If you’re passionate about food and cooking, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use that passion to earn some extra cash. After all, everybody needs food, and being able to cook well is a highly sought-after skill. You don’t even have to be a professional chef. If friends and family are always complimenting you on your cooking, then that might mean you have what it takes to do something with food that people will be happy to pay for.
Here are five ways you can go about earning an extra income from food.
1. Social Dining: Get your piece of the cake
The fast-growing social dining phenomenon is really an extension of social networking, only this really is social — you actually get to meet up with the people you communicate with online in real life!
And it’s really taken off. There are new social dining platforms appearing all the time. However, it is in the home restaurant niche where the real money is. It is very possible to earn a good profit while developing your skills in the kitchen.
There are specialist online platforms out there to help you connect with people who will pay restaurant prices for your menu. Just be sure that you test out your recipes, as well as your ability to cook and look after a large number of people, before turning your home into a pop-up restaurant.
2. Cooking lessons: A recipe for success
If you do try social dining, you might find that a lot of guests are asking about techniques or the preparation of certain dishes, which brings us to our next tip for making money from home cooking — running your own virtual cooking school.
Again, there are plenty of tools online that to help you do this, the most obvious being Skype. With the current trend in celebrity chefs and home cooking, online classes are one route amateurs are choosing to gain new skills.
The secret here is to find the niche that differentiates you from the competition, whether that’s a particular type of cuisine or a specialised skill. Obviously, previous experience in a professional kitchen can help, but if you already have a food blog with a lot of followers, this could be the ideal target audience if you’re planning to offer classes.
3. Your own website: All the ingredients for a profitable business venture
We’ve already touched on the subject of a food blog, which can be the perfect tool for showcasing your knowledge and expertise in a certain area. If you already have one, or are thinking of setting one up, why not go a step further and develop it into a website that can be monetized.
There are plenty of content management platforms out there to help you do that and offer ways for your customers to pay. Once that’s in place, all you need to do is add the revenue streams, such as downloadable recipes, kitchen tools or utensils, cookery books, or even food products that you create yourself.
4. Specialist cooking: Serve up some expertise
At a time when people are more health conscious and careful about what they put in their bodies than ever before, there’s a huge market opening up for specialist food categories, such as gluten-free, vegan, homegrown, or organic produce. If you’re an expert in one of these areas, then many people will gladly pay you to share that expertise, especially if you have developed innovative ways to help with sourcing, growing, designing, and preparing clever foods from what can often be a limited range of ingredients.
5. YouTube Cooking Channel: Become a celebrity chef
Another popular way of making money online is through a YouTube channel. This medium is already cluttered with would-be celebrity chefs, so to succeed here, again, you’ll need a niche, a theme, or an angle. It doesn’t even have to directly focus on the preparation of food dishes.
One idea, for instance, might be to review the best food products or kitchen equipment. That way, you might be able to get sponsorships from producers or manufacturers. The key is to get as many viewers as possible to your channel, as you’ll be relying on ads for your revenue. You’ll need to enable your channel for monetization and connect your money to an AdSense account in order to be paid. You’ll also need to know, or be prepared to learn, about video and sound techniques to ensure that you get good quality videos.
When used in combination, these individual strategies can provide you with a full-time income. As a newcomer to this field of expertise, it’s important that you persevere with your passion of cooking and keep your long-term goals in mind. Don’t be put off by a slow start, as miracles do not happen overnight. However, once you gain momentum and begin to build a presence both online and through word of mouth, the results can come thick and fast.
Featured photo credit: Pixel Bay via pixabay.com
