Love Food But Don’t Want to Be a Chef? Other Careers to Consider
Foodies are on the rise. From Instagramming meals and perfecting your plate composition, to traveling the length and breadth of the country to try new ingredients and experience stellar chefs – it’s a glorious lifestyle. Even better, it’s one that you can make serious money from. However, the obvious route isn’t an easy one: being a chef is one of the most stressful careers in the world! So, what do you do if you want to work with food, but you don’t want to be a chef? There are plenty of options open to you; you might just have to put more groundwork in first.
Run your own franchise
In an ideal world, you’d start a restaurant from scratch. However, the risks and costs behind this are astronomical. So, for the same effect but in a safer way, why not look at opening a franchise? Pick your favourite café, bar, restaurant or food shop, and see if you can make it work in your town. More and more people enjoy eating good food, so opening niche, quirky venues will always go down well. From running your own soft pretzel franchise, to opening a milkshake bar, you’ll be able to surf the successful wave of fun, quality diners. There are so many benefits to running your own franchise, and if you want to work for yourself, it’s the safest way to do it. You don’t need to worry about risk or making mistakes – it’s all been done for you.
Become a food blogger
If you’re already a serious foodie, you probably have an Instagram account dedicated to your journey, and you might already have a blog. It’s possible to make a living from this, but you need to truly concentrate your efforts, and work hard to make your blog profitable. You need to have a high readership and follower base if you’re going to either make money from ads, or be given foods to review and free meals at local restaurants. To get this, you need to be producing original, entertaining, honest content on a regular basis. Plus, you need to be excellent at taking photos of food! To really stand out, try to give your blog an angle. Focusing on purely organic or vegan food will help you grow your readership, rather than just being a generic food blog. People want to follow and engage with writers who report on niche topics – so by narrowing your focus, you can grow your readership.
Work with manufacturers and brands
If there’s a particular shop, brand or substance that you truly rate, then why not focus on working for them? It means that you can use your current skill set and career experience, and continue doing something similar – but for an industry that you adore. Firstly, get to know the different food brands, and set up alerts to hear of any vacancies that would suit your skills. You could also get in touch with recruiters who specialize in the food and drink industry, and get them to work on finding you your dream position.
