There is a food job right in your own neighborhood. It requires no specific qualifications (other than being nice). It requires no investment. You can choose your own hours. Set your own fees. Have no one to report to. You are your own boss. Hmm. What could this be?

Culinary tourism.

Tourism is a huge and rapidly expanding industry and culinary tourism is becoming a niche market that is experiencing impressive growth.

Anyone with a love of food can get started by simply getting to know the neighborhood.

Plan a tour of  a cheesecake factory, an ice cream plant, a ranch or farm and a farmer’s market, two or three ethnic groceries and a specialty food store.

Explore local wineries and plan a wine tasting. Visit a brew pub. Attend a class at a cooking school. Organize a talk with a culinary historian, cookbook author or television star.

Visit an artisanal baker and a cheese maker. Maybe there is a a chocolate maker or a smokehouse nearby? The yellow pages directory can provide you with many more ideas. Think about organizing a fishing trip. Make reservations for breakfast, lunch and dinner at restaurants you know and love.

I’m sure you will have many more ideas.

Here are few rules though:

Never surprise the businesses you plan to visit. Schedule a specific hour well ahead and make every effort to avoid their busiest time. A homemade food gift from you to the destination owner will surely be greatly appreciated.

Have frank conversations with vendors about whether they can expect payment, or if their compensation might be in form of goodies sold to tour participants.

Consider how many tourists you can handle at a time.

Settle all the details regarding the number of clients you can handle, transportation, accommodations and payment for meals. For a two day tour, you may enter into an agreement with a bed & breakfast owner.

Decide how to market the tour.

Give your company an appealing name and one that is easy to remember.  Don’t be cute and inscrutable. Food Lovers Market Tour is a better name than Have Thyme?

Build and constantly update your web site. Tweet and post your information on other social networks.

Join culinary organizations and local clubs where you can network.

Seek advice from others about fees to charge.

Consider hiring a marketing professional as a consultant.

Prospective clients may also be identified by talking to real estate brokers and kitchen designers about recent home buyers. Talk to religious groups about new arrivals to the neighborhood.

A convention and visitors bureau may be willing to distribute your sales materials. So too may beauty parlors and doctors and dentist offices where patients are often left waiting with nothing to do but read old magazines.

Keep a dedicated telephone number for your business.

Determine other marketing venues i.e. wwwShawguides.com, state tourism department.

Good luck. Start planning today.

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The times they are a-changing! The passage of Health Care Reform immediately opens up job opportunities and culinary careers for us foodies. For I predict there will be greater emphasis on wellness — wellness that springs from a far greater emphasis on helping others make wise food choices.

The idea of eating well, (or, at least better), increasingly begins before the beginning. It has become accepted that pregnant women should watch what they eat to better ensure that their well-nourished babies get a huge head start in life.

I would not have believed this had I not seen it with my own eyes. Decades ago, at the moment the government in the U.K. instituted the National Health System, it was decided that all graduate nurses who wished to specialize in a specific branch of medicine, were required to first become midwives. To this day I have never understood the logic of this, but in order to concentrate on my chosen field of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, I trudged to Aberdeen, Scotland, to assist in the birth of 50 babies. (Fifty was the number required to achieve certification.)

All this is a preamble to say that when we nurses arrived on the obstetrics ward we could often match the contented babies to their contented mothers. The fractious, restless, sometimes low birth-weight babies, could similarly be identified with their Moms. Failure to thrive doesn’t occur at the moment of birth, but as  a result of  poor nutrition during gestation.

The risks and rewards of securing a healthful diet have lifetime consequences. Fortunately we can already see healthy and nutritious food choices taking up more shelf space in supermarkets.

Healthy food is now prepared in hospitals and company cafeterias, in schools in school systems and colleges, museum restaurants, spas, in the military and upscale retirement homes.

Local farms are providing farm-to-table fruits, vegetables, grass-fed meats and free-range chickens and sustainable fish for restaurants. And farmers’ markets are gaining more fans.

This rethinking of the food everyone will be eating is gathering momentum not only to those who can afford the very best but for everyone.

We are also seeing large food processing companies and chain restaurants  improving the nutrient profile of their foods. These are small steps, admittedly, and perhaps the cynics will be justified in sniffing that these are more public relations moves than a genuine interest in improving the diet of a very large planet. But steps, no matter how small, are still steps that offer employment for many good cooks and culinary school graduates.

How can you get in on this? How do you get started?

Decide which specific sector of the vast, ever-expanding food and hospitality field appeals to you, and make a goal to join it. For instance, Sodexo and Aramark have employees working worldwide in institutional food service, sports stadiums and facilities of every kind. Their customers are seeking fast yet healthy choices.

Check out the web sites of companies known for promoting healthy, delicious foods, such as Wegmans and Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.

Explore the employment opportunities in menu development for your local hospital and school systems. For instance, consider volunteering to teach a class of kids how to start their own school garden and develop recipes from their harvest.

Lastly, track down specific trade magazines and check out the classified pages that list job openings.

These suggestions are merely a start. You will find your own way. Whether you agree or disagree with the new Health Care Reform, there are food job opportunities to seize.

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Will Write for Food by Dianne Jacob

I’ve met many students who want to write about food and I  try my utmost to be encouraging. It’s always been difficult to earn a decent living as a writer but I can’t remember a time when it has been more challenging.

Even so, there are doors that are open a crack and with a little ingenuity and masses of determination it is possible to push them wide open.

It is important to know, what exactly, a food writer does. Scott Jones, Food Editor of Southern Living and a CIA (Culinary Institute of America) grad describes it well: “Writers research, write, edit, proofread, and check facts (including testing recipes) in jobs such as: newspaper columnist, cookbook author, and restaurant critic. As a food editor for a publisher, you’ll review cookbook proposals and take an accepted book from contract to print. Editors also work for magazines, newspapers, and television shows, setting the content and style of their food section or programming. In this field, you’ll need strong writing skills, knowledge of culinary principles, and familiarity with current consumer and industry trends.”

That all sounds good. So, let’s look at the bad news first. The prospects of landing a job as a syndicated newspaper writer are slim and getting slimmer. The possibility of finding work as a regular newspaper columnist are thin and getting thinner as circulation and advertising numbers shrink, and few funds can be found for opinion pieces. Many resort to simple seasonal recipes with text, recipes and photographs provided free by commodity boards. Cross off newspapers as a potential employer unless you decide to become a hard food news journalist where hyper-local is the current trend.  This job has to be undertaken by a local writer.

How about food magazines?  As we all know, Gourmet is gone. The bad news here is though a fortunate few manage to secure freelance writing assignments. They are a precious few and they are, (sorry to say), often big names or “known” to the food editor. So forget about FOOD & WINE, Bon Appetit or Saveur and the other giants in the field.

This brings us to all the good news. The familiar food magazines do not provide the only home for your writings. Go to any of the major booksellers, and scan the incredible number of magazines that offer opportunities you may not have previously explored. Look at local publications too. Often the chamber of commerce or real estate groups publish their own (sometimes very handsome) magazines as do medical groups and other special interest organizations. And don’t forget about food blogs for food magazines.

Wegmans is just one of the many excellent supermarket publications, and then there are the huge number of trade magazines: FOOD ARTS, Chef magazine and Chef Educator Today, Nation’s Restaurant News, Restaurant Business, Restaurant Hospitality, Tea Times, Mushroom Growers, as well as catering and specialty food industry publications. Check online to find the names of the astonishing number there are.

There are other ways to dip your toe in the food writing world. There are food writing courses and coaches and writing programs to choose from, though I highly recommend New York University Steinhardt Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health.

But whichever direction you decide to travel, you must write regularly. The difference between a writer and a professional writer is the professional never gives up.

There are three reasons a writer becomes successful; no one knows what they are.

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