Secrets of Success

Epicurate's founder and CEO, Max Porterkhamsy, spoke with Business Insider about what it takes to deliver Michelin-quality meals for his Silicon Valley tech clients.

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The secret of success? Anticipating guests' needs before they are even aware of them. Below are excerpts from the conversation.

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Max Porterkhamsy is a former executive chef of the Mayo Family Winery Reserve Room in Kenwood, California, and he previously worked at the prestigious Le Bernardin restaurant in New York. When he turned to private cooking several years ago, he stepped into a different and sometimes surreal world.

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He mentioned a time a client sent a private jet to pick him up. A different family had Porterkhamsy living with them in an $80,000-a-month rental unit and driving their rented Lamborghini. The family, Porterkhamsy said, was "afraid to drive the vehicle but wanted to go for rides in it. So I spent two days just driving random people around in the Lamborghini."

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“What people can't afford is an evening of disappointment.”

—Max Porterkhamsy

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Today Porterkhamsy runs Epicurate, an online marketplace that let's clients schedule services from a curated list of high-end chefs. His business is built on a core tenet of the private-chef world, which is that people who hire private chefs often have more money than they have time.

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Preventing disappointment is a big part of the job. Whether it's an afternoon snack of carrots and hummus or a birthday cake, chefs become an integral part of their clients' daily lives. They must anticipate their clients' needs, including the best time to put out freshly baked cookies.

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