If cooking, and food in general is your thing, and you’ve lost your job or looking for a side hustle or a food-related business idea, here are 10 ways to make money without leaving your home.
The interest thing about capitalism is that as some industries crumble, others flourish.
And with the restaurant, hospitality and travel industry tanking in response to the Covid-19 pandemic came so many lay offs.
But it has also brought with it lot’s of opportunity to make money as a lot of people are currently self-quarantined but they still need to eat.
Thus, the focus of today’s article will be easy food-related business ideas that food and beverage professionals can leverage to make money online from home without leaving home.
Since we’re all cooped up at home — some have lost their jobs and all of us looking at the Covid-19 pandemic slowly taking over our lives — it makes sense to be finding ways to make money online without having to leave our homes.
And the options are as diverse as the strains of Covid- pun intended 🙂
The trick while starting out is to try to be as niche specific as possible and also have a clear target market.
For instance your focus can be on: traditional and innovative Kenyan cultural food classics, pasta making class, low-carb dinner options, vegan breakfast, etc.
So you’re a great cook, have a passion for food,and looking to make money online? Here’s 10 ways to make money without leaving your home.
What's Covered in This Article
Get paid for streaming your cooking classes online
The internet is awash with different sites that literally let you to make money by cooking at home.
My favorite is Airbnb’s online experiences AirBnB’s Online Experiences that lets you host your cooking class online and get paid for it—and you can do it all without leaving your house.
If you’re a professional chef for instance, consider signing up on Eat Feastly for an opportunity to make money offering online cooking classes.
Eat Feastly describes itself as “a marketplace for chefs to be able to express themselves, earn money and create community around the dining table”
Click on this link for tips on how to get started with Eat Feastly.
To make money with EatWith, you would need to join as a Host, list the cooking class you’d like to offer, and your charges.
Once someone books an experience and pays you, then Eatwith takes a 20% commission.
Create a YouTube channel
If you love cooking, and food in general and have no problem standing in front of a camera, then make YouTube your friend.
With internet usage up more than 50% in some parts of the world as more people are staying home during the corona virus pandemic and more aspects of our daily lives moving online, there’s no better time than now to start a YouTube channel, start an online business, and make money online.
Once you start getting a decent number of subscribers (at least 1,000) and significant watch time for your videos (at least 4,000 in last 365 days), you can sign up for YouTube’s Partner Program. But as you work towards these thresholds, there are several other ways to make money with your YouTube videos as I describe in this post.
You could host different videos on your site e.g. basic cooking videos, videos on meal prepping, videos focused on various recipes, nutrition based videos, weight loss videos, etc.
By creating and teaching your course online, you will be able to reach more potential learners and earn more income.
You could do a single food course, a series of food courses, or just multiple different food courses.
Online platforms through which you can create and sell your online course and membership sites include: SkillShare, Thinkific, Teachable, Subhub, etc.
The main challenge with making money by offering courses online is the upfront work that it takes to create the course.
But once your course is ready, up and running online, it is available 24/7/365 and can be accessed from anywhere and by anyone in the world at any time.
This is a decent way for those with cooking and food-related skills to make money as they sleep.
Create your own Cookbook
Aren’t there already too many cookbooks out there already?
Yes there are.
Do people even have a reading culture anymore?
Yes they do.
While these concerns are very valid, here are 3 reasons why you should still consider creating your own recipe book.
- A well-written cookbook that targets a certain sub-set of people positions you as an expert and authority in that area. This could open doors towards many more ways to make money online.
- It gives you an opportunity to help many people at the same time.
- E-books are one of those proven ways for making earning decent passive income online. Once your coookbook gets out there, you continue to make money without too much effort.
The key here will be to target your cookbook to a niche audience. Some ideas you could consider include:
- Diabetic diet
- Senior citizen diet
- Paleo diet
- Gluten-free diet
- Dairy-free diet
- High protein diet
- Vegan diet
- Calorie friendly diet
- Traditional local diet, etc.
Of course you’re going to need to put in a lot of work in the beginning in picking a theme for your cook book, prepare the meals, take high quality pictures of the finished product, compile your cook book, and then market and avail it to your target audience through self-publishing platforms such as Amazon Publishing, Lulu, etc.
The best part is that once your book is out there, all you have to focus your efforts on is promoting it and making sure you have consistent sales.
Make money writing about food
There are two main ways to make money as a food writer.
You can either write for yourself or write for other people.
The best way to make money writing for yourself is through starting a food blog whereby you can post particulars of various diets e.g. keto, paleo, etc; do restaurant/food reviews, post recipes, etc.
Once your food blog starts getting decent traffic, you can monetize it either through Google ads, selling advertising space on your website, brand mentions/affiliations, or affiliate income.
You can also make money through your food blog by promoting your own products such as writing an e-book and self-publishing it on Amazon.
To get paid as a food writer writing for other people will require that you pitch publications that deal in food related content.
You could start of with online magazines as well as your local publications such as Business Daily, Yummy, Nomad, etc.
While this may not make you money in the near future as businesses and individuals contend with the pandemic, it’s worth giving a try.
Some of the restaurants that have closed are taking advantage of this downtime to re-engineer themselves, reinvent themselves, reconstruct their menus, and even renovate their businesses in time for when life returns to normalcy.
Your best bet will be with the smaller restaurants whom you can assist in making their menu designs more visually appealing, help them take high quality photos of their meal offerings, help them correct spelling mistakes on the menu items, etc.
Enter recipe contests
Food magazine editors are constantly on the look out for new recipes to share with their readers.
To entice readers to submit, they occasionally hold paid contests.
Check out this Taste Home magazine link to see current recipe requests and submit your for consideration.
Offer online meal planning services
Starting an old-school meal plan business is one of the food-related side hustles that doesn’t involve actually making and/or selling food, and is very ideal especially during this lock-down and self-quarantine season.
You can use your skills as chef or a food professional to make money by developing custom meal plans and selling them to your clients.
Let’s say someone is looking to lose weight, is diabetic, has high blood pressure, wants to go Keto or are diagnosed with medical conditions that require specific dietary plans, you can develop custom meal plans to suit their particular situation.
To add a premium to your services, consider helping your clients out with a grocery list and recipes for them to use with your meal plans.
If they are clueless in the kitchen, you could, pair your meal planning service with online cooking classes.
Your Turn: Which of these food related online business ideas side hustle options sounded the most appealing to you?
Share with us your thoughts in the comments below.
Love,
Eva Mtalii
