitchen where the wife probably hosts parties regularly.
nah. you should be at least doubling your hourly wage for this calculation. indepdent contract work typically commands a 100% premium to account for the increased overhead costs and risk. in this case, that premium might be closer to 150% of your base pay rate, given the need for things like insurance.
Poor people wanting to act wealthy.
More likely itās wealthy people being cheap and petty.
Hit the nail on the head there...the post is in a very wealthy area
This person likely already has some person in a bad situation cleaning their house weekly for next to nothingā¦ I agree they are likely wealthy and out of touch
This is also clearly someone who does not cook, hence their ridiculous underestimation of how much time (and money) this would all take.
Yeah that too. Itās almost like the arrested development meme. āHow much could a banana cost? $10?ā
Doesnāt mean they can actually afford anything though! Keeping up with the Jones gets really expensive.
For real. Rich people can be more stingy than poor people more often than not.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You'd be surprised how stingy and out of touch rich people can be. They've never actually had to work for a living so they don't know what's normal. Also they didn't get rich by being generous.
Do they still sell the plastic grocery carts and fake food for kids to play with? Because that and a case of Ramen is what this person should get. $400 MINUS $150 for THEIR food?!
Wait, so their food costs come out of the salary? Who is this person?
Chef hereā¦.they could kindly kiss the darkest part of my arse.
r/delusionalcraigslist
At that point youād just be paying me to buy lunchables and frozen lasagna. Excuse me. Charcuterie and Artisan Pasta.
Sooo....compensation is $250. Not $400 (nice try)
A chef for $12500 a year would be a sad chef indeed.
one day of work per week...
We require unicorn meat thrice a fortnight and shall offer a peasantās wage ofā¦ I donāt knowā¦ $400, soā¦. Yeah.
400 a week, and that *includes* food cost? Tf outta here with your delulu ass
itās genuinely so disgusting they tried to scoot the food costs in as compensation šŖ
Serious questionā¦ what would be a reasonable wageā¦ labor only because I would instacart
If it was $400 for compensation and then $150 for the food, so $650 in total, that'd be a lot more attractive. But $250 is doable if your expectations are moderated. $15.63/meal ($250/16) really depends on what they expect out of the meal from the cook. If they're happy with simple dishes that take less than an hour to do each, it isn't great money, but someone would be willing to do it. If they're expecting something that is impressive, no one with more than 2 brain cells would bite for that price. Especially because of clean up at the end. The work itself really isn't bad if it's spread over two days and every one is realistic about what kind of meals can be stocked up on for a week and still be edible by the end. One for shopping and discussing meal plans and some prep, another for the rest of the prep and cooking. But if they're trying to cram it all into one day and also think that it can be done in 5 hours, they're fools unless stew and beans is their preference, lol. Shopping and making sure that everyone is on the same page itself will take an hour or two. 3 hours for 4 days of food for 2 adults (8 breakfasts, 8 dinners, side plates for the rugrat, snack sets) is not happening unless you're happy with a bowl of slop.
400 in labor (and a higher food budget) would be reasonable for the dinners alone imo but for dinner, breakfast, snacks, with enough leftovers for other meals is not enough. Trying to buy that much food for <$150 is gonna be hours of clipping coupons, going to every store in town on its own. These people also seem pretty high maintenance so I would imagine its going to turn into more work than you would expect
This will 100% be more work than they are saying. It'll be just a little extra of this and that and less money than they said and pay you less, etc. This is a shit show
Theoretically the proposed wage is fine, except what they want is going to take far more than the handful of hours theyāre expecting to pay for AND anyone with the qualifications theyāre looking for is extremely unlikely to have their weekends free to dedicate to meal prep for $250.
$250 for 6 hours of shopping and cooking, once a week, is not bad. But it's just that they're setting you up to rob you blind in multiple ways. If you end up working 10-12 hours, they can frame it as "you're taking too long" instead of as the job being twice as time-consuming as advertised. And 100% they want to hand you $400 on Saturday, so it's _your fault_ when there's only $117.31 left of your 'compensation' after you buy the bare minimum ingredients needed to not get fired.
I can throw together 5 days of Hamburger Helper, 2 steamed vegetables, and a day-old hot roll for 20% more food cost and still meet labor.
Iām a personal chef, I charge $70/hour and typically will quote about an hour per dish plus around an hour and a half for menu planning/shopping. The cost of groceries for five dishes (with leftovers) plus ābreakfast items and various snacksā (with five dishes already cooking, these will count as a dish each, so weāre up to seven dishes, if weāre just doing one snack plus one breakfast) is going to be around $400-$450ish. More if itās one of the first few services as Iāll be stocking their cabinets with spices, vinegars, oils, etcā¦ With the juggling of all these dishes Iād probably split my time, Iād start and finish four dishes, and while those are finishing up and being stashed in the fridge, Iām resetting everything, cleaning all my dishes, and starting fresh with the remaining three. Then I gotta make everything look nice and stash in the fridge, clean up again, write out an invoice with reheat instructions, And take out trash and recycling. So all in all, even if Iām in a groove and moving quick, this is gonna be around a $950 day for these people. If traffic sucks or the grocery stores are understaffed or busy itās gonna be another hour so $1010.00. These people canāt afford a personal chef š¤·āāļø
Thank you for answering the question I have had this entire thread: āhow much does it reasonably cost to have a personal chef?ā
I started my business recently so my price will be jumping $5/hour yearly. Weāll see how things look in a few years but I probably wonāt charge more than $99/hour for what I do. Private parties, lessons, or private cheffing Iāll charge a bunch more for.
If the grocery store is right up the road and they want to eat the same easy three different things three times a day I think I could handle it on one of my days off.
I'll make you rice and beans maamam
Iād do it and stay under budget. Breakfast-rice w cinnamon Lunch-ramen w celery Dinner- beans w rice Easy
Iād love to see who they get for 400 a week.
I'm a freaking stay-at-home mom who does ALL OF THESE THINGS and there is no way I could do this on a $150 budget. Ugh!
Rice, beans, and mystery meat
My bologna has a first name...it's O. S. C. A. R.
This just shows the disconnect between us and everyone else
Getting the feeling that this family doesn't know how money actually works.
Or time..
Ew, no. This sounds like a fucking head ache.
Completely unhinged
So they want all their meals cooked days ahead of time? Do they have any cooking abilities, like can they pop something in the oven or follow instructions? They just want microwave dinners prepared by a guy off Craigslist I guess
LMAOOO they think their groceries will be $150 a week and wont be paying for that. Love it. Delusional!
Why not just get meal delivery from Cook Unity or Factor and round that out with some prepared fruit, etc. from the grocery store?
Food prep alone in a kitchen after shopping for ingredients is 5 to 6 hours. Cutting, chopping, mixing. That's physical labor even with good processors or blenders. I cook a lot myself and I dated 2 chefs! Hours go by! Real food takes real time! This is a joke.
OP if you could reply to them and tell them to go Fuck themselves? I would really appreciate that.
For 4 hours the best I can do is a weeks worth of PB&Js, and I guess some rice for snacks.
I love how they include the food cost in the compensation, like technically yes they are giving you that money but you don't actually get to keep it so it's a pretty big stretch to call that "compensation".
Maybe they should take that $400 a week and buy the already-prepped mealsā¦.?
lol this is a big time joke. I am a private Chef and this kind of full service meal prep would run you at least $1400 for 4 full meals and extras BEFORE food. Fuck outta here trying to prep a whole weekās worth of food in 4-5 hours never mind only spending 150$ per week. š¤¦āāļø
I get a bit of satisfaction knowing what a complete waste of time it was for the clueless couple who posted this. They actually thought this through, and came up with those numbers lol $150 for an entire week of dinner and extra meals?! I guess it can be done, but theyāre going to really sick of alternating spaghetti and Top Ramen.
That many meals + prep + shopping in 4-5 hours!! š¤
The time frame that they want 4 different meals, plus breakfast and snacks is unrealistic. As well as the grocery shopping done in that time frame. Selection of a menu alone would take at least an hour. All of this with dietary restrictions.
150 bucks for a 2.5 family for 400 bucks compensation? Suck my dick and balls
Aaaaaahahahahahaha. Get fucked
/r/ChoosingBeggars
r/choosingbeggers
**IF** you could do this in 4-5 hoursā¦. And **IF** you could do it for $150ā¦ It could be worth itā¦ unfortunately, I seriously doubt either of those things are possible.
Hard pass
Try 800 per week and you buy your own groceries. I'd do that. For a friend. Who has just been in a terrible ice fishing accident and has lost the use of their hands.
It's $250 a week. Why are they pretending that the food budget is compensation?
sounds like yāall have sprung for the bean-only diet package
Lmaooooooo goofy fucks