Kim Gandhi

I think it goes back to how I was raised in customer service. My dad was in retail, and I learned from looking at how he treated people and how he treated our family. He raised us to look at how to do the right thing. He failed at things, but he'd get back up, brush himself off, and go forward. He taught that resiliency to all of us kids. As I've progressed in my career, I've failed and taken pivots, and I get back up and think, well, that didn't work, now what am I going to do to change that trajectory? Being in that customer service mindset, whether it's with your people, your teams, your employees, or your customers, really helps. Now I've got two customers: the chefs, who are all contractors and don't have to stay with us but I'm blessed that they do, and the customers coming in who've never heard about private chefing and might be nervous about bringing somebody into their home. That customer service piece plays on both ends, and I love being around it.

One of my best mentors told me that I like to go through the mountain, because I like to get from point A to point B. My vision was always, okay, this is how we can get there, I can see the endpoint. But he said, you know, sometimes you gotta go around the mountain, and you gotta bring everybody with you, because not everybody's going to see that end stage. They're not going to see as far as what you're seeing. So you need to stop, make a change, and make sure that people understand what it is. Sometimes going to other executives or making those compromises to go around the mountain, you'll get to the end game still the same, but it's a lot less painful than trying to bulldoze your way through a mountain.

I think that for the younger generation, finding those people that will mentor you is important, and also looking at the companies that you work with. When you wake up in the morning, do they have the same compass that you do? Same vision that you do? If you wake up and you're dreading your day, you're in the wrong role - take a pivot on it. It's okay to start over. A lot of people think every role they have has got to build on each other, and sometimes you've got to take a step back to go forward. With the different changes in roles that I've had over the years, I think anyone that's young and hungry never wants to say they're going from being an executive back down into operations. But at times, going through that and learning something more, learning more about yourself and what you really like and don't like, will lend itself to success longer term. Find a mentor that will help talk you through that. I pay it forward as much as I can with anyone who wants to be mentored, because at this point I'm at the end stages of my career, so if I can help somebody just take that one leap forward and find something that's their dream job, I'd like to do it.

The amount of opportunity to become a private chef is growing exponentially in the U.S. The field really has a lot of opportunity going forward. People are looking for that human connection. Communities, people looking to talk with people. We spend all day long on our PCs, dealing with AI and technology all the time - it's kind of part of our DNA at this point. But I think people are really missing that communal feel of when we get together, we talk, we're not looking at our devices. For a private chef, they come into someone's house and bring that community together for them. Whether people are visiting or interacting with the chef, learning what they're doing, it's very tactical and human. Those opportunities are continuing to grow within the whole chef and hospitality area. People can't get that going into a restaurant - restaurants are noisy, there's music going on, they never get to see the chef who's always in the back. This is a very close encounter with somebody who is a professional, and a lot of people are looking to do that. We're seeing tremendous growth. There was some huge number of growth for the industry within the next 4 years, well over a billion dollars in new opportunities for qualified chefs to jump into the industry.

Do the right thing. Make sure the decisions you make and actions you take are beneficial to those around you. I love that I can go to sleep at night knowing I've done my best to support our chef community as well as helped hosts find chefs to create the experience they are looking for.

My family is so important to me. I love that I am healthy and able to travel and visit them - my husband and I jump in the car with our dog and drive coast to coast. We find experiences of our own and. we are so happy that our kids still want to share holidays and vacations with us.

Seeing so much of the USA by car is also pretty epic and it allows me to reach out to chefs wherever we are going and share a cup of coffee or meal with them. Our chef community is truly amazing and that they make time to see me when they can is humbling.