Culinary Arts Programs for Future Chefs: What You Need to Know
The shift from culinary school to real-world culinary work can be a confusing one, and it helps to have an idea of what to expect once you get out into the non-school world of kitchens and cooking. While there are some factors you'll never be able to control, if you know about some of the issues you could encounter ahead of time, you'll be better able to navigate post-schooling jobs.
Starting Your Degree Program in School
If you have only basic cooking skills, culinary school is absolutely where you should start. You need to get a thorough grounding in how to handle a knife (e.g., the safe way to cut open an avocado), why ingredients and heat affect each other the way they do, and more.
When you're in culinary school, take electives. You'll have your core courses that cover a lot of ground, and you'll have an externship that gives you some real-world experience. But if you find any electives in fields you hadn't considered before, such as recipe creation and testing, or nutritional and menu planning, take those. You will do best in school if you know which areas of the food world are really the best for you instead of assuming you're just going to end up in a restaurant kitchen.
Look into Your Future for Exciting Opportunities
Take time to meet with an advisor and get an idea of what a career path in your chosen food field might look like. For example, recipe creators for food brands likely aren't going to start as dishwashers in restaurants, although they may start as basic kitchen assistants in the company test kitchen. While it's true that you may have to take whatever job you can find right out of school -- more on that in a bit -- you want to start yourself off on the right path as soon as you can.
During your externship, you might not have a lot of time to talk to your supervisors, but definitely try to ask them about how they progressed as they learned more. Keep in mind not every chef went to culinary school, so don't be surprised if you get a range of answers.
After Graduation: Opportunities Await for Hardworking Chefs
Once you graduate, your world changes. You'll likely have an immediate need for work so you can earn money, and often a lower-rung job at a restaurant is the easiest to find.
Past that, be prepared to start on the ground floor in any part of the culinary world that you're planning to work in. You're not going to be treated as a star just for having completed culinary school. While completing the courses is fantastic and shows you have the stamina to handle professional cooking, you'll still likely have to start at the bottom and work your way up.
That could include moving from company to company because restaurants and food brands don't always have a huge turnover and open positions; people try to stay in good places to work, which makes advancement in the same company tough.
Note that you should continue learning even after you leave culinary school. Maybe you've trained to be a chef but find the physical intensity of restaurant work to be an issue; but if you like photography, food styling could turn out to be more your style. If you continue to learn about how food is treated and prepared in different settings, you'll find you have more options should you grow weary of a particular job.
Are you interested in culinary arts? If you want to a chef and are interested in earning an Associate of Applied Science Degree in Culinary Arts, ECPI University's Culinary Institute of Virginia offers this course at an accelerated pace. For more information, connect with a helpful admissions advisor today.
It could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!
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