How much do you pay for meal preparation?

[Anonymous]

I have someone who has agreed to prepare 4 meals for me (at her house). Each meal will probably provide 4-5 servings each. We have already given her money for the groceries. Now we need to know how much we should pay, since she asked us to set the price. She is a family friend and is really doing us a favor, so we want to be fair,but have to keep this endeavor economic.

[Anonymous]

I used a personal chef service a few years ago (I think it was called Easy Evenings or something like that) and she charged $14/serving including groceries. She would prepare the food in our kitchen (I think the health laws are that if the food is prepared in a home kitchen for sale, there needs to be a food service license) and clean-up afterwards, however she would keep the leftovers and any remaining ingredients, what I received was the prepared meal, ready to heat. It turned out not to be a system we liked -- the quality of the meals was "eh" and the price was basically that of a neighborhood restaurant.

When our nanny cooks for us (not snacks for the kids, but if she takes time to cook a pot of something delicious for our kids) we pay for the ingredients, the time used to shop for the ingredients and prepare the food--usually around $40-$50, but within that time she would have also helped by picking up extra grocery items for us.

[Anonymous]

A friend of mine was a private chef in DC, but moved out of the area. Here is what she charged

4 x 4 Plan - $180: 4 servings each of 4 different meals, for a total of 16 servings.
5 x 4 Plan - $210: 4 servings each of 5 different meals for a total of 20 servings.
5 x 6 Plan - $270: 6 servings each of 5 different meals for a total of 30 servings.

This was exclusive of groceries.