The Pampered Chef

The Pampered Chef is Doris Christopher’s extraordinary account of how she turned an innovative concept and $3,000 investment into a business with annual sales approaching the billion-dollar mark. It is packed with real-life lessons and inspiring insights for small-business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.

In 1980 Doris Christopher, a former home economist and teacher, was itching to get back into the workforce after an eight-year hiatus as a stay-at-home mom. Drawing on her personal and professional expertise, and determined to make cooking easier and more convenient for families, she started selling high-quality kitchen tools through cooking demonstrations to groups of women in their homes. Today, the company she started in her basement, The Pampered Chef, is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary and has grown into a corporation (now owned by Berkshire Hathaway) with tens of thousands of independent Kitchen Consultants who present more than a million Kitchen Shows a year, attended by more than 12 million people.