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Chef Oakason Hoffman, known professionally as Chef O., is splitting this NFL season between Miami and Pittsburgh, 1,200 miles apart, and the reason is Jalen Ramsey.
Ramsey got traded from the Dolphins to the Steelers in the offseason. The cornerback, Hoffman’s client of two years, wasn’t about to face a new challenge without her cooking fueling his performance.
When Ramsey got injured in the Sept. 28 game against the Vikings, Chef O. shifted her usual approach to recovery mode—whole foods, fresh juices, anti-inflammatory ingredients, nothing processed. “You’ve really just got to go back to the basics,” she tells Front Office Sports. “Food is one of the key ingredients to having an incredible season. I think private chefs don’t always get all the credit for what we do to lay out the groundwork.”
For many elite athletes, private chefs are as integral as trainers or physical therapists—trusted members of a tight inner circle. They have keys to their clients’ houses, earn six-figure salaries, and make decisions that have implications on the field. The right diet can extend a career and create competitive advantages worth millions in contracts and endorsements.
Hoffman, who trained under the world-renowned chef José Andrés before launching her company, Sweet & Savory Kitchen, never set out to work in the sports world. Her first athlete client came by chance after her neighbor connected her with a big-time sports agent. That agent had an NBA player coming to town who needed a chef, and word soon spread quickly among the city’s offseason regulars. “Everyone comes to Miami,” she says of its city’s popularity as a training hub. “Basketball, football, baseball—the seasons are all different, so it’s year-round here.”
What started as a solo operation has grown into a team of 13 chefs: predominantly women, many of them single mothers. Hoffman didn’t plan for this demographic makeup, but she’s embraced it, creating opportunities for her team to travel for contracts and develop their skills.
Some chefs are connected through team dietitians, others through agents or word-of-mouth referrals among players’ wives. Some land their first athlete client after catering an event. But once they make it into these close-knit circles—and prove they can be trusted for both discretion and delicious meals—there tends to be plenty of opportunities available.
“It’s about the relationship. You want to create an environment where they are like, ‘She will be our go-to,’” says Hoffman.
For these cooking pros, one-off work, like a celebratory dinner or a yacht spread—a frequent ask in Miami, with plates laden with sliders, fruits, and dips—typically comes with a per-person fee. If a player wanted to take 10 friends out for a day on the water, at a rate of $200 a head, they would pay $2,000 plus the cost of groceries. For longer engagements or returning clients, Hoffman says she’ll negotiate a discounted rate.
“Miami’s a money-driven place,” Hoffman says. “But you’ve got to leave a good taste in their mouth, both literally and figuratively.”
For experienced chefs, she says annual earnings typically start at six figures: “$100,000 is probably the base rate for someone who’s with you on a day-to-day basis.” More experienced chefs can command significantly more, up to $250,000 or so annually.
Chef Montez Hymon, who runs Chef Tez, a private-chef business in Charlotte that serves Panthers and Hornets players, bills NBA clients on a daily rate because their schedules are too irregular for weekly structures. For NFL clients, he charges a consistent weekly rate since the schedule remains stable, though he avoids salary structures so a mid-season trade doesn’t leave a contract in limbo.
He estimates he spends as much time on logistics as he does in the kitchen. “There’s no real balance to it,” says Hymon, whose small team of four chefs juggles contracts with NFL and NBA players alongside upscale private-dining events. “A lot of ordering, a lot of ripping and running, sourcing certain materials, writing out menus, getting on calls and talking to different clients, and speaking with the team.”
The work is grueling and physical. Hoffman describes days starting with shopping at 5:30 a.m. and ending past midnight after cooking for eight hours, cleaning, driving to a commercial kitchen, and prepping for the next day.
The caloric demands of elite athletes alone require careful planning. “We take care of a lot of O-line guys,” Hymon tells FOS. “They eat, like, 5,000 calories a day.”
Much of a private chef’s work begins in the offseason, where feeding players has massive implications for the months on the field.
After more than two decades teaching culinary arts, Chef Ana Machado returned to private-chef work in 2021, cooking for 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa, whom she worked with in Florida for four consecutive offseasons. When Machado began cooking for Bosa during his recovery from an ACL tear sustained in the 2020 season, her focus was singular: performance nutrition. Bosa wanted to get leaner while maintaining energy for eight-hour training days. He wanted no starches, no dairy, high protein, and maximum vegetables.
“Because they’re so big and athletic, and they burn so many calories, they have to eat every two to three hours,” she says. “And we’re not talking snacking—we’re talking full meals.” Whatever meals she prepared, she would make five portions of them, serving one hot and packing the rest, and making a gallon or two of green juice on top of that.
The work kept her busy with 10-hour days that started with early-morning trips to the grocery store and ended with leaving the kitchen spotless, “as if I was never there, better than when I arrived.” She cooked for Bosa on Mondays and Wednesdays and for his brother, Joey (then between seasons playing for the Chargers, now with the Bills), on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She worked in their respective home kitchens, arriving after they left for training and having meals ready by the time they returned. Fridays were for menu planning—ensuring variety across both brothers’ different preferences.
When Nick Bosa returned to California for minicamp in June 2021, his trainers and team nutritionists immediately noticed changes. He’d achieved a 9% body-fat level while maintaining his muscle mass and energy. ESPN interviewed Machado about Bosa’s transformation, which sent other NFL players contacting her.
She took on another client for her business—Jordan Poyer, a Bills safety playing for the Dolphins at the time—but she has otherwise declined to expand High Performance Cuisine. “As good as I was for Nick,” she says, “I couldn’t fit more than the two of them on my schedule, because the days are so long and so customized to them.”
Working with players during the season requires a different approach. Chef Crystin Hardgraves launched GlamGourmet after her pandemic cooking videos gained enough traction on social media that she began picking up private clients.
Seahawks defensive tackle Jarran Reed was one of the followers who reached out, and she signed on for the 2024–25 season. “His main thing was: I want to eat some good food. I want to feel good. I want to stay in shape,” she says.
Hardgraves works with Reed five days a week during the season: Tuesday through Saturday, starting each day at 6 a.m. She prepares breakfast before he leaves for the practice facility, delivers him lunch there, and has dinner ready when he returns home. She’s at the grocery store daily, and Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market almost as often. She tries to create variety. His favorite is A5 Japanese Wagyu steak, but Hardgraves keeps the dishes rotating, pivoting when plans or preferences shift.
“The other day, he’s like, ‘No more gluten, no more dairy.’ So I’m like, ‘O.K., it’s gone,’” Hardgraves says.
Changing eating habits requires patience and creativity, particularly with players who want to stick with what they know. Ramsey, a Nashville native, grew up on Southern comfort food—dishes heavy with butter, cream, and dairy. “He loves Southern foods,” Hoffman says. “Along with that comes a lot of heavy foods that really satisfy him, but we have to figure out ways to still be able to scratch that Southern itch without as much butter and cream and milk.”
Hymon takes a similar approach, researching players’ backgrounds to understand their food preferences and childhood influences. “You may have a football guy that grew up in southern Texas, then went to Alabama or something like that,” he says. “So, you can kind of gauge what the culture was and what his palate was growing up, and you try to put a creative spin on it, a creative and healthy spin on it.”
For all the planning, adaptability, and nutrition science that goes into private chef work for elite athletes, the kitchen pros who spoke to FOS say the intangibles are really what make their jobs work.
“You come in and you’re always on time, always professional, always trustworthy,” says Hymon. “There are times when I’m in these clients’ homes more than they are.”
“Trust is everything,” agrees Hardgraves. “When you take your job very seriously … you walk into their homes, and you know what time it is. You know what you need to do.”
