Three Ways to Make Money With Your Catering Skills Online
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With restaurants and catering companies unable to serve as they would normally, cash flow has been limited or even completely stopped. Now is the time to pivot your business to continue to support yourself and your family. Learn to take your skills online and provide solutions to current problems.
First, make a list and identify all of the problems that you could help solve. Some ideas might be:
People who normally dine out are now stuck at home and tired of delivery.
Rising chefs aren’t able to receive in-person training.
Consumers are tired of trying to make magic in the kitchen using the same three ingredients on their spice rack.
Then, take those problems and see how you can help solve them while staying safe at home (or in your commercial kitchen).
The best ways to provide solutions remotely are to educate, inspire, and nourish your potential customers.
Leverage Your Expertise to Educate
Teach your craft to others by building an online course. You could teach at-home cooks the basics, or gear your content toward aspiring chefs who are using this time to hone their skills. When you’re ready to develop your course, follow these steps:
Identify the need within your market, the solution, and who you are providing the solution to.
Outline your course, and start off with something short - perhaps 3 modules with 3 videos per module. The videos can be short, around 5-10 minutes long.
Create any supporting information. You may need to create checklists or guides so that your students can implement what you teach them.
Record your course and upload it into a learning platform. Some popular learning platforms are Thinkific and Kajabi.
Promote your course using social media and your email list.
Depending on how robust your mini-course is, you could charge anywhere from $30-$300 per student enrollment. The beauty of a course is that you only have to do the work once, and then you can launch and sell multiple times.
If you don’t want to pre-record your course, you could also sell spots for live video training that you host on Zoom or Skype.
Inspire with Recipes & Stories
Have you ever wanted to create a cookbook? Now is the perfect time to start with an e-book version to test demand, get feedback, and gather testimonials.
Create a group of 10-15 recipes that can be easily made by the home cook and relate the title to the current world climate. For example, “Sizzle while Social Distancing” or “The Ultimate Quarantine Recipe Book”. Incorporate a bit about your cooking philosophy and backstory to start to build your brand and create a smoother launch for your more extensive cookbook release in the future.
You don’t have to be a Photoshop wiz to create a great end product. Online design tools like Canva are free and create high-quality outputs. You can sell your e-book using a simple website and promote it online with social media ads.
Nourish with Your Unique Flavor
If you don’t want to go completely online, you can still use your talents to make money right now. Create a non-perishable product like a spice blend, candy bar, or sauce and sell via an online store. You could even offer “Quarantine Kits” with unique nosh that will help people get out of their food rut. Think of things like hickory-smoked bacon dark chocolate or blueberry maple habanero sauce.
Make sure that if you do start cooking or preparing ingredients from your home kitchen that you check all applicable regulations and laws.
When selling your product online, make sure to:
Create an eye-catching label.
Use a shopping platform like Shopify to make the purchase process go smoothly.
Show your product in use so that your future customers can visualize themselves buying it.
Even after the pandemic is over, implementing any of these solutions will help you begin to develop another revenue stream that will help to create future business stability and hedge against any crisis.
