Cooking is a skill that anyone can pick up and learn in a variety of different ways. You can learn by watching others, checking out videos, or even from copying recipes in cookbooks. But to really stand out with your cooking is a completely different story!
If you feel rather confident in your cooking skills and are interested in turning it into a job, then we’ve got a couple of tips to help you out. Here are some ways to make a living from your skills so that you can fully dedicate yourself to cooking as a career choice!
Starting your own food truck, delivery service, or restaurant
These days, there are just so many different ways for someone to start selling their own food. The usual steps to take here are food trucks, delivery services, or even a restaurant. Sure, there are probably a few other ways to sell your food, but these are generally considered as the most common.
A delivery service is probably the easiest way to get started. It’s possible to get listed on food delivery apps from your kitchen. However, the same rules and regulations that apply to restaurants will also apply to you! This means that you’ll need to consider food safety, hygiene, keeping records, and also labeling requirements in some cases. There’s a lot to consider here, so don’t take the setup process lightly! But once you’re done, you’ll be ready to sell food from the comfort of your own kitchen, and this is something that a lot of people are already doing to some extent.
The other option is to start your own food truck or restaurant, with the former being much cheaper but with varying degrees of success. Restaurants are ultimately going to cost more, but there’s no telling if you’re going to make more money or not. A larger place means you have the potential to have more customers, but it also means that your food will be more expensive to cover things like rent and employee wages.
There are a couple of ways to make running a restaurant a bit cheaper. For instance, you could use pay at the table solutions that will make it easier to run your restaurant. That way you can hire fewer employees, resulting in higher profits overall. You could also list yourself on food delivery apps so that you have a wider reach. There are lots of different ways to grow your business, but it requires a lot more skill and experience than just knowing how to cook!
This article is too brief to cover all of those scenarios, but it’s really important to do a bit of research here.
Teaching others how to cook
There are a number of ways that you can teach others how to cook, such as creating your own cookbook, having online lessons, or even teaching others in-person. If there’s any business advice that we can offer you here, it’s that you really have to build a brand in order to do something like this effectively.
Of course, you could always become a tutor or instructor for a company that advertises cooking services. However, the self-employed method of doing this is to essentially create different types of content that can be used to sell items related to your cooking.
Here’s one example. Imagine recording your cooking and turning your videos into recipe videos with a bit of video editing. You could also link this to a blog that you share, and also post your recipes on various websites. The way to monetize this is to have things like advertisements on your website or YouTube videos, but you could also link to kitchen tools with Amazon Associates Program links so that you get a small commission whenever you sell something.
This multi-layered approach to monetizing your cooking skills can work great, but the success of it banks on your ability to build your personal brand. You’re not going to make money by creating good content alone–you need to also be willing to get yourself out there, market your brand, and realize that you’re competing with hundreds of other creators who want to show off their cooking skills.
The good thing with this approach is that you don’t necessarily need to be an experienced chef, nor do you have to work in a busy kitchen environment. However, you do need to supplement your cooking skills with video production, blog writing, and other forms of content creation. If you’ve already got some experience in digital marketing too, then this can be an excellent way to turn cooking into a career.