Cooking up a new career in the food industry

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

It’s all about food lately.

Culinary shows like “Top Chef” and “Hell’s Kitchen” are all the rage. Tainted peanuts have us worried about what we eat and how to make it better. Books such as “The Omnivore's Dilemma” and “Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics” are bestsellers. And even first lady Michelle Obama is getting in on the act, planting a vegetable garden at the White House.

Not surprisingly, more and more laid-off workers, those switching careers and young people just starting out are contemplating jobs in the food industry.

Jack Bernowitz, a 44-year-old laid-off broker from bankrupt Lehman Brothers, enrolled in New York’s Institute of Culinary Education this past November with his sights on becoming a chef.

“For 20 years I loved going to work,” he says about his tenure at the brokerage house. “But in the last four years, with the greed, corruption on Wall Street, the love was gone.”

He was ready for a career overhaul.

“I always loved cooking for my family and friends, even bringing food in for the people at work,” says Bernowitz, who has more than 120 cookbooks at home. “Sometimes you need a tragedy to push you to do what you want to do.”

Last year, the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) saw a record-setting 20,000 inquiries for enrollment, up more than 12 percent from the previous year.

“Surging interest and growing enrollment at ICE is directly related to the current economic climate,” says Rick Smilow, president of The Institute of Culinary Education.

“People are re-pondering the importance of food in our lives,” adds Mark Erickson, vice president/dean for The Culinary Institute of America. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that food is a topic on the national agenda. People are thinking about the health, social and political implications food has, and it’s a wonderful time to think about a career in the food profession.”

A growing but competitive industry
While many individuals like Bernowitz have aspirations of working in a restaurant kitchen, cooking jobs can be very competitive.

The jobless rate among food preparation and related occupations in 2008 was 9.5 percent, compared to the overall national unemployment rate of 5.8 percent last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But take heart, the food job opportunities go beyond the standard restaurant digs.

“Food is the second-largest employer after the federal government,” says Irena Chalmers, author of “Food Jobs: 150 Great Jobs for Culinary Students, Career Changers and Food Lovers.”

When people think of food-related jobs, they tend to think of cooks or chefs in a restaurant, Chalmers says, but that’s just a small part of a huge industry.

There are a host of other opportunities, says Chalmers, including jobs as a cook in nursing homes or retirement centers, personal chefs in people’s homes, and even behind-the-scenes at supermarkets, which are offering more prepared food for time-crunched consumers.

Non-cooking jobs run the gamut from nutritional experts to food safety jobs to research and development positions for corporations, she says.

Dennis Pitchford, 40, used to work for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra doing marketing but decided to take his business background and combine it with one of his other loves: food.

He graduated from The Culinary Institute of America in June and is now working as the corporate chef for Noble Communications, conducting market research and testing of new food products.

When he went to culinary school, he admits he wondered whether he’d be a famous chef like the ones he’s seen on TV. “But school straightened me out,” he says.

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