We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Victoria Rivera a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Victoria, thanks for joining us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

To get started a relatively big topic right now, Corporate America has slowly ruined the food industry with the over consumption and use in restaurants, as well as the “perfect” image of foods. I’ve seen both sides of fine dining as well as using what you’ve got, and the reality is the food tastes just as good if it’s a perfectly circle tomato, or a lopsided one. Unfortunately corporate America has made it out to seem that everything must look perfect to be good, and that’s just simply not the case. They carry literally the same flavor, just different growing conditions, but we waste so much food picking through for the perfect looking ones, trimming the quantity down to make them perfect. And yet so much of our world, this country and beyond is struggling for those “scraps” that we’ve come to constantly waste. Even up to the top levels of what we purchase in stores, putting “low fat” labels on products that are sometimes worse than the original. Greenwashing or faking organic labels, on products that are still on shelves. It’s gotten so bad as to hike prices on the products that are simply raw ingredients, and the “low fat” options sometimes being cheaper but packed with tons of unnecessary additives. This topic isn’t something I want to go super deep into, we as consumers need to do our own research to understand what world we live in and what to buy. I chose this topic to touch on where I saw my career going, focused solely on numbers and image; and where I chose to make a change, and do differently. At Chef Tori- Personal Chef LLC, we are an almost entirely homemade fresh company, and utilize as much of the products as we can. From homemade stocks, juices, breadcrumbs, and everything in between. We make sure we are utilizing every part that can be used, and if there is ever a time that we had more than we can use, we have donated to shelters and those in need every single time. We don’t believe in throwing food out, wasting tons of “scraps”, when there are so many people out there in need. Even being turned away from shelters and situations due to the laws prohibiting certain food donations, we still persist in trying to do better than Corporate America.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi! My name is Tori, and I’m a professional chef in Palm Beach County Florida. Originally born and raised in Long Island, NY; I traveled to South Florida in search of bigger career and life opportunities. I attended an ACF accredited culinary school and I fell further in love with food and knew I was going to do this for the rest of my life. I’ve been able to experience and learn wide varieties of cuisines, foods, cooking methods and styles, and range in atmospheres. I’ve worked high end fine dining restaurants to corporate run fast paced to catering personal events, and a lot in between. I knew I wanted to continue working with food and get on a more personal level with clients, I decided to open my own business, meal prepping in home, delivery, and pickup; fine dining in-home; as well as catering events and food vending. I opened Chef Tori- Personal Chef LLC in 2024 with the goal and mindset to do different than the catering and meal prep options that are out there.

I’ve been in the industry now for 10+ years and I’m here to show you what a difference loving working with food can do on your meals as well as your relationship with food. I take pride in my variety, my knowledge of allergies and diets, and my willingness to go that extra step to make sure the client is getting the menu they would want. What separates us from everyone else is our flexibility, we don’t just push our clients to make choices off menus, we want the choice to be yours. We understand that living in South Florida, we see a wide variety of clientele, and we pride ourselves on our flexibility for that fact. We are well versed in a wide variety of cuisines and nutrition/dietary restrictions. Unlike other services that narrow your selection to a handful of menus, we ask thoroughly what you’d like for YOUR event or meal prep. We offer a luxury service having a chef prepare your dinner, meals, or event; to make your week easier, with the flavors and foods that you love! We are knowledgable and offer gluten free, diary free, soy free, keto, mediterranean, anti-inflammatory, low fat, low carb/Atkins, and mayo clinic diets. As well as all organic/grass fed options for those who want to take their health and nutrition to the next step! To go into the specifics, our meal prep service is available for delivery in Palm Beach County for all shapes and sizes, with our order minimum depending on the specific situation. We offer plans as small as 4 meals/week, and as large as an 8 person household! If you’re looking for cooking done in your home, we do that as well, availability is limited to location as well as requested dates/times. As far as catering events, we cater small intimate gatherings to large scale weddings and events. For bookings, inquiries, and to see more visit our website www.cheftori-personalchefllc.com

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn was rather unfortunate in my opinion. To give you back story, I knew I wanted to cook from an early age and aside from a lot of people telling me I shouldn’t, the pay wouldn’t be worth it, especially as a female, that I’d fight so hard, etc etc, I kept going for it. I went to culinary school and I’m going to preface this with I absolutely loved every second of it, and would never go anywhere else if I could do it again. I feel like I learned so much, it was entirely hands on, the quick pace kept me constantly learning and on my toes. It was very cutthroat, we graduated with far less than what we started with, and it’s not surprising. Required of us was absolute perfection, we couldn’t be late, missing a single part of our uniform, homework, and materials without a significant knock to our grades. On top of that, it’s environment physically, is cutthroat every second. High temperature kitchens, equipment, brand new skills and lessons, mind you a perfect uniform had to be kept the entire time. And then there’s the competitive nature from the class, but also just the way the program was ran, we were high performing, every single second of every day in that building. It created a great structure for me, as well as work ethic to power through whatever possibly needs to be done. The kitchens are also not soft environments, insults and frequent badgering are common, some chefs curse and scream, and most of us pick up at least one of those habits. I kept that same drive with me in every restaurant or concept I worked in, from French fine dining to the mom and pop pizza place to the billion dollar HMF. I was constantly working my way up from the bottom, then finding a plateau, and as someone who wanted to continue to learn, I would always take on more. I would learn extra stations, order duties, etc. until I worked my way up into a management position for almost 4 years. This was where this lesson really was learned, because I spent nearly every second of every day focused on running those shifts, and almost completely forgot about that “wanting to learn more”. There was no time, energy, or effort left in me to keep working on my own goals too. So after years and years of working under that same push and drive, for someone else’s goal always, eventually I realized a lot that had been drilled into me, was changing. One being finding the balance between the stage and living it constantly. What I mean when I say this is culinary school taught me a lot about how to perfect what I do, and I never want to lose that. Being on a stage, constantly putting on a performance for the goal. There’s also a constant hunger for more, to be better. After years of over-working myself feeling like I had to, I realized I had to unlearn living in that constant state of need for more, that there’s value in slowing down to perfect what works for you. You can be on stage when needed, but also be able to turn it off; and I know saying that sounds simple, but some of us forget it. And the other side of it, is not letting your surroundings dictate and control you. That when no matter how busy life gets, whether it’s work focus or anything else, to keep your priorities straight, taking care of yourself. Because at the end of the day, we need this body to get us through, so taking care of it mentally and physically is just as important. It’s all about finding the balance between working for everything you want, but still taking care of yourself in doing so.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

My most effective strategy for growing clientele has been consistently working at it. This is the one size fits all answer, you have to constantly be researching, monitoring, adjusting to what works or doesn’t. If you’re trying to grow your business and you’re not looking at absolutely everything that people in your business are talking about regarding what works or doesn’t, you’re only cheating yourself. Your site traffic, clicks, views, etc are the numbers you have in front of you, and a couple ai searches can help you find exactly how to run your analytics to track what you want to know. To talk more about the specifics, I’ll generalize it a bit so this is more interesting to those not in the food industry.

For starters, word of mouth, doing it strategically so people in your circle are aware of your business venture but not overwhelmed by it. For example, a couple posts to Facebook, or emails to friends; but personally, I wouldn’t add everyone to my mailing list. Obviously, this is all personal choices, and you can do what you please, but I am selective and relevant contacts in my circle I made aware without pressure. What I did was add those contacts to my social media that were business relevant, which brings me into the next point of posting about it. Talk about your business, post about it, find your balance that’s enough without being overwhelming. Make it easy for your friends, family, and circle to know what business you are in, we don’t want to hide it, but again don’t over do it either. You can use any of your social media pages, YouTube, TikTok, etc or take it to the next step with a website. Build your own website where you can display the content you want your audience to see, make it your own, upgrade to versions with online ordering available if applicable, blogs, email subscriptions, etc there are so many options out there. You don’t have to know what’s going to work for you, research it for your business specifically, see what other people do well and not well. Keep notes and then make adjustments after a period of time, see if you get more traction, and just keep adjusting. Odds are for your business, there are blogs or other people talking about or looking for the same answers. You don’t have to build the website yourself either, you can use as much or as little help as you need to get it done and started. The first one doesn’t have to be perfect, you can easily edit and adjust as you see what works! Utilize what you have, most website services have additional benefits and it doesn’t hurt to try them out and see what works for you. From my experience, in the personal chef business having blog posts, online ordering, and lots of menus and photos has been the most beneficial. This applies to any other ad services you may want to check out as well. I think ad spending is worth it to get your name out there, it’s just about finding a good source that can make your business look more reputable. My business has had success with Yelp, but even then it’s not perfect and we are constantly testing out other avenues. You have to find what works for your business niche and like I said, research, trial, review and adjust.

To go into a little detail about some of my ventures in getting clientele, it doesn’t just stop there. We do large scale food vending events, small local wellness gatherings, talk to gyms and nutritionists about referring clients, gym open houses, and buy in events where we’re taking financial risks with the goal of business networking as opposed to profits. It’s all about your industry and your specific goals. You’ll find us all over Palm Beach County, because that’s how far we service; from Facebook groups, events, news, etc. So to summarize, you have to do it all, TRACK IT, and find what works to really grow and find your clientele.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cheftori-personalchefllc.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rivera.tori