Want a tasty side job? When the world was shut down from travel and dining out due to the pandemic, millions of people pulled out the oven mitts.
Suddenly, demand for sourdough starters was through the roof. And online cooking classes flourished and proliferated. Now, even though travel has revived and people can go out to eat, the lure of learning new recipes and how to cook new delicious dishes at home remains strong.
In fact, just as the world of work could be forever changed by the pandemic’s mandate to work from home, the world of cooking could also be forever changed. After all, in years past, most cooks turned to books and written recipes. Now it’s easy – and probably much more instructive – to find a cooking video.
This creates money-making opportunities for good cooks who want to learn culinary skills in person or online. Here are six online platforms that can help chefs find a paying audience—three specifically for chefs, three that will help anyone start a class.
Eat with me
Eatwith is an international platform that was launched with the idea that you can offer authentic dining experiences to travelers in your home. However, like many other businesses that thrived on eating out, the site revamped itself during the pandemic to offer online cooking classes.
These online classes can also be offered in person now. So a chef in Madrid can host an online event to teach viewers around the world the art of making paella. The next day, he can host gazpacho-making lessons at his home.
To offer meals or classes through Eatwith, create a profile and then start setting up meals and events. You set the time, capacity, price and rules, and post plenty of pictures of what you’re doing to make potential customers want your food. Eatwith books customers and receives a commission on sales.
Tastefully made
Tastemade is a lifestyle media company that calls on “creators” to deliver online cooking content and in-person events. Chefs set the menu, price, hours and conditions.
Manufacturers can also offer “fan subscriptions” here. With a fan subscription, you can give avid followers discounts on merchandise and access to special events and recipes. You determine the price and what is included. The subscription fee is collected monthly by the site.
And because Tastemade has millions of viewers who are specifically looking for food and lifestyle content, this can be a great place to build an audience.
Comfort food
CozyMeal connects chefs and caterers with people who want to host private and corporate dinners and cooking classes. The site also books homes and other venues as venues for these events when neither the chef nor the client has the right space.
Chefs determine what to make and/or offer, when, where and how much to charge. CozyMeal receives a commission that varies based on group size.
Video courses
You no doubt know that you can post a cooking video on YouTube for free. But you will need to get a lot of traffic before you can make a penny with this content. If you want to pay for your cooking classes – and you want to create a series of content, not just a single video – there are several platforms that will help you create a cooking course and get paid for it.
Udemy
Perhaps the most popular of the course creation sites is Udemy. This site offers courses on everything from music to marketing. What makes it a good place to start if you’ve never offered a cooking class before is that the site offers all kinds of help and advice. But it’s not necessarily where you want to keep your courses long-term, because the site’s policies can lower the selling price of your class and the site’s commissions can be huge, leaving you with only a fraction of the course’s purchase price. .
Thoughtful and learned
Thinkific and Teachable work almost identically. They help you create a course for free. But they charge commissions — or a flat fee, depending on the plan you choose — when your courses sell. However, it’s hard to get started with these sites because they don’t do the marketing for you. You need to find your customers.
So many people start a basic course on Udemy to gain followers. Once they have a loyal flow of customers and word-of-mouth advertising, they launch a second, more comprehensive course on one of these two sites. Both sites allow you to set your own prices.
Kristof is the editor of SideHusl.com, an independent website that reviews monetization opportunities in the gig economy.