Cool Jobs in the Food Industry

There are many roles available within the food industry, including entry-level positions that allow for career advancement to more veteran leadership roles. Many positions require skills such as creativity, communication, and customer service. Have you ever wondered how companies choose which gum or ice cream flavors to put on the shelves? Maybe you’re curious about who prepares the food you see in magazines or where the fortune cookie messages come from. Well, someone has to do it. Check out these four unusual jobs you could have in the food industry.

Molecular Gastronomist

Molecular gastronomy is a blend of science and food to create the kinds of weird and wonderful concoctions you might see on Masterchef. You could make your start in this career by doing a cookery or food science course from places like Le Cordon Bleu and the  Willam Angliss Institute. Molecular gastronomy is most commonly used to describe a form of the culinary style adopted by chefs including Ferran Adria (Elbulli Foundation), Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck), Grant Achatz (Alinea), and Thomas Keller ( of The French Laundry and Per Se) to name a few. 

Molecular gastronomists utilize the principles of chemistry, physics, and biology to develop delicious food that can be presented in new and interesting ways—solid cocktails, fruit jelly caviar, or vegetable foams and bubbles. It’s basically the science of food you thought could only exist in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. But with a grasp on some of the basic concepts of molecular gastronomy, you’re actually much closer to those fantasy recipes than you think.

Chocolatier

Who doesn’t love chocolate? Chocolatiers are the people responsible for creating the sweet treats we enjoy. A chocolatier is a chef who specializes in chocolate. They craft chocolate into truffles and bars, creating all sorts of shapes, colors, decorations, and textures. Being a chocolatier is a creative job where you can let your imagination run wild. Chocolatiers use all kinds of flavors to make their tasty works of art.

Many chocolatiers are self-employed, making money from selling chocolate in their own shop or online. So chocolatiers who run their own business must have good entrepreneurial skills . They need to build up a brand, which means working on the company logo, packaging, and advertising. They usually work long hours, spending time on the marketing and book-keeping for their company.  A job as a chocolatier is an interesting, fun, and creative job. But it also involves a lot of hard work, enthusiasm, and dedication. You’ll need to have a real passion and interest in chocolate.

Food Lawyers

Yep, there really are lawyers out there for everything. Food lawyers can help advise companies that grow and sell food, work with chefs and restaurants, and advocate for workers in the industry. Food lawyers study, use, and create rules to improve the food network. The client can be a chef, the city or federal government, a nonprofit organization, or a farmer. Our work touches every area of law: zoning, contracts, environmental, constitutional, international, trade, patents, animal and human rights, and immigration. I moderated a panel last month on using laws to ensure food access in new low-income construction developments. Being a food lawyer not only allows but requires, interdisciplinary thinking and using the existing system in inventive ways.

The food law advisor is ultimately responsible for the safety of the food that a company brings to market. They must ensure that all regulations have been understood by the company and strictly adhered to. A food law advisor must also inform clients of any changes to the law that may affect the production or marketing of their food products.

Fortune Cookie Message Writer

Fortune cookies evoke mystical legends, but they’re far from divine. Someone has to write the messages and they get paid to do it. When restaurants or organizations request custom fortunes, cookie companies pay someone to think of new predictions or words of wisdom. Fortune cookie message writers don’t need any formal training, but they do have to have good grammar skills and a unique imagination. This could be the ideal job for a person who has a knack for poetry and other creative arts.

A fortune cookie writer must be exceptionally creative in writings as the writing style expects you to be witty, understand the culture of the people, know how to create short sentences with high levels of creativity, and so on. You can do it as a freelancer, for your own cookie manufacturing business, or get employed full-time by a company. As you will learn in the subsequent sections, the mode of work (freelance or full-time employment) affects—to a certain degree—the earnings from fortune cookie writing.