Jillian's Story
I didn’t set out to start a frozen food company. For most of my adult life, I’d been circling a problem: how to keep eating the kind of home-cooked food I loved while building a career and, eventually, a family. Chef’s Daughter arose as the solution.
In 2021, I left my corporate job. I couldn’t sit through one more Zoom meeting about digital ad targeting when the only thing I really cared about was what was for lunch. I decided to take my mealtime preoccupation seriously and learn to cook professionally and at scale. I attended Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland, where I learned just how thoughtful farming practices can show up on the plate, shaping both flavor and nutrition.
After I returned to New York, working in restaurant kitchens refined my understanding of planning, sourcing, and discipline. Working in restaurants like Lodi and King sharpened my intuitions about seasonality and cooking thoughtfully at a larger scale.
I eventually became a private chef, building a delivery-based service out of my apartment. As the scale of my work grew, so did my space, and I moved into a commercial kitchen in 2023.
Rather than simplifying my menus, I made them more complex. I wanted to understand what traveled well, what benefited from time, and how dishes meant to be eaten later could still retain, or even improve upon, their original phenomenal taste. Many of the clients I cooked for were at the apex of their careers, either pregnant or newly postpartum, and I spent years nourishing others through the most demanding, transitional seasons of their lives.
Along the way, my perception of the freezer shifted. In professional kitchens, it isn’t an afterthought; it’s essential. When food is cooked and frozen with care, it preserves its flavor, texture, and integrity. That idea stayed with me as I took on more delivery clients.
When I became pregnant myself, I realized I’d been quietly building something I needed too. The pace I’d been keeping was no longer sustainable, so I scaled my work back and began freezing meals for both my clients and myself. At the time, it seemed like a short-term solution for maternity leave.
After my daughter was born, I could see how central those meals became. It wasn’t just that they were easy. They were good. We looked forward to them. We craved them. Finishing the meals with something fresh from the market each night brought an exciting versatility to an otherwise easy dinner. Most importantly, they allowed our family to eat well, in every sense of the word, without cooking from scratch every night, giving me a little breathing room exactly when I needed it most.
That’s when Chef’s Daughter clicked.
It was about taking something from each kitchen I spent time in over my career and synthesizing it into its core parts. Chef’s Daughter’s meal line is composed of the dishes I crave and cook for my family at home. They’re nourishing, familiar, and satisfying for people of all ages. They’re made with the same standards I brought to private cheffing, designed to find a home in your freezer until you’re ready for them.
I hope Chef’s Daughter makes it easier for you to return to good food, offering support through the busiest seasons of life, from my family to yours.
