If you can cook, you can make money teaching cooking classes
Want a delicious side job? When the world was shut off from travel and dining out because of the pandemic, millions of people pulled out their oven mitts.
Suddenly, the demand for sourdough starters was through the roof. And online cooking classes thrived and proliferated. Now, even though travel has revived and people can go out to eat, the lure of learning new recipes and how to cook succulent new dishes at home remains strong.
In fact, just as the working world may be forever changed by the pandemic’s mandate to work from home, the cooking world may be forever altered too. After all, in years past, most cooks turned to books and written recipes. Now it’s easy — and arguably far more instructive — to find a cooking video.
That creates money-making opportunities for good cooks who want to teach culinary skills either in person or online. Here are six online platforms that can help cooks find a paying audience — three specifically for cooks, three that will help anyone launch a class.
Eatwith
Eatwith is an international platform that launched with the idea that you could offer authentic dining experiences to travelers in your own home. However, like many other businesses that thrived on dining out, the site revamped during the pandemic to offer online cooking classes.
Those online classes can be offered in person now, too. So, a chef in Madrid might host an online event to teach the art of making paella to viewers around the world. The next day, he could host gazpacho-making lessons in his own home.
Whether you’re an artist, a photographer or an extrovert, here are a few online platforms worth considering next time you’re looking to make a few bucks.
To offer meals or classes through Eatwith, you create a profile and then start setting up meals and events. You set the time, capacity, price and rules and post copious photographs of what you’re making to get potential customers craving your meals. Eatwith books the clients and takes a commission on sales.
Tastemade
Tastemade is a lifestyle media company that enlists “makers” to offer online cooking content and in-person events. Cooks set the menu, price, schedule and terms.
Makers can offer “fan subscriptions” here too. With a fan subscription, you can give avid followers merchandise discounts and access to special events and recipes. You determine the price and what’s included. The subscription fee is collected monthly by the site.
And because Tastemade has millions of viewers who are specifically looking for food and lifestyle content, this can be a great place to build an audience.
CozyMeal
CozyMeal connects chefs and caterers with people wanting to arrange private and corporate dinner parties and cooking classes. The site also books homes and other sites as venues for these events when neither the chef nor the client has the right space.
Chefs determine what to make and/or offer, when, where and how much to charge. CozyMeal takes a commission that varies based on group size.
Video courses
You doubtless know that you could post a cooking video on YouTube for free. But it would need to get a tremendous amount of traffic before you’d ever earn a penny with this content. If you want to charge for your cooking classes — and you want to create a content series, not just a one-off video — there are several platforms that will help you create a cooking course and get paid for it.
Udemy
Perhaps the best known of the course-creating sites is Udemy. This site offers courses on everything from music to marketing. What makes it a good place to start, if you’ve never offered a cooking class before, is that the site offers all sorts of help and advice. But it’s not necessarily where you want to keep your courses long term because the site’s policies can depress the selling price of your class and the site’s commissions can be huge, leaving you with just a fraction of the course’s purchase price.
Thinkific and Teachable
Thinkific and Teachable operate almost identically. They help you set up a course for free. But they charge commissions — or a flat fee, depending on the plan you choose — when your courses sell. However, it’s tough to start with these sites because they don’t do marketing for you. You must find your own customers.
So, many people start a basic course on Udemy to gain a following. Once they have a loyal flow of customers and word-of-mouth advertising, they launch a second, more comprehensive course on one of these two sites. Both sites allow you to set your own prices.
Kristof is the editor of SideHusl.com, an independent website that reviews moneymaking opportunities in the gig economy.
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