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How to Start a Cooking Class Business

Who doesn’t love food?

We even have a saying that goes- the way to a man’s heart is through his tummy.

This speaks what food means to us.

Until the beginning of the year 2020, we were at liberty to go out and have whichever cuisine we want, whenever we want and from wherever we want. Even people busy with their work life were able to depend on the food delivery platforms for their daily meals. But, with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic everything almost ceased to exist. And with the enforcement of work from home, everyone was left with no choice but to fend for themselves. And hence, without any doubt, we can tell that the one thing this pandemic has made everyone come to terms with is cooking. As a result, we got to see some great dishes spamming the social media every day of the worldwide lockdown and still continuing. Hence this is undoubtedly the perfect time to make hay while the sun shines.

Before you start off with planning your moves and strategies to build your own tutorials, there are a few basics you need to know and be mindful of at all times.

Without further ado, let us dive right in.

There are two kinds of tutorials that you can start over the internet.

  1. Tutorials to only teach different cuisines
  2. Certified culinary tutorials

Though the foundation and the structure for both are the same, there are some differences in the nuances of their executions.

Firstly you need to decide what kind of tutorials you are going to run. Because the steps might vary a bit depending on your decision. You could also mix up the two if you will as well. The ball’s in your court now. However in this article we will brief you on the most basic procedures you will have to follow in order to successfully start a cooking school business.

Here are the bullet points on what all it takes to build a robust online cooking school.

  1. Choose your Target Audience:

This is the step that will define the course of your online cooking classes. What kind of audience are you aiming to reach out to?

  1. Experiences cooks
  2. Audience looking for certification
  3. Audience looking just for some technical knowledge
  4. Audience with no prior knowledge about cooking
  5. Audience including children (of certain age limit) etc

This decision is what is going to help you in formulating all your course materials.

  • Form a business and revenue plan:

The basis of any building is a strong foundation. The same applies even to a business as well. Draw a plan and document it. Your plan will also depend on the type of customer you aim to attract with your tutorials and also what you intend on teaching them.

To give you an idea on what options you have, here are a few:

  1. Preparation class:

In this, you can teach your students-

  1. Time management skills
    1. How to prep the ingredients
    1. Founding/basic techniques of cooking
  2. Technical class:

This is all about advanced cooking techniques for the sect of audience who are experienced cooks.

  • Cuisines cooking class:

This is for the general audience where you can teach them recipes they can use on occasions, everyday life, provide them tips etc

Once you are done with the business planning it’s time to chalk out the revenue plan as well. Below are a few revenue models that you can adopt based on your business plans.

  1. Subscription fee model: A monthly, yearly or any prior legal agreement of periodic payment of fees till a fixed day (completion of the course) is called a subscription fee. This has been one of the most popularly used revenue models in the eCommerce field and you can learn more here about it. However, this completely depends on the rapport you build with your customers. They will continue to pay subscription fees till they see value in your tutorials or any product for that matter.
  2. Membership fee model: Charging a basic fee to your customers to access the cooking classes you are conducting is called a membership fee. Though it may sound very similar to the previous model, there is a very small difference between the two. Members get special privileges and discounts whereas subscribers would not be able to get any of those privileges.
  3. Pay-per-class option: This is one of the most popular options chosen by many customers. Be extremely mindful of what you are charging for and how you are charging because the competition in this field is neck tight. One way to go about it is by charging according to the recipes or technicality of the classes you are going to teach.
  • Procure materials for your tutorials:

Without a basic map on what you will be teaches on your tutorials it will be a messy affair to go through. There should always be a clear cut path before you in order to drive the tutorials without any complications.

Here are a few questions to help you with your materials.

  1. What result do you need your students to achieve?
  2. What is the duration of your recipe?
  3. Do you have the expertise to teach the recipes to your students?
  4. What are the ingredients, apparatus, skills required to prepare that recipe?

This is a skeleton of the course materials you will need to work on.

  1. A general introduction to the cuisine
  2. Listing the ingredients
  3. Listing the equipment’s and techniques used
  4. Duration of the cook
  5. Tips to make variations to the dish, enhance flavor’s, health tips etc.
  • Grow your global footprint:

It’s finally the step to develop your own website. However, before you start building anything and since you are just taking your first baby steps into this industry you might want to check out on a few other viable options as well. You can launch your tutorials in two ways-

  1. Your own platform
  2. Through an established platform

The second option is what we would recommend for people just starting their online classes. However, both the options have its own pros and cons. So it is really only your decision to make.

On the other hand, building your own website need not be as hard and time consuming as you think as well. Here are the options you have in order to set up your own, exclusive website. They are-

  1. Coding on your own or by hiring a tech team
  2. Purchasing a turnkey solution

The first option is ideal when you have the sufficient funds, time, and technical knowledge to code or get the coding done. However, turnkey solutions are a much efficient way in all possible aspects to build your website. You will be getting-

  1. Complete code of your platform
  2. 24*7 support
  3. Installation help
  4. Domain and server help
  5. Customization options
  6. One time down payment and much more

There are multiple software firms that provide such services as well. Agriya, Pinlearn, Wix etc to name a few.

  • Plan marketing strategies:

Without marketing or promoting your business, you will not be able to achieve anything in this field of ecommerce. This can be the most challenging part of the journey. There are innumerable and creative ways in which you can market yourself. And the aim of all of them is to gain an increasing amount of customer base and earn good SERPs. Most businesses tend to use social media marketing as that is one of the easiest methods of marketing. By creating an Instagram account, you could easily create a brand for your cooking classes, allowing people to easily find them. Websites like https://growthoid.com/ can help you to increase your followers too, so the page can stand a better chance of becoming successful. Additionally, here are a few other ways that you can incorporate in your strategies to get good visibility and the required ranking on the search engines.

  1. Content Marketing
  2. Digital marketing
  3. Trough reviews and ratings
  4. Social Media marketing

Here too you can customize and create your own type of marketing strategies according to your business by mixing up two or more kinds of plans mentioned above or even better- invent one yourself!

Hope you got the information that you came looking for. With just your passion and the zeal for cooking you too can build a cooking school. Though it might seem a bit overwhelming, it is actually not extremely difficult to start off your own online business. It has improved drastically over the years. As you would have already read through there are multiple ways in which you can start your own business and that too within the matter of hours. And also, we are just a click away to here to support you all through your way.

Sam Roberts
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