A family office is a strange kind of business. The team is small, often under fifteen people. The decisions are large. And almost all of the value sits in the heads of the people around the table.
So here's a question I like to ask principals and COOs: you invest carefully in everything else. What are you investing in the fuel your team runs on?
For most offices, the honest answer is whatever arrives from a delivery app at 12:40.
Food is an input, not a perk
After 26 years as a chef, and years working as a longevity coach, I've seen the same pattern again and again. What people eat at lunch decides how they work at 3pm.
A heavy, oily, carb-loaded lunch gives you the afternoon slump. Energy drops, focus drifts, and the second half of the day gets quietly less productive. Skipped meals and snacking at the desk do the same thing in a different way. None of this shows up on a P&L, but everyone in the office feels it.
A well-built meal does the opposite. Enough protein, plenty of vegetables, good fats, slow carbohydrates, cooked fresh and eaten at a proper table. People stay steady through the afternoon. They think more clearly in the 4pm meeting. Over months and years, they're simply healthier.
For a team whose job is judgement, that isn't a nice extra. It's part of how the business performs.
What a Le Petit Marché chef actually does for your office
When we place a chef with a family office, the brief is never just "make lunch." It's closer to running a small, personal nutrition programme for your team.
- Menus built around your people. We start by learning the team: allergies, dietary choices, health goals, what they love and what they'll never touch. The menu is designed from that, and refined every week.
- Nutrition done properly. Low carb and high protein if that's the brief. Plant-forward if that suits the team. Balanced, varied, and never boring, because healthy food nobody wants to eat doesn't help anyone.
- Cooked fresh, on site. No trays that left a central kitchen three hours ago. The food is made in your pantry or kitchen and served at its best.
- Lunch and dinner covered. Including the late nights before a deal closes, when delivery usually means something fried.
- Room for the principal and family. Many offices use the chef for the family's needs too: a board lunch, a client dinner, a special request from home.
- One standard, every day. One accountable professional, not a rotating cast of restaurants and couriers.
Why it's an investment, not a cost
A full-time private chef with Le Petit Marché is SGD 10,500 to 12,000 per month, depending on the size of the team and the chef's background. Food is billed separately, at cost, with receipts.
That's a real number, so it deserves a real comparison. Most family offices are already spending on food, just in pieces nobody adds up: delivery for the team, catering for meetings, restaurant bookings for guests, late-night orders. Put it all together and the gap to an in-house chef is often smaller than people expect. Sometimes there's no gap at all.
But the better way to look at it is return, not cost. What is it worth if your team is sharper every afternoon? If fewer people are run down and taking sick days? If the office becomes a place people genuinely enjoy being, and good people stay longer? If a key client walks into a lunch they'll talk about for weeks?
You won't find those numbers on an invoice. You'll see them in the team.
Why go through Le Petit Marché
Finding a chef is easy. Finding the right one for a professional environment, and keeping the arrangement running smoothly for years, is the hard part. That's where we come in.
- Chefs we've trained and vetted, suited to health-focused, consistent cooking in an office setting.
- We're the employer. Our chefs are on our payroll, so contracts, leave and admin are handled by us. Read more on what happens when your chef is sick or on leave.
- We stay involved. Menu planning, feedback, adjustments. Month six should be as good as week one.
- A trial first. Every placement starts with a one-day or one-week trial. You taste it before you commit.
A small change with a big effect
We recently placed a chef with a private office in Asia Square that had spent years on delivery and catering. What struck me most wasn't the food. It was how quickly the team started eating together again, at a table, instead of alone at their desks.
That's the part people underestimate. A private chef feeds your team well, and it also changes the culture of the office, one lunch at a time.
If you're still comparing options, our honest comparison of food options for family offices lays them all out side by side. And if you're ready to talk, tell us about your team.
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Le Petit Marché is Singapore's private chef concierge agency, founded by Chef Nicolas Reynard and Kai. We match families, family offices, and private offices with chefs we've trained, vetted, and genuinely stand behind.
