The Pampered Chef

The Story of One of America's Most Beloved Companies

By: Doris Christopher

Narrated by: Kimberly Farr

Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

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 25th 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.

The Pampered Chef is the story of the vision, energy, hard work, and chutzpah that drove Christopher and her company to the height of success. She describes her early days as a “one-woman show,” chronicles the company’s gradual expansion, its challenges and growing popularity, and the process, offers invaluable advice and sound strategies on how to found and grow a business, including:

• Hard learned lessons for start-up entrepreneurs• How to create a business concept and set your priorities
• Knowing when to expand and when to slow growth so that demand doesn’t overwhelm your operations or supplies
• How to counter the naysayers and deal with adversity

Today, as at the company’s founding, achieving a better balance between work and family remains central to The Pampered Chef’s mission. The Pampered Chef brings Christopher’s recipe for success to women, and men, everywhere.

©2005 Doris Christopher (P)2005 Books on Tape, Inc.

Great Company!

Doris Cristopher CEO of Pampered Chef has built a fantastic company from the ground up. The company now owned by Berkshire Hathaway has one of the best business plans and up to date technology of any of the homebased businesses marketing opportunities today. Pampered Chef has a state of the art website and product line that give numerous individuals the opportunity to be Independent Consultants..

an inspiration

Ms Christopher's story is inspirational and uplifting. I loved this book!

Pampered to Sleep

I've listened to 25 Audible books, most longer than this version, but this is the first and hopefully the last that I cannot possibly finish. I've tried, but just can't take it anymore. Pure torture. Maybe it's the narrator, who e-nun-ci-a-tes every syllable. Or maybe it's the author who writes every detail imaginable. It is this terrifying combo that leaves with me an image of Mrs. Brady or perhaps someone more 'perfectly' conservative without her humor or wit.

The innane detail and repetition of how much Jay, her husband, has done for her is boooring. She comes across as incredibly weak on one hand and utterly conservative on the other: it's pretty clear that Jay did everything except sell the stuff, and she starts the book by thanking not him, but God, for it all working out.

I bought this book hoping to hear an intersting story about how she started her business. The intro was great- written by Warren Buffet, who bought the company. If only Doris had been so concise. Or perhaps she was in her self-narrated abridged version (I'll never know)... Buffet says this was a great book worth reading and rereading- maybe he read the abridged version?

All that said, I'm obviously not very happy about wasting an audio credit on a book I can't bring myself to finish. Note, I've taken to fastforwarding a bit here and there just to fisnish it, but I find she's still going on about the same thing, minutes later. Kills me, just kills me.

JB tells us the most interesting thing in the intro- she started it on $3000 borrowed against Jay's life insurance policy. Now, I told you the best part, so save your money and time and get something else.