What experiences do you need to enter in the culinary arts?

I started working in the culinary arts many years ago at the beginning of my career. I loved cooking, creating food, preparing it for large groups. I worked as a cook part-time all through high school and college, and catered all the fraternities and sororities at my college. After graduating and working in the technology industry for about 5 years, I decided to leave that and go into culinary arts full time. Here is what i learned:

Passion and interest are helpful, but not enough. You need to know the business of food. You need to be very aware that it is a customer driven business and you will be working directly with customers every single day. You need to know how to plan well, understand what supplies you need and when and where you can get the best ones for the lowest price. You need to keep up with food trends and be involved in your community to know what your customers want.

If your passionate about it and want to go into this industry, I recommend going to a great culinary arts school and in addition taking some great business classes.

Dear Siclali,
Recently, I watched a series of documentaries related to cooking. The series is called Cooked for Michael Pollan. It talks about 4 basic things about cooking: Fire, Water, Air and earth.
I encourage you to watch it over Netflix. It will open your eyes to a new horizon in culinary arts.
In Essence, in order to add a great value to the culinary arts, you need to jump 2 steps ahead of what is going on now and start thinking about the future of food and its impact on human being. Healthy food is the trend but how can we make that affordable?
Good Luck.