5 Mouthwatering Food Industry Careers (Cooking Aficionado’s Guide)

The ever-changing nature of the food industry creates a path for new career opportunities to emerge on the market. While chefs and cooks are exciting opportunities, they’re not the only food industry careers you can strive for. The excellent industry goes beyond the kitchen and interacts with other fields, like science, arts, and photography.

If you’ve long dreamed of dipping your toes into the culinary world, this round-up of the most unique jobs can help you find the inspiration you need. 

Restaurant Designer 

Design of all sorts can be among the most enchanting careers, especially among those who love to unleash their creativity in ways that appeal to the eye, bring beauty to unexpected places, and improve the overall aspect of a setting. But how can your passion for food combine with that for design? 

The answer couldn’t be easier to find. While it’s not among the most popular in food Industry careers, restaurant design is an opportunity if you’re willing to gain the needed experience and education. Successful restaurant designers resemble a well-developed cake recipe: they must have a little creativity, spontaneity, and educational background. Having some knowledge of the restaurant industry, a creative eye, and a desire to learn how different elements in the restaurant work together can get you one step closer to pursuing a career that will satisfy both of your inclinations.

Are you willing to step up your design game? A good starting point to find the answer is to look at different restaurant rooms and kitchens and determine what could be improved or removed or what colours mix and match better than the existing ones. How would you decorate a white gloss kitchen, and what additions would boost its functionality and design?

Pursuing a career in the food Industry will take your creative and critical thinking to the next level.

Molecular Gastronomist

Molecular gastronomy, or progressive cuisine as it’s also named, is the discipline that focuses on the chemical and physical interactions happening during culinary transformations. If you are unfamiliar with the term, let us simplify the task.

Molecular gastronomy is all about experimenting with different techniques, tools, and ingredients to uncover every possibility provided in the cooking world, eventually learning how to behave better in other scientific conditions, like pressure and fluctuating temperatures. This title is often rejected by many chefs in the industry, who consider that this label casts a relatively inaccessible and elitist air on the profession. Some chefs may resonate better with terms like “avant-garde cuisine” or “modernist cuisine”, even if, in essence, they refer to the same activity. However, this sector is still relatively new, and there’s a long way to go before it enters the everyday vocabulary of the average individual. More research and progress are needed to make this a well-established field, driving job demand. However, just like with any other job on this list, one of the exciting things about this profession is that you’re also witnessing the development of a promising future career path. 

If you have a well-developed biology, chemistry, and physics background and can approach food with critical thinking, you may have just stumbled upon your dream career. 

Food Safety Lawyer 

With the food service industry expected to hit $997 billion during this year, there shouldn’t be any surprise that professionals with the needed expertise to help clients comply with food regulations and overcome food safety issues are in demand these days. 

Like with any other career in law, the food sector doesn’t abide by the need to have skills spanning a wide range of topics, from communication to research to analytics. Moreover, you will need a law degree to attest you’re eligible to perform food law, can represent businesses in legal proceedings, and the other array of responsibilities you may have depending on your position.

As such, a career in food law can prove rewarding if you’re more inclined to work with clients and businesses in the field instead of cooking and arranging spaces.

Pitmaster 

Have you ever watched the American Barbecue Showdown and wished you could also cook alongside the smokers and barbecuers in the show? If you have a soft spot for making barbecues and are down to spend long nights preparing the tastiest and tenderest feast, then pit mastering may be your inclination. As a commercial pitmaster, you will manage barbecue pits, including grills, smokers, and utensils to cook juicy chicken and fall-off-the-bone tender ribs. 

You’ll need to specialize in a cut you excel at to advance in your career, just like in the Netflix show. If mastering the barbecue is your upper-edge talent, several ventures can help you achieve this goal, whether you learn from other professionals, exercise to exhaustion, attend various related events or invest in the best utensils to improve your skills at home.

Pit mastering is the holy grail of barbecuing, and the individuals responsible for this job are experts in the field, so if you’d rather smoke your briskets for hours than work in a restaurant, you may want to check this venture out.

Holistic Health Coach

Holistic health coaching is a relatively new field in its developmental stages. Given that it is expanding quickly, it can be loosely defined and lack national certification standards. However, due to the myriad benefits that have been researched and revealed to the world, the market is growing, expected to surpass $34 million by 2031, with a compound annual growth rate of 7.4% between 2022 and 2031. For this reason, holistic health coaching represents a lucrative option if you’re into helping people discover their ambition and power to overcome their conditions and become their best.

As a holistic health coach, you’ll work with individuals who lack the motivation to get on track, guiding them towards real change. Improvements can take all sorts of forms, from strategies that regard activity to environmental or dietary styles. It is known that the body’s health is impacted by all these aspects, meaning you must have an integrative approach to fitness changes, diet, and lifestyle to lead your clients in the right direction.

This profession can be gratifying, helping you continuously improve your knowledge about different body and mind mechanisms and knowing that you have positively impacted a client’s life.

Whatever career you are willing to pursue in the food industry, the most rewarding ones require a certain level of education and skill. Therefore, thoroughly research, find the job of your dreams, and discover what it takes to accomplish your goal.