What type of careers involve cooking and buissness that pay well?

Hi Rachel,

It is so great that you already have skills that are absolutely needed in the world and that you love! Baking and cooking are services that everyone needs, so you already have a great business model. But you are right, starting your own business is hard work and requires a entrepreneurial skills.

The most challenging part of opening any small business, is the start up costs. Luckily, there are some great options to start really small (which means fewer costs) and grow the business as you bring in more profit.
1) Sell your baked goods (like cookies, cupcakes, etc.) at the cash register of another store. This could be a coffee shop, a local book store, etc. You would need to come to an agreement with that business owner (for example, give them a few cents or dollars for each item sold depending on its price) for letting your business use that space. Renting a space for a store can be the most costly part of a business, so starting small allows you to avoid that cost and also test different items to see which customers prefer.
2) Rent or buy a food truck to sell your food out of. Like I mentioned above, buying or renting a store for your baking/cooking business will be one of your main costs. A lot of great restaurants and bakeries start as a food truck. This is a great idea because it is cheaper, and you can drive around to many neighborhoods to see where your target audience is. Maybe one neighborhood is more likely to buy your type of food, so once you do have enough money saved up from your food truck, you already know the best area to start your actual store front/restaurant. A lot of business keep both, even when they start making money, just because food trucks are so popular, especially in big cities.
3) Starting your own business is great, but you could also go work in a bakery or restaurant cooking to gain experience. Furthermore, you could go to culinary school to enhance your baking/cooking skills and this could lead to you working in a more well know restaurant that would most likely be higher paying. You could always work for someone else for a while, then decide to quit and start your own business once you have saved enough money and received some professional baking/cooking experience.

For now, I would say to keep cooking and baking as much as possible (practice makes perfect!) Also, have as many different people try your food as possible and give you feedback. Although it is great to cook for yourself, family and friends, sometimes strangers give more honest feedback. So for example, you could enter into local cooking competitions, bake for your school events or volunteer at other local non profits that would benefit from your cooking skills (a soup kitchen, making dinner for a community event, etc), then ask those who ate your food what they thought was really good about it as well as what they would improve. Then use this information to keep getting better!

Best of luck and keep cooking!