Hiring Celebrity Chefs in the UAE- What is Involved? Pros, Cons, Costs…

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Hiring a celebrity chef is a dream of many small and mid-sized hospitality businesses. When a celebrity chef is behind the cuisine and menu for an event, thousands of people are immediately attracted to the business and its event. Many corporate houses invite a personal celebrity chef in the UAE for highly important events that mark a major milestone in their journey. But booking the services of a celebrity chef is not that easy in the UAE. They get thousands of invitations in a year, without any clue as to whom to really trust and assist. Then how to approach such a celebrity chef to work for you? This blog gives you some valuable insights.

Starting a restaurant is not that difficult as it is to make it a successful business. If you do a little search on Google, you will find there is no dearth of restaurants in the UAE. People have numerous options when it comes to getting the cuisine or dishes they like. The reason why a customer chooses one restaurant over the others is not a science that could be studied and accurately predicted. No wonder many great restaurants with amazing chefs have also had to close many branches.

How do the millions of people living in a city come to know about new restaurants? One of the factors is local publicity and word of mouth. Another option is great advertising investment – billboards, good-sized ads on online and print media. A third option could be booking stalls in many major events in the cities, but the competition out there is huge.

One of the ways that a good restaurant gets visibility is through hiring the services of a celebrity chef for a day, half a day or a few hours.

Celebrity chefs can take any restaurant business to a new height. Their presence in your restaurant or hotel, or other hospitality business brings a lot of customers but hiring a celebrity chef is not a walk-in park.

A celebrity chef would only invest his time and skills in a business he or she can trust and value. A chef restaurant Dubai could be doing good business, but there are millions out there, and it is not possible for a celebrity chef to know whether an invitation is worth accepting.

A chef recruitment agency could play an important role in helping hospitality, and other businesses hire a celebrity chef. A celebrity chef’s office could get all the required details from an agency about a restaurant that is inviting the chef for its event.

This information and the reputation of the chef agency makes all the difference. A good restaurant’s request to book the services of the celebrity chef is considered.

The consideration could not have been given if the restaurant simply sent an invitation on its own to the celebrity chef’s office, and the latter has no clue as to why this restaurant could be trusted.

When you organize an event with a celebrity chef as the curator of the menu, there are hundreds of things to take into account. Starting from coordinating to getting the data and time, finding the equipment which the chef needs, getting the ingredients exactly in the manner the chef wants, arranging the event as per the chef’s convenience, managing the PR and publicity… the list goes on.

You might be wondering how to estimate the real costs and benefits when you hire a celebrity chef or a celebrity personal chef in the UAE.

Costs For Hiring a Celebrity Chef in the UAE

There are different celebrity chefs.

The ones who appear on local television, the ones who are invited on national television channels, the ones who have their own series on national or global television platforms, and those who have earned their reputation through cookbooks and various publications. There are Michelin Star chefs and Cordon Bleu chefs.

The level of popularity a chef gathers and the social-economic market segments a chef attracts plays a role in determining how much they would charge.

Costs also depend on how many invitations a chosen chef is getting for private and business functions and the market value generated by these events.

It would not be practical to indicate a price range as the variations are huge, as costs are charged per hour or minutes. You might be paying AED 500 to AED 1,500 per hour or much higher. And, that is just the chef’s charge to be there and direct a menu.

If your event involves getting the chef to whip up a number of dishes, then the pricing dynamics change.

You would also need to pay for hours and work put in by the chef’s staff. Then, there are matters like his or her pickup and drop charges for different commutes (airport to hotel to the place of event and back). You would definitely need to consider the other expenses that are associated with getting publicity.

If you would like to hire a chef Dubai for a personal event, the rates, comparatively, are lower.

There are hundreds of chefs out there in the UAE, from 200+ nationalities and specializing in different types of food and cuisine.

A chef recruitment agency will make your job of hiring a celebrity chef much easier, outcome-enriched, and cost-efficient.

You could indicate your goals, a budget, the type of food or dishes or a brief menu description and your target audience. Our chef consultant will research, study, analyze, consult with different chefs and send you our shortlisted names with details. You could then choose the one that best suits your goals.

Why Hire A Celebrity Chef? How Much Can You Benefit?

When you come to know hiring a celebrity chef and organizing an event could cost you AED 10,000 or AED 20,000, your first reaction might be – “Is it worth it?”

Here, we give you the right information to help you assess correctly.

Goal: Launching A Restaurant:

You might not be aware, but hundreds of restaurants get launched each year, but lack of customers gradually lower their capacities, and soon they are out of business. Sometimes, it is because they get a powerful competitor, an already established business that could offer more at lower prices.

How do you stand out from the competition? Hire a celebrity chef specializing in the food items you offer. You need to choose a chef that is very popular in the city or with your target audience.

For example, you might be specializing in specific French cuisine, and your target audience are top executives, businessmen, and the French habitants in your town. You would need to organize an event with a celebrity chef who is not an unknown entity despite being an international chef. If the chef is popular, then your chances of attracting the right crowd and winning their best impressions will give you outstanding results.

Goal: Business Celebrations:

Let us tell you a story. A multinational company invited a celebrity chef for its 25th annual celebrations. The celebrity chef curated the dessert menu, got his staff to prepare a couple of dishes, and directed the preparation of the other items. The celebrity chef was also among the VIP invitees.

The company had become the talk of the town for several weeks, with many magazines and local dailies reporting something or the other about the event and chef’s stay in the city. The outcome was simple. Before the event, the company was not a known name, but post the event, it became well-known, and attracted much more local business, employees, suppliers, and associates than it ever did before.

You could also enhance the reputation of your business brand in similar ways.

Goal: Launching A Food or Nutrition Product Line:

Are you preparing to launch a retail recruitment agencies in Dubai? Are you planning to start a business selling nutritive food products or maybe ingredients used for cooking? Several companies have associated with a celebrity chef to sell their products, and it has worked wonders for their business.

You could organize an event in which a celebrity chef uses your products to prepare an innovative dish. The event might cost you several thousand AED, but the event could be capitalized in many ways to bag orders quickly and in large volume.

Goal: Increasing Your Club’s Visibility and Membership:

With so many clubs out there, people tend to choose the oldest brands to avoid being part of lesser-known brands.

But old and new clubs alike sometimes do go through tough times and lose membership to their rivals. In the case of new clubs, the more people recognize them as good brands, the more they will attract members.

Hiring a celebrity chef is another way of getting the visibility you have targeted. If you design the event in a perfect manner and find a celebrity chef that takes it to another level, you could easily leverage the event to gain 2X memberships.

Goal: Launching Food Delivery Business Network:

If you could get a celebrity chef to offer dishes even for an hour, the value, recognition, and popularity of your food delivery business network would be highly enhanced. This is not an idea often used, and that only makes it even more lucrative and unique.

Goal: Personal Events:

People also seek to hire a celebrity personal chef in the UAE for personal celebrations like weddings, wedding anniversaries, or to mark other significant personal events. Hiring a celebrity personal chef in the UAE is different from a business event.

The charges are calculated in a different manner by different chefs. The charges vary depending on the number of guests and the variety of dishes to be prepared. Despite the costs, it does make any occasion immensely memorable when you hire a celebrity personal chef in the UAE for marking moments or celebrations that are very important or special to you.

You Need To Think Much More Than Just About Hiring A Celebrity Chefs

1. Strategize To Manage the Costs And Achieve Outcomes

If you are hiring a celebrity chef, you need to make sure how you will cover their costs. See, emptying your pockets just to get fame and recognition is not a good idea. After all, you have to look after your business, so it won’t be worth it if you invest all your savings in just hiring a celebrity chef. To make the best out of your decision, it is crucial to make a strategic plan to design the event in a manner that you achieve your goals and cover your costs.

2. Play To Your Strengths:

It is not just about the celebrity chef and his or her cuisine. Your focus is your business and how you could play on your strengths. The event should be designed in a way that your business strengths get visibility, acknowledgement and demand.

Hiring A Celebrity Chef Through Alliance Recruitment Agency-UAE

There are many benefits if you hire a celebrity chef through a recruitment agency. Here we are mentioning some.

1. Connect With Celebrity Chefs Specialized In Areas Your Prefer

The first benefit of going with a recruitment agency is that they will never neglect their clients’ needs. They will do the research for you and find out chefs who could be the best fit for your areas of culinary specialization.

2. Hire Celebrity Chefs On Time For Business Promotion Events

Promotion is a key for a newly starting business, and every day counts as a golden day in promotion. When you partner with a recruitment agency, you will be able to find a chef within a short time period and accordingly speed up your promotions.

3. Avoid Wasting Time and Money When You Search and Search On Your Own

If you do all the recruitment process on your own, then it will cost you your precious time but might not get you the results. You might always be behind the calendars as and when you contact a chef, with booking closed much before you are heard from their office.

When you partner with a recruitment agency with years of experience in helping hire celebrity chefs, you find a partner that knows whom to contact, when and find dates that suit your business needs.

Alliance Recruitment Agency UAE

Alliance Recruitment Agency is a global manpower agency with a presence in 25+ countries. We have a huge network of recruiters in the Middle East that includes the UAE and several other countries.

Our chef recruitment teams have extensive experience in helping businesses and individuals find the services of professional and eminent chefs. We already have strong connections with numerous chefs in the Middle East and from locations worldwide.

If you are looking to hire a celebrity chef in the UAE, please get in touch and find opportunities to book their services!