You love food. You love working with food. But, can you make a career out of working with food?
Absolutely! Actually, there are more diverse and exciting career options for you in the food world than you might think. According to the National Restaurant Association, the restaurant and food service industry is the nation’s second-largest private employer, having surged back after the 2020 disruption to reach an approximate $1.5 trillion in sales in 2025.
It’s a great time to get into the field, as The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts steady growth for the leisure and hospitality sectors over the next 10 years. The outlook for chefs and head cooks appears particularly strong, with a projected job growth rate of 8%, which is faster than the average for all occupations.
So, it’s clear there are many opportunities out there, but how can you take advantage of them? For any position in food or hospitality, you need three things:
- Specialized skills
- Knowledge and experience
- A strong network of support
The best way to get where you want to go is by earning your culinary degree. With a degree in culinary arts, you not only build specialized knowledge and refine your skills, but you also connect with experienced professionals, mentors, and other passionate professionals. And a degree from the Culinary Institute of America is especially valuable for opening those doors and getting you into any of these exciting culinary career opportunities.
Top 15 Careers With a Culinary Degree
The top trending careers in the food business include titles you might expect, such as executive chef, chef, pastry chef, and baker. They also include roles like restaurateur, food entrepreneur, food and beverage manager, food stylist, food writer, research and development (R&D) chef, media personality, sommelier, caterer, educator, food policy influencer, and more!
Here’s what you need to know about the jobs and roles you can do with a culinary degree.
1. Executive Chef – The creative and operational leader of a kitchen, responsible for everything from designing the menu to managing budgets and overseeing the kitchen staff. They ensure that food quality, presentation, and consistency meet the establishment’s standards. Executive chefs often manage the entire kitchen, which can include hiring, training, and maintaining food safety standards.
If you’re a highly driven individual who enjoys leadership, thrives under pressure, and has a passion for both culinary creativity and business management, this could be your dream career.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $73,000–$123,000
- Work Environments: Restaurants, hotels, resorts, private clubs
- Recommended Education: Either a bachelor’s or master’s in culinary arts degree, courses in business and/or management are also helpful
- Essential Skills: Leadership, time management, creativity, budgeting, culinary expertise
2. Sous Chef – As the right hand to the executive chef, the sous chef manages kitchen staff, oversees food preparation, and ensures dishes are prepared to standard and on time. They often step in during busy shifts and help troubleshoot problems in the kitchen.
This role is great for organized multitaskers who love hands-on cooking and are also natural leaders, capable of managing both people and processes.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $55,000–$87,000
- Work Environments: Restaurants, hotels, catering companies
- Recommended Education: Culinary arts degree
- Essential Skills: Organization, multitasking, technical cooking skills, leadership
3. Culinary Instructor – Culinary instructors combine their kitchen expertise with a passion for teaching. They work at culinary colleges and institutions to develop lesson plans, demonstrate cooking techniques, mentor students, and assess their progress. Aside from training future chefs, culinary instructors continue to refine their own teaching and cooking techniques to ensure they’re setting students up for success.
If you enjoy mentoring as much as cooking, have patience, and hold a sense of pride in sharing knowledge with others, then you could have a future as a culinary instructor.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $50,000–$87,000
- Work Environments: Culinary colleges, culinary schools, community centers
- Recommended Education: A culinary degree and teaching credentials can be preferred or required, depending on the school
- Essential Skills: Communication, mentorship, patience, technical culinary mastery
4. Personal Chef — If you’re interested in working directly for individuals, families, or small groups, you could be a personal or private chef. Responsible for creating customized menus based on the dietary needs, preferences, or lifestyles of their clients, personal chefs often prepare meals in advance or cook on-site.
This role is ideal for independent, flexible individuals who enjoy close client relationships, creative freedom, and a slower-paced work environment compared to restaurants. This role is well-suited for those who don’t mind handling the full scope of cooking, from grocery shopping to cleanup.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $84,000–$154,000+ (varies by clientele)
- Work Environments: Client homes, private estates, businesses
- Recommended Education: Culinary arts degree
- Essential Skills: Menu planning, flexibility, client relations, budgeting, cooking versatility
5. Caterer — Caterers design menus and prepare food for events like weddings, corporate functions, and private parties. They manage everything from menu planning to staffing and logistics for off-site service.
There are a lot of moving parts in catering, so this career is well-suited to organized, entrepreneurial individuals who enjoy working across a variety of fast-paced environments.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $46,000–$83,000
- Work Environments: Event venues, commercial kitchens, off-site events
- Recommended Education: Culinary arts degree, as well as food business skills and/or a degree in hospitality management
- Essential Skills: Logistics, time management, customer service, diverse cooking techniques
6. Sustainable Food Consultant – These consultants advise restaurants, farms, and food businesses on environmentally responsible practices, from sourcing local ingredients to reducing waste and energy consumption. They also help businesses adopt sustainable models that benefit both the planet and their bottom line.
A position in sustainable food allows you to direct your passion for sustainability, food systems, and social impact into real impacts. This is a great way to align culinary work with environmental stewardship.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $73,000–$136,000
- Work Environments: Restaurants, corporations, nonprofits, farms
- Recommended Education: A bachelor’s degree in food studies and sustainability or a master’s degree in sustainable food systems
- Essential Skills: Research, systems thinking, communication, culinary knowledge
7. Wine and Beverage Manager — Similar to a sommelier, wine and beverage managers curate and manage wine selections, educate customers, and pair wines with food to enhance the dining experience. Whereas a sommelier works directly with guests, wine and beverage managers play a direct role in managing wine inventory, purchasing, and staff training.
If you have a deep appreciation for wine and a passion for hospitality, this can be an extremely rewarding career. Just be aware you’ll have to develop your sensory skills in addition to your management and business skills.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $68,000–$113,000
- Work Environments: Fine dining restaurants, hotels, wineries, private clubs
- Recommended Education: A culinary degree with a concentration in hospitality or beverage production and service, a sommelier certification, or a master’s in wine and beverage management
- Essential Skills: Wine knowledge, palate development, customer service, sales
8. Food Entrepreneur – Food entrepreneurs create and run food-related businesses such as restaurants, food trucks, packaged food brands, or sustainable ventures. Food entrepreneurship tends to cater to niche or specialty tastes, finding success through creativity, culinary skills, and business acumen.
For aspiring business owners who are also food lovers, there are essentially limitless possibilities for building something unique. However, this field can be extremely challenging and requires a high amount of risk-taking, innovation, self-motivation, and possibly a little luck.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $40,000–$189,000+ (Highly variable)
- Work Environments: Kitchens, food trucks, markets, production facilities
- Recommended Education: A degree in food business management or a culinary degree in addition to a master’s degree in food business.
- Essential Skills: Business acumen, creativity, risk management, culinary skill
9. Food or Culinary Scientist – Love innovation? You could excel as a food or culinary scientist. These similar but distinct fields are open to analytical thinkers who are curious about how food behaves at the molecular level and passionate about improving all types of food products.
Food scientists work in labs and production facilities to develop safe, nutritious, and innovative food products. Their work covers elements such as ensuring food is safe and healthy to improving shelf life and overall quality, to improving packaging methods and sustainability.
Culinary scientists combine the science of food with their hands-on experience in the culinary arts, to create new food experiences. Their goal is to apply scientific knowledge to improve recipes, techniques, and food products.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $85,000–$151,000
- Work Environments: Labs, food manufacturing, research facilities
- Recommended Education: Culinary science or related food technology degree
- Essential Skills: Analytical skills, lab research, problem-solving, food safety knowledge
10. Research and Development Chef – Research and development chefs develop new recipes, menu items, or packaged products for restaurants, food brands, or manufacturers. They combine culinary artistry with food science to balance flavor, texture, shelf stability, and cost-effectiveness.
Consider yourself a creative problem-solver with a passion for innovation? You can help innovate the next-best-thing in food through the process of experimentation and refinement.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $61,000–$104,000
- Work Environments: Corporate kitchens, test labs, food manufacturing companies
- Recommended Education: A degree in culinary science or training in food R&D
- Essential Skills: Creativity, culinary science, precision, collaboration, problem-solving
11. Restaurant Manager – A restaurant manager ensures smooth front-of-house and back-of-house operations, overseeing staffing, budgeting, inventory, and customer service. They set the expectations for a restaurant’s culture and ambiance, handling problem-solving on the fly to ensure a world-class guest experience.
This role is perfect for strong leaders and organizers who enjoy balancing people management, customer service, and business operations. It’s a lot of responsibility, but it’s also highly rewarding.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $56,000–$93,000
- Work Environments: Restaurants, cafes, bars, foodservice venues
- Recommended Education: A degree in food business management or hospitality management.
- Essential Skills: Leadership, problem-solving, customer service, organization
12. Hotel Food and Beverage Manager – This role isn’t limited to hotels, but encompasses a wide variety of hospitality locations such as cruise ships, resorts, and casinos. Food and beverage managers oversee multiple dining operations, including restaurants, bars, banquets, and room service. They’re also responsible for staff management, inventory, budgeting, and delivering high service standards across departments.
These managers oversee larger, more complex environments than a single restaurant, making it a high-end hospitality position that’s perfect for people-oriented professionals who enjoy variety, are excellent multitaskers, and have a passion for hospitality and operational excellence.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $64,000–$109,000
- Work Environments: Hotels, resorts, cruise ships, casinos, conference centers
- Recommended Education: A degree in hospitality management or food business management.
Essential Skills: Operations management, leadership, financial oversight, service excellence
13. Food Stylist — Food stylists craft dishes specifically for photography, film, commercials, or cookbooks. They understand how to make food look delicious under studio lights and in different environments, using tricks to maintain visual appeal during long shoots.
“Looks good enough to eat” is the goal for these artistic, detail-oriented creatives. If you enjoy the visual and design side of food, then you can collaborate with photographers and other media professionals to put your culinary skills on display.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $62,000–$116,000
- Work Environments: Photography studios, film sets, magazines, ad agencies
- Recommended Education: Culinary arts with a focus on food styling
- Essential Skills: Artistic presentation, attention to detail, creativity, knowledge of food behavior under lights
14. Performance Chef – Performance chefs design nutrition-focused meals tailored to the specific dietary needs of athletes and sports teams, ensuring their food supports training, recovery, and peak performance. They are employed by the organization and will often travel with their clients or teams.
If you like the idea of being a personal chef who helps people perform at their best, then this could be the specialization that’s right for you. It helps to be a meticulous planner, highly adaptable, and passionate about nutrition, health, and wellness.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $90,000–$168,000
- Work Environments: Athletic facilities, private homes, sports teams, training centers
- Recommended Education: Culinary therapeutics degree or a culinary arts degree plus sports nutrition certification
- Essential Skills: Nutrition knowledge, meal planning, flexibility, precision, confidentiality
15. Food Writer / Food Media Specialist / Celebrity Chef — This career blends culinary expertise with storytelling and passion for sharing. Food writers and media specialists produce articles, cookbooks, blogs, videos, and digital content about food trends, recipes, restaurants, and food culture. Celebrity chefs share their culinary expertise as guests on TV shows or create their own books, programs, and podcasts. Love talking about food as much (or more) than eating it? There’s always room for passionate communicators who are curious, creative, and eager to talk and write about the things they love. If you’re as skilled in writing, photography, or digital media as you are in the culinary arts, this could be a very fulfilling career.
- Estimated Salary Range*: $59,000–$110,000
- Work Environments: Remote, media companies, magazines, digital platforms
- Recommended Education: A culinary degree in addition to journalism, communications, or media training
- Essential Skills: Writing, storytelling, photography, SEO/digital content knowledge
* Salaries are from June 2025 and were sourced from estimates posted on Glassdoor and job listing on Culinary Agents.
How To Prepare for a Culinary Career
As with any professional field, there’s a lot of work and preparation that goes into building a successful culinary career. However, there are some best practices you can incorporate to make things a little easier on yourself. Consider these helpful tips:
- Pursue a Culinary Degree from an Accredited School
Attending an accredited culinary college or institution does more than offer structured training in foundational techniques; it helps you understand the “why” of how food works. Formal education is also a great way to gain exposure to a wider range of global cuisines, to work with industry professionals, and to experience different working conditions.
Employers recognize accredited programs as a mark of quality. A degree offers credibility, confidence, and a solid technical foundation that can open doors to higher-level positions faster than learning solely on the job.
That’s why a CIA associate, bachelor’s, or master’s degree is valued as a proven route to a successful career in food and hospitality. Our gold-standard programs feature hands-on kitchen instruction in world-class facilities and high-level college academic courses taught by expert faculty to prepare graduates for positions in culinary and management leadership. - Stay Current with Food Trends and Techniques
The culinary world never stops evolving. New technologies, sustainability practices, dietary trends, and innovative cooking methods are constantly emerging. It’s exciting, but it also means being at the top of your game requires continuing education.
Staying ahead of trends keeps your skills sharp and relevant as much as it makes you more competitive and creative. Showing employers and clients that you’re invested in professional growth demonstrates that you’re committed to giving 100% at all times. - Work in Different Kitchen Settings to Gain Hands-On Experience
Gaining experience in a variety of kitchens and environments broadens your skillset as well as your palate. Each new setting offers you a new understanding of different operations and requires you to develop unique skills, from high-volume service to precision plating or logistical event management. Diverse experience is as much about helping you find your true passion as it is about building your versatility, adaptability, and problem-solving skills.
“My best memory at CIA was coming back after my internship and feeling like I finally had a sense of focus about where I wanted my career to go. I always knew I wanted to work in the food industry in some way, but that field is vast and contains many options. Being able to narrow that down, and coming back to school with that knowledge, brought such a sense of relief and purpose. I felt as though I was finally enjoying the experience.”
— Sarah Baldwin ‘06, Creative Director, Ron Ben-Israel Cakes - Develop Soft Skills Like Communication, Time Management, and Stress Control
Culinary careers are demanding, and your success often depends on how well you can work efficiently. This requires clear communication with your team and clients, the ability to manage tight schedules, and knowing how to stay composed in high-pressure situations.
The service industry is almost always a fast-paced, collaborative environment. Strong soft skills go a long way toward improving teamwork, preventing burnout, and accelerating your path to leadership roles like executive chef or hospitality manager.
“The CIA drove me to achieve a level of performance I had not seen before in myself. It not only prepared me to enter the working world as a chef, but also helped me get mentally prepared for everything that has followed.”
— Steve Ells ‘90, Founder of Chipotle Grill - Attend Culinary Expos, Food Festivals, and Trade Shows
Industry events are valuable for learning about new products, techniques, and culinary innovations. They provide networking opportunities to build connections that can lead to job opportunities, partnerships, or business ventures. Also, meeting potential employers, mentors, and collaborators isn’t just a wise career move; it can also be a lot of fun. - Attend Culinary Career Fairs There is a waiting list for top restaurants, hotels, resorts, supermarkets, health care management, foodservice contract providers, and other food and hospitality management companies to attend the CIA’s Career Fairs—where they actively recruit students and recent grads for both kitchen and management-track jobs with opportunities for rapid advancement. And, because of the skills that graduates leave campus with, CIA students average 3 job offers at graduation.
- Seek Out Mentors Who Can Offer Guidance and Career Advice
Connecting with experienced chefs, instructors, or alumni provides insight into career paths, industry expectations, and personal development. Mentors can offer feedback, job leads, and honest advice that accelerates growth. A good mentor can introduce you to unique opportunities, help you make smarter career decisions, and offer you insider knowledge.
“The wine class with Steven Kolpan was a revelation to me. It opened my eyes to a completely new world. I went to all the tutoring sessions to learn as much as I could about wine and I was fortunate to get a scholarship to accompany Professor Kolpan to Italy, specifically Piedmont, Tuscany, and Emilia Romagna.”
— Carlton McCoy ‘06, Master Sommelier and President/CEO of Heitz Cellar - Stay Adaptable and Curious
As you’ve seen with this career list, the culinary field extends far beyond the restaurant kitchen. Careers in food writing, nutrition, food styling, food science, hospitality management, and sustainable food consulting all offer alternative ways to apply your culinary passion. Staying open and adaptable ensures your long-term career success, whether adjusting to a new role, launching a business, or mastering new culinary trends that excite customers.
If food is what you’d love to do for a living, the options are endless for you to satisfy that passion. With majors in Applied Food Studies, Culinary Science, Food Business Management, and Hospitality Management complementing Culinary Arts and Baking and Pastry Arts—and even more concentrations—students have the opportunity to explore and pursue the many dimensions of the food world. A culinary degree from the CIA can lead you to a wonderful career in the restaurant industry, and it can lead you down paths that will take you places you’ve never even imagined!
FAQs
Can you make good money with a culinary degree?
Yes, you can make good money with a culinary arts degree, especially as you gain experience and move into higher roles like executive chef ($94K*), food and beverage director ($92K*), or restaurant owner ($86K*). Using the skills, creativity, and business savvy you build up in a degree program can lead to high-earning opportunities in the food industry.
*These are median total pay estimates sourced from Glassdoor in June 2025
Is culinary arts a hard major?
Hard is relative, but a culinary arts program can be challenging—it’s hands-on, fast-paced, and physically demanding. You’ll need to master techniques, manage time under pressure, and be competitive. But if you’re passionate about cooking and creativity, all of that work can be rewarding and lead to exciting career paths in food or hospitality.
What age is too late for culinary school?
Whether you’re a college graduate looking to earn your master’s degree or a seasoned professional looking for a career change, it’s never too late to earn your culinary degree. The CIA welcomes non-traditional students from all walks of life and previous career paths who are inspired by their love of food to follow their passions.
Read Eric Jones’ ‘27 story about how he transitioned from construction sales to hospitality management.
What kind of job can you get with a culinary degree?
There are so many different career options with a culinary degree! Not only are the opportunities in the food and hospitality industry vast and varied, but you can also get into education, research, or even entertainment. Perhaps the best way to learn more about what you can do with a culinary degree is to read about the career paths of the Culinary Institute of America alumni. They’re leading the industry, doing what they love and changing the world through food, all at the same time.
Is getting a degree in culinary arts worth it?
Deciding on culinary school is all about getting the best return on your investment. A degree from a college of the caliber of the Culinary Institute of America will return big dividends throughout your career, with higher earning potential, the door-opening advantage of a prestigious credential, and more. So, yes, it is definitely worth it to go to culinary school, especially if it’s the CIA.
“I loved every single minute of being a student at the CIA. To be able to be a sponge and to be able to be like ‘teach me, teach me, I want to know more, I want to learn, I can’t work hard enough.” And every time I go back there it’s just mind-blowing… I loved so much being a part of it and I loved so much having the CIA as my springboard.”
— Anne Burrell ‘96, Chef/Television Host
