Conserjio is by invitation only. We write here occasionally — about the work, the coast, and the way our members spend their time.
The first thing to understand about hiring a private chef in Marbella is that the daily rate is not the bill. It is one of three or four numbers, and members who book without knowing the others tend to be surprised.
The shape of a typical engagement
Most of our members book a chef in one of three formats. A single dinner — six, eight, twelve people — runs as a one-off evening with menu, market shopping, service and clean-up included. A weekend across Friday-to-Sunday usually means breakfasts on the terrace, a long lunch, and a dinner on each evening. A residency, which is by far the most common format we run, means a chef in the villa for a week or more, full board for the household, with the menu built day by day.
Daily rates, broadly
For a competent, English-speaking chef on the Marbella stretch in 2026, expect a daily fee somewhere between €450 and €900. The range reflects the chef's experience and what the household is asking for: a Sunday family lunch is the lower end of that bracket; a tasting menu for ten on Saturday night, with an amuse-bouche and a pre-dessert, sits higher. Top of the range — and we do book this — is a chef with a Michelin-listed restaurant on their CV, doing the kind of menu they would put out at the pass.
What the daily rate does and does not include
The daily rate covers the chef's time: planning, market shopping, prep, service, and leaving the kitchen as it was found. It does not, in nearly every engagement we run, cover the food itself. Market shopping is reimbursed at cost, against receipts, and on the Marbella stretch a typical day for a family of six runs €120–€220 in groceries — higher if the menu pushes into seafood, aged beef or specific wines. We ask members to set a per-meal budget when they write so the chef plans against it.
The numbers most people forget
Two costs catch members out. First, kitchen kit: most villas in Sierra Blanca, on the Golden Mile or inside La Zagaleta have well-equipped kitchens, but the occasional rental does not, and the chef will sometimes bring blast-chillers, sous-vide kit or specific knives. We flag this in advance. Second, transport — for residencies inland, in Benahavís or Sotogrande, the chef commutes daily and that costs are usually folded into the rate.
Where to spend, where not to
Members underspend on chefs more often than they overspend. A single notch up in experience — from competent to genuinely good — almost always shows on the plate, and on a residency that is fourteen meals across a week, not one. Where members can spare, ours is to send the better chef.
We can be reached on private chef from anywhere on the coast — and for stays where the kitchen comes with the house, the villa rental page is the right place to begin.