| Mix together an appetite for indulgence and the seductive influence of superstar chefs, bake in several years of widespread economic prosperity, and watch as the market for luxury food products and services rises. Consumers and corporations alike have developed a taste for the best, it seems, and are willing to pay whatever it costs to get it.
For those who have a taste for luxury, a taste for good food and and the means to afford both, here some imaginative gift suggestions for that proverbial “person who has everything.”
• Trend: The Rise of the Personal Chef
For generations, European aristocratic and, later, bourgeois households have employed personal chefs. The trend moved west during the Gilded Age, when newly rich Americans hired private chefs as a badge of their “arrival” in society. Today, affluent consumers around the world are following their lead, turning to agencies to supply them with professionally cooked meals.
The United States Personal Chef Association, established in 1992, currently has 3,200 members. Another group, the American Personal Chef Association, has a roster of 1,400 and is adding 50 to 60 new members per month, according to executive director Candy Wallace. In 1999, Enterprise magazine ranked the personal-chef industry, worth $120 million, as the second “hottest” upcoming industry. Austrian-born Christian Paier, founder of Los Angeles-based Private Chefs, Inc., calls the new breed of kitchen pros the “personal trainers of the new millennium.”
Gift Suggestion: Interview and hire a personal chef for that spouse that’s just too busy with work to cook.
• Trend: Recreational Cooking Schools
Since cooking has become a hobby for many people around the globe, so-called “recreational” cooking schools are blossoming all over Europe, most notably in the French countryside and in Tuscan villages. The schools offer an immersion course in the culture of local cuisine, as students spend weeks or months living and learning under the apprenticeship of expert teachers.
Between 1995 and 1998, the number of cooking school-related vacation programs in Europe tripled, according to Dorlene Kaplan, editor and publisher of Shawguides Inc.’s Guide to Cooking Schools. Amateur cooks of ample means can select from a menu of mouthwatering choices:
• The Ritz Escoffier offers one-week programs on food and wine in France, Italy, Spain, and Greece.
• Patricia Wells, author of “The Food Lover’s Guide to France,” gives small-group lessons on food topics at her 18th-century farmhouse in Provence.
• Faith Willinger, author of “Eating in Italy,” shares her expertise in Tuscan cuisine in workshops at Capezzana, a 16th-century villa near Florence.
Gift Suggestion: Give a loved one that loves to cook a personally engraved gift certificate for a trip to Europe to attend one of these schools.
• Trend: Semipro Equipment
The luxury aspect of cooking extends beyond food. As discovered in “The New Gourmets,” a study conducted for Gourmet magazine, weekend kitchen warriors who fancy themselves semipro cooks are willing to shell out serious money for high-caliber equipment. Many are making professional-style ranges — which resemble, as well as function like, their commercial counterparts — the focal points of their kitchens. The ultimate product in this category is La Cornue, a $20,000 piece of equipment that kitchen designer Mick De Giulio calls “the Rolls-Royce of ranges.” Warming drawers, steamer sinks, and gas- or wood-burning pizza ovens are among the other luxuries sought after by ambitious home chefs.
Gift Suggestion: The installation of one of these ranges for the loved one that loves to cook.
• Trend: Deluxe Corporate Food Gifts
Gourmet food items are popular with corporations as well as consumers. Food and beverage gifts ranked in the top 10 award categories in the 2000 Incentive Merchandise Facts Report, and items with a high perceived value are favored rewards. A sales-incentive program run in 4Q99 by Ohio-based Moen Faucets, for example, offered winners such choices as the Lobster Gram Deluxe (including two lobsters and a 12-quart ceramic-steel pot) and the Stockyard Chateaubriand and Sugardale Filet strip steak combinations.
Gift Suggestion: The perfect gift for your best client or best salesperson
What’s next?
• The Incredible Shrinking Subzero: Manufacturers will downsize commercial-style appliances to fit even the smallest city kitchens.
• Foie Gras in a Flash: Web-based grocery services specializing in luxury ingredients will deliver the goods by dinnertime.
• Private Lessons: Personal chefs will offer their cooking-challenged clients one-on-one lessons to help them survive the pro’s days off. | 
