Knowledge Base > Eric Wynkoop - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Eric Wynkoop - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

This event was on Tuesday, May 13, 2025 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Eric Wynkoop in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to co… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

I would like to start a business where I teach people how to cook. How do you charge for teaching people to cook, when food is very expensive?

— Ilana Lauer

Answer:

I think the first thing to do is to go online and do a little bit of, uh, field work and figure out what is being charged in your locality or your region for cooking classes. And, you know, I would reach out to the local community college if you have one of those or other, you know, uh, let's say, uh, uh, formal institution that might offer some community classes, you know, in this area, IE cooking, get an idea of what they offer, the, in other words, the, the type of class, the type of cuisine. Uh, take a look at the syllabus to get an idea of the complexity of the menu that's being offered. Uh, take a look at the duration of the class and get an idea of just how much interaction the student or the client will have. In other words, some of these classes are, uh, observation only, uh, others are full hands-on, and others are a balance of, of those two ends of the spectrum. And then, uh, take a look at, if you can, if you're able to, the specific types of ingredients that are used, so you can get an idea of the expense, right, for that dish and for that menu. Uh, and then also take a look at other sources for cooking lessons in your area. And there are bound to be, um, you know, private folks, you know, like yourself, uh, who are given this a try. And also compare prices between in-person and online. Uh, lessons. Also consider your experience that you bring into the, to the class. Um, it's reasonable to expect, uh, that a, a less experienced, uh, teacher and cook, uh, in a particular discipline might charge less than someone who is more experienced in, in those areas. Maybe, maybe not, but something to consider. Okay? Uh, when it comes to the, the cost of the food itself, there are a couple of ways to do this. Uh, you can send a shopping list to your students, to your client ahead of time, telling them to procure all of those things prior to the class. And I've seen this done for online classes, of course, uh, as well as in-person classes, uh, or if it's gonna be an in-person class, you know, you can roll that expense into your, uh, your price tag, uh, and then, you know, just pass that on as a, as a single cost to your client. Now, in this case, you're gonna have to cost out the recipes and cost out the menu. And the way we do that is taking a, a single recipe, as an example. Take a look at the ingredients and the quantities, and you'll need to go out to wherever you buy those ingredients and write down the cost, right? The, the price that you pay, um, on a pound basis, or whatever the unit of measure is, um, by which you purchase that item. So produce is usually by, uh, weight. You know, it could be a kilo, it could be in a hundred gram unit, it could be by the pound meats. Uh, seafood will be priced in a similar manner. Um, other things, you know, uh, dry items like olive oil, could be by volume. Uh, other liquids could be by volume. Um, in the case of canned items, uh, they're gonna be buy that canned unit. And then further, as you go to cost it down, you'll look at the label and, uh, use the unit of measure that's on the label. Often it's gonna be in ounces or fluid ounces or grams, okay? And so you'll need to measure out what you would use for the, the lesson, right? For that recipe. Uh, and then, uh, uh, you know, calculate the cost of how much you use for the recipe versus, you know, the, the pack size. So, for example, if you bought, uh, let, let's say you need, um, 12 ounces of carrots in the recipe, and you buy, um, a pound of carrots at a dollar, uh, you'll take that, um, dollar per pound, which is equivalent to a dollar per 16 ounces. You'll take the dollar divided by 16 to get the, the cost for one ounce, and then you would multiply that by the 12 ounces in the recipe, okay? And you would, that's the basic procedure. Same thing if it was a canned item or a liquid item in, in, in fluid ounces. Um, if you buy, uh, a 32 fluid ounce container of something, and you're using, uh, you know, let's say seven fluid ounces in the recipe, you'll take the price of that 32 fluid ounce container, divide it by 32 to drop it down to a one fluid ounce cost, and then multiply it by the seven fluid ounces in the recipe. Okay? Uh, and again, you'll go through each line item, each ingredient to get the cost for the quantity that's used in that recipe. Then you'll add up everything to get the recipe total. And if you have five recipes in your menu, then you'll do that for all five recipes. You'll add all those up so you have an idea of what your food cost will be for the entire menu. So we, we call, we call this food cost. And, uh, you, you'll wanna do that on a, uh, on a recipe basis, which also gives you the ability to break it down to a proportion food cost. Uh, and then you could also, you know, add up all of the, uh, the food costs for the different recipes that you use to come up with a menu cost for a cooking class or cooking lesson, uh, that you might offer. And then, uh, you want to use that as a, as a, you know, one data point, uh, along with the other market research that I just suggested. And you can create some sort of a, uh, a, a balance in there that's gonna work for you, right, based upon how, uh, how long your lesson is gonna be, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, 120 minutes or something else, okay? But you also wanna be competitive, so you wanna see what, what others are doing. Uh, and, and if it's gonna be an in-person class, look at what folks, again, in your locality or charging, if it's an online class look more broadly, uh, because it becomes a national and a, even an international sort of a, a marketplace or competition field at that point. And so you wanna see what others are offering, uh, and then also take a look at, uh, Reddit and other online discussion boards just to get an idea of what, uh, people are, are chatting about when it comes to this sort of education. Okay? So that's, uh, a quick overview. Hopefully that's helpful, and we'll get you started down this path.
Eric Wynkoop

Eric Wynkoop

Director of Culinary Instruction

rouxbe.com