Culinary Arts is nothing but the art of cooking. A culinary arts course trains aspirants to prepare, cook as well as present food/ meals in an effective and attractive manner.
So if you are looking for career options that one could pursue after completing a BA in Culinary Arts; you have come to the right place. Here’s the list:
Food Scientist
If you’re a BA Culinary Arts graduate, pursuing the road to becoming a Food Scientist is a fantastic choice for you. The job description is exciting, and you’ll be challenged to solve new problems every day in a creative manner. Is there anything more satisfying? No, I doubt it.
Food Scientists basically study food processing, preservation, packaging, and even the way foods smell as well as interact. They fiddle in everything from sustenance safety to atomic gastronomy. Some aspects of the job description, as well as work-life balance, can vary from company to company. Some businesses ensure that their workers have a good work-life balance, while others do not.
With time, leadership opportunities become open, and the opportunity for career advancement is enormous. However, bear in mind that this is a desk job, so travel will be a rare aspect of your workday. So, if travel is a top priority or a make-or-break factor for you, this career path may not be the right fit for you.
The pay in this field is good, with freshers being given a good starting salary (approximately 3,50,000 rupees per annum). The money in this sector is growing slowly but steadily. Not your cup of tea? Continue reading for a few more suggestions to assist you in finding your dream career.
Cooks and Assistants
Another amazing option for you if you have just graduated after completing a BA Culinary Arts degree, is to become a cook or an assistant cook. Good salary, great growth opportunities, opportunity to apply all that culinary knowledge, and some travel sprinkled here and there. What more can a BA Culinary Arts graduate need?
If you don’t know, cooks and assistants cooks are usually in charge of one specialty, such as French, Chinese, Italian, Banquet, Continental, Pastry etc. The work profile often varies with the restaurant and your position in the organizational chain, but your major work is going to be this only.
Leadership and management opportunities are available in ample once you attain a certain level of experience, if that is an important factor for you in choosing a career.
You can expect your starting salary to be around 2,50,000-3,00,000, but this is not a hard and fast rule. If you are applying to a bigger company and are able to adequately display your skills, you can get a much higher package. And as for growth prospects, the same rule applies. If you are good at what you do, you can expect quicker promotions and more leadership opportunities.
Kitchen/ Culinary Manager
Not satisfied by the various career options we talked about? Well, how about becoming a Kitchen/ Culinary Manager? You will get good pay, be involved with interesting work, and the potential for career growth is enormous.
Culinary Managers are responsible for hiring new workers and training them. Additionally, they manage information and communication of other divisions that affect their kitchens. Apart from this, some other work that you may be required to perform as a K Manager is management of people, internal operations and so on.
The work is challenging and rewarding at the same time, which makes for a deadly combination if you ask us.
Growth and leadership opportunities may be slightly difficult to grab in the beginning, but if you stick with it, you will definitely be rewarded with more responsibilities (and more importantly, better pay). Work-life balance can be a bit absurd at times, but it’s not something that you can’t manage after proper communication with your seniors.
Salaries start around 4,00,000, and monetary growth happens very quickly. You can very easily expect your starting salary to double within a few years. With time, your work profile will change, and your daily work will stop being about the nitty-gritty of things, and more about the general overview and high-level strategization (is that even a word?) for the future of your organization.
Catering Manager
A slightly unique or offbeat career option for students of BA Culinary Arts is Catering Manager. But being unique does not mean that the work is not good or that the pay is not that high.
So, what are the responsibilities and work profile of an Catering Manager, you may ask? Worry not, we have the answer. Catering Managers are in charge to help plan the food part of events. They negotiate with customers to achieve contracts and help with the menu choices.
Catering Managers are also responsible to directs events as well as oversee the work of other workers. Additionally, they also take part in scheduling tasks as well as acquiring the required equipment in order to fulfill a contract.
As you can see, the work is very interesting, especially if you are interested in management. But a word of warning if you are not particularly a ‘jugaadu’ guy (or girl), please don’t get into this profession as you would be miserable most of the time. Don’t say that we didn’t warn you!
And of course, how can we not talk about salaries. Starting salaries are roughly in the range of 2,50,000-3,00,000 rupees per annum. Mostly employment would be found in cities, so if you are from a rural or semi-urban area, be ready to relocate.
Growth prospects (both monetary and otherwise) are great at the moment (we wouldn’t be recommending this to you otherwise, would we?). So, to stress the original point of this article, becoming a Catering Manager is a great option for BA Culinary Arts graduates.
Food Stylist
Another great option for culinary arts students right now is to become a Food Stylist. Demand had been steadily increasing since the early 2000s, and has skyrocketed recently. And supply has not risen in proportional way, at least not yet. If you remember even a little-bit of high school economics, you would be jumping in joy because it means that your pay has just ballooned up.
What Food Stylist actually do is this – Food Stylists are responsible to arrange a meal to look decent on the plate. They try to give the food the maximum appeal possible (such as, they often create ‘steam’ by the usage of chemicals, make foods out of provided materials, play with cooking strategies to maximize color, and search the ways to make food look excellent for longer)
Pretty simple, right? Well, not really. It’s a difficult skill to master and demands a lot of your time. Work–life balance is okay, and you may need to put in a couple of hours of overtime every so often.
Starting salaries are around 2,00,000 rupees, but as always, a lot depends upon your individual skills, the size of the organization, as well as the location where you are working. So, don’t come at me with pitchforks if your salary does not fall in this range. Monetary growth happens very quickly in this industry. Once you have some experience behind your name, you are golden.
So these were some of the highest-paying professions that you can go for after completing a B.A. in Culinary Arts. Did you like the article and found it informative? Then please share it with fellow culinary arts students so that they can make well-informed decisions about their professional life. Subscribe to our newsletter to get a weekly update about the different career options added on the website.