If you’ve just stumbled upon this post. Get the background of what this is about by visiting the main page of my journey in developing a career with food.Now that I’ve decided my career should revolve around the food industry, things will just fall into place right? After all, it’s something I’ve thought through and so passionate about it. But, being a taste advisor and food writer isn’t just a walk in the park. There is tons of competition out there and frankly what I feel is little demand for paid services.
Nonetheless, for achieving a life of contentment and
happiness you have to give it a try. So, to begin, I start with what I do best
– develop a plan. At the beginning, you may feel like you don’t know where to
start, planning helps calm me and focus efforts to specific purposes. Unlike my
past efforts of planning a wedding or vacation, this one will be more fluid and
I’m certainly willing to branch out and do more as I become immersed in
learning about the industry.
Generally, the “master plan” is made up of the following
rough steps:
Develop credibility.
Just like attending a well-known University and earning a designation developed
my current career, I have to distinguish myself in the world of food. Unfortunately,
I don’t have the resources to return to school to study journalism, but some
continuing education courses wouldn’t hurt. Luckily, George Brown offers a food
writing course, and starting mid-April the weekly evening classes begin. I
can’t wait to learn from someone who does this professionally!
Connect with the
industry and develop the necessary connections. Admittedly, this is the
area where I’m stumped. Attending more media events and speaking to more food
bloggers certainly has helped. But, I’ve yet to meet individuals who actually
do this for a living. If you’re a food writer or menu consultant and are
feeling generous with your time, please connect with me, I’d be so grateful.
Gain and build experience
to prove my work abilities. At Gastro World, I’m able to do plenty of posts
on restaurant reviews. But, for food writing the articles need to be more
diverse. So, expanding into more interviews (I did one with Kanpai Snack Bar) and product
placement are a few areas I need to work on. If you’re a company with a food
product please reach out. If it’s something I enjoy and can stand behind we can
do some interesting things together.
On the taste advisory front, restaurants need to learn about the value of having someone who’s not their chef or employee trying their products. Likely, I’ll need to reach out to a few places to offer these services on a complementary basis first – if you’re a Toronto restaurant that want to try out my services please contact me.
Have the necessary
resources to pursue the dream. By resources, it means both time and money.
Certainly, at this point, leaving my job is not an option as there are still
annoying financial obligations to maintain. But, I also can’t work in a role
that expects a lot of my time beyond the 9 to 5 as between classes, writing,
connecting and researching a lot of time will need to be spent on the dream.
Eventually, I’m likely going to have to take the plunge and
focus my efforts full-time to make this work. Before this can happen, it's important to build a nest egg to get me through the “tough” times. Also, starting to
develop some sources of income (even if sporadic) is needed to let me know that
this could work. Simply developing a “Work With Me” section and adding an
Amazon store are first steps at attempting to monetize the efforts.
Thinking through everything and taking first steps towards
some of the above goals has really gotten me excited! You hear time and time
again that people now have numerous careers in their lifetime – some very
different from each other.
Next: Going on a roller-coaster ride
