Culinary courses are a type of business that can be run on a completely Starting with your own cooking blog and growing into culinary academies and schools.
The world has become more globalized and many more people now want to experience the cuisines of the world than ever before. Someone visits restaurants of unusual formats and gets acquainted with unusual food, someone watches TV programs about cooking exotic dishes and then tries to cook at home – using videos and recipe books, or enrolls in master classes or training with professional cooks.
Of course, training in a culinary school or studio is preferable. After all, at classes under someone’s guidance, a student gets feedback, communication with other students, can ask any question to an expert, and the knowledge is given in a more systematic and structured way, not in a fragmented way, as when mastering culinary art independently.
Pros and cons
What are the advantages and disadvantages of learning to cook? Here are the highlights.
Pros:
Wide audience. A lot of people are interested in cooking, the main thing is to make them an attractive and unique selling proposition. Cooking lessons and events can be held for adults, children, and corporate customers, and thanks to the ability to work online (especially with knowledge of foreign languages) there is an exit to the audience from anywhere in the world.
Abundance of formats. It is difficult to find two culinary schools that are the same – the variety of concepts is influenced both by the abundance of cuisines in the world and by the experience of each individual chef as founder or teacher. Everyone can find his or her own direction in this theme: pastry art, baking, meat dishes, art-cooking, healthy gluten-free food, and much more.
Ability to work alone or with minimal staff. You do not need to open a school in the full sense of the word, you can organize the courses yourself with a minimal investment, and organize events on weekends as an additional business to the core business (for example, working as a chef in a restaurant). Influencers with a ready audience on social networks or YouTube can also make money from cooking courses.
Ability to work online and offline. Along with traditional schools, online projects are popping up today where classes are taught via video link and communication is maintained on messengers and social networks.
Minuses and difficulties:
Competition. There are more and more competitors in this niche, and it’s getting harder and harder to stand out from them.
Advertising costs. As a consequence of the growing number of competitors – increasing costs for the promotion of the project. If you do not have a ready audience, then, at least, the first time you will have to invest a lot in advertising.
Consumer attitudes. Most customers are still under the belief that learning from the master is not worth the stated price, while on YouTube and in the recipe books you can find anything on any topic. Therefore, it is desirable for such a project to already have some sort of name, a personal brand that people will go to and be willing to pay well for.
Energy-consuming. Especially if you do not delegate tasks, and work alone in all areas, including cooking, and training, and working with people, and finding and attracting new customers. Therefore, it is desirable to find a partner.
Seasonality. As with most projects in education, demand for cooking studios will be from fall to spring, in summer – reduced. However, the opposite situation is possible, for example, in the case of resort towns.
Target audience
In the broadest sense, the target audience can be all people who want to learn to cook well.
Those who want to learn to cook “for themselves”/family/friends. Mostly, of course, this is a female audience and housewives, although in recent years there has been a tendency to increase the number of male customers. The main incentive is to master the skill as a hobby and surprise their friends and guests with new skills and abilities in cooking, including complex and exotic dishes.
Lovers of interesting leisure activities. Many city dwellers are already bored with standard entertainment such as clubs, movies, restaurants, theaters, etc., and they just need some new attraction and a cycle of new emotions, communication and acquaintances. They can be lovers of good food, people who have traveled around the world and tried all sorts of different things and want to do something similar at home, creators in search and so on.
Those who want to become professional chefs. These people come not for recreation, but to learn a new profession, to get a job as a cook in a catering establishment, or to open something of their own. Or they are already working chefs who want to learn a particular technique, a new direction, or a new kind of cuisine. Usually this category knows exactly what they want to get out of the course.
The problem here is that for those people who can afford to pay dearly for an event, cooking at home may be perceived as “uncommon” by the local community. So analyze the demand, the local specifics, and decide which audience would be more profitable and easier to work for specifically in your city.
Choosing the format of the studio
To begin with let’s look at what formats we can conduct classes from a technical point of view, and then move on to the concepts and content of the lessons.
Online or offline. In the last 5-7 years (since about 2015), online cooking courses have been gaining popularity. This option can be relevant for many reasons. First, our very time, when people began to learn everything online and languages, and fitness, and playing musical instruments, and so on, actively contributes to this – online format becomes a habit. Secondly, the audience will be much wider, because people from different cities or even countries will be able to participate. Third, with the online can cover those categories that for various reasons it is inconvenient to attend live classes. It can be moms with children and who do not have someone to leave the child, people who have to interrupt classes because of business trips, vacations, illnesses, and so on.
The disadvantages of online versus offline are quite obvious. Cooking takes place away from the chef, and getting adequate feedback becomes more difficult. To check homework assignments, you have to analyze reports sent in, not the dish itself. Participants are instructed to take photos of their dishes from different angles, such as taking pictures of cakes or steaks whole, near and in section, to make a video of the process, take pictures of the plate when serving and with the elements of decoration, and so on. Yes, and a client who compares such a service with the free videos on YouTube, to give for the lessons online serious money psychologically more difficult. On the other hand, the student can not just review the material in the recording and improve skills.
Scale and organizers. Courses can be offered at different scales, and the choice here is dictated not only by the level of finances, but also by your desire.
Author’s courses, or yourself 7 in 1 (chef, advertiser, organizer, recipe creator, negotiator, dishwasher, etc. in one person). At the same time, the easiest and, in a sense, the most difficult format. Easy in the sense that you do not depend on anyone. You attract the audience, you teach it, you check its progress. Such an option is perfectly suited for developers and opinion leaders with a ready audience in social networks, with which you can already work. But in practice this approach is difficult to implement, because at least small helpers may still be needed – it is unlikely you will have time to wash the dishes after the participants, and take pictures during the class and deal with their subsequent processing, and maintain social networks, and answer the phone and so on. Some responsibilities will still have to be delegated.
Partner Duo. A great option for small projects is to have two partners who complement each other. For example, one partner is responsible for the culinary part and conducting master classes, and the other is engaged in promotion and work with clients. Other small tasks can also be delegated to other people.
A project with multiple employees/large staff. Larger projects with small, medium, and large staffs. These are mini-projects and large professional schools that may have front desk staff, sales managers with a call center, several different types of cooks, a full-time accountant, etc. Projects like this can already afford to not depend so much on specific personalities.
A project under another business/partnership. As a kind of marketing, image project culinary studios can open at specific restaurants, kitchen studios, stores kitchen utensils, kitchen equipment, and so on. Here the goal of making a profit from the courses themselves is somewhat relegated to the background – the additional business is designed, first and foremost, to work for the former. In this case the project usually already has room and equipment for the cooks to demonstrate their work and thus help increase sales. It is also possible when the studio has contracts for training and internships with various restaurants and chefs, and the business “wanders” through the establishments.
Class format. In addition, the format can also be understood as the methodology of the events themselves. To figure them out, it is enough to look at what competitors offer, or become a participant in their classes. By the way, live attendance at even one event can give you more food for thought than any theory.
