Cooking Dinner
Christmas is one of the busiest periods for Dante Giannini of Farm to Fork. The former private chef for Jimmy Buffett now runs a company with 15 Michelin-level kitchen vets on its roster. They have been hired out by the likes of Paul McCartney, Debra Messing, and David and Lauren Lauren. He and his team are often tapped by clients who are juggling two Christmases.
“One is a very, very successful real estate agent who has her own celebration at her house in Bronxville for family, but also hosts an open-house/holiday party for clients at a home nearby,” Giannini tells Bloomberg. “I have two chefs collaborate on that, and she goes back and forth between them.”
Another family splits the day between both sets of in-laws, who live two blocks apart on New York’s Upper East Side: The same chef cooks a traditional, roast-driven lunch at one home around 4 p.m. before decamping with the family to the other apartment, where he preps an Italian-style feast that’s heavy on fish and pasta. Giannini’s crack kitchen team isn’t limited to working in New York. One festive client whisked him off to Saint Barts for Christmas and New Year, bringing all his ingredients by helicopter and storing them on a refrigerated cargo barge.
Plated dinners range from $100 to $225 per head, plus servers and bartenders
Playing Santa
Tim Connaghan is the Ari Emmanuel of the North Pole, running the country’s largest Santa-for-hire agency. He personally understands the gig’s requirements, having channeled his inner St. Nick for the first time in 1969 while in Vietnam: sporting a foamy, white beard made of Barbasol, he handed out gifts to his fellow soldiers. For 18 years, he has been hiring out Santas via his agency, supplying them to more than 1,400 events annually for malls and corporate and private clients. His roster of Santas undergoes full background checks and wears custom-made suits, boots, belts, and—most important—a tug-proof, all-natural beard.
Rural Santa fees start at $75 for a 30-minute visit and rise to $200 per hour in cities and $350 per hour in New York
Absolutely Everything Else
Think of Lindsi Shine and her team at Insider NYC as real-life elves with the power to work magic. Every year, they’re the behind-the-scenes team for a slew of VIP clients. They work on everything from holiday cards—she estimates they handle around 5,000 every year—to gift-buying, for which Shine produces an exclusive, in-house version of the Neiman Marcus catalog, filled with impossible-to-find treats. She estimates that they spend around 20 percent of their time during the holiday season handling decoration, from sourcing a local tree-trimmer for a client’s second home in Aspen, Colo., or stepping in to help during an emergency.
“Last year, a client had bought a new house in Pebble Beach [Calif.], and we had two hours to get a tree for him when he asked,” Shine tells Bloomberg by telephone from her New York office. “So we persuaded the local Pottery Barn to take it off the floor and deliver it to their house. The store’s lead decorator went with it so he could put everything back on the tree exactly as it was.”
Even better, in January, Insider NYC will happily tackle the hassle of returning all of those unwanted gifts.
Initial subscription: $750 per month for 5 hours, with additional hours charged at $150