Culinary Careers Hub
Discover the wide variety of careers available from culinary training at Leiths – from new product development, food styling for magazines and television, cookery writing to restaurants and hospitality, being private chef or a yacht chef, nutrition, content creator, marketing & more.
Explore Careers
Welcome to our culinary careers hub! We hope it will provide you with some inspiration around the exciting and varied careers that our Diploma in Food & Wine can open the door to, because not only are we famous for our excellence in culinary training, but we have unrivalled industry contacts through our in-house careers service and recruitment agency, Leiths List, which helps you set up the most exciting work experience and future jobs when you graduate. If you would like to find out more why not arrange a one-to-one here.
Recipe Developer & New Product Dev
NPD is the exciting process of innovation in a product, requiring creativity, research, design and development and can really suit someone who has a science-brain as well as food one! New product launches involve looking for new trends in food or expanding product ranges in the market. Alumni like Laoise Casey have found development roles at COOK, Sainsbury’s, Marks and Spencer, Gousto, Kraft Heinz and HelloFresh.
Food Stylist
A food stylist’s job is to help create mouthwatering images that make a dish look irresistible. Having a professional cooking qualification is essential, as you need to know how to cook everything from pastry to a joint of meat and have the technical knowledge to problem solve if things go wrong. Many Leiths alumni have gone on to be successful food stylists including Saskia Sidey, Emily Kydd, Jake Fenton and Sophie Austen-Smith and they work for companies like Waitrose, BBC food magazines, Publishers of cookery books and more.
Food Business
Starting a food business starts with a brilliant, well researched idea and business plan and on the Diploma we have lecturers who provide the frameworks to get those ideas started. It’s thrilling to start a food business and many of our graduates have gone onto be very successful, for example Libby Whitfield’s Nomadough food truck, a ready-meals business ByRuby, the popular Pasta Evangelists by Chris Rennoldson, Sam Newman’s Hackney Gelato sold in shops and restaurants across the UK and Genius Food, the gluten free bakery company.
Restaurants & Hospitality
The world of restaurant kitchens is exciting and creative, working with food every day preparing, cooking and presenting food and as you progress, creating new dishes and putting together menus. Many of our graduates work in some of the UK’s best restaurants like Kitchen W8, Clipstone and Elystan Street, some open restaurants of their own like Joshua Hunter at Hawthorn, Alice Staple, with Maremma and Ayesha Kalaji owner patron of Queen of Cups. Event catering is another option, with graduates working at Rocket Food and in sustainable catering at the socially and environmentally conscious Social Pantry.
Home Economist for Television and Media
Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes on your favourite cookery shows like GBBO, MasterChef, Saturday Kitchen or Great British Menu? The home economist is the cook behind the camera, prepping food, consulting with guest chefs and ensuring everything is organised and ready for them to cook on the show. The classic ‘Here’s one I made earlier’ will have been cooked by a home economist like Anna Colwell or Lucie Bruckner.
Cookery Writer & Cookery Books
A career writing about food for magazines like Olive, delicious or for BBC Good Food or writing your own book is all about the kitchen creativity. For cookery books, taking all the skills learnt from training and your further development, along with inspiration outside of this and creating recipes; there is also a lot of recipe testing that goes with the territory of course! For magazines, there is also the wide creativity, plus working with editors to create recipes for the readers that are pitched right. Take a look at some of our alumni and how they got where they are – Diana Henry, Olia Hercules and Lara Lee.
Private Chef & Yacht Chef
Working as a private chef can be flexible and offers great opportunities for a varied career as well as the chance to travel! Roles can include permanent positions in a private household or freelance work such as one-off dinner parties, holiday cheffing in the UK and abroad, yoga retreats or working on super yachts. As a private chef like Rob Clark, Ali Pumfrey, Rachael Leach and many others, you will utilise all your people skills as well as wowing your clients with your spectacular dishes.
Content Creator
As a social media content creator you create and share material to educate and entertain your audience across all social media platforms. Helena Busiakiewicz joined BBC Good Food and Olive magazine as a recipe tester and is now a fully-fledged recipe developer producing social content for both brands. For Anna Frazer, documenting her work on Instagram was a way of driving up enquiries for her catering business, but she is now able to create content professionally, helping food brands promote their marketing campaigns.
Nutritionist
Nutritionists work in different roles including public health, private sector and in education and research and are able to provide information about food and healthy eating. Kelly Stretton is a nutrition-focused private chef to a Professional Athlete. She works closely with the club’s nutritionist to create daily menus that meet all the nutritional needs of the Principal, focusing on performance and recovery.
Our Alumni
Discover the stories of our vibrant alumni community, each box a portal to their unique journey and achievements.
Anna Frazer
Private Chef & Content Creator
Josh Hunter
Chef & Restauranteur
Lara Lee
Chef, Writer & Caterer
Maria Bradford
Head Chef & Owner of Shwen Shwen
Matt Tebbutt
Chef & Food Presenter
Michael Lavery
Chef & Business Owner
Saskia Sidey
Food Stylist & Recipe Writer
Sophie Wyburd
Food Writer & Presenter
Tara Spink
Food Writer & Restaurant Critic
One-to-One Chats
If you’re interested in training with us or just want to see if our courses are a good fit for you, we recommend booking a one-to-one chat with a Leiths teacher by clicking the button below.
Leiths Diploma Kitchen Newsletter
Want to learn more about the Leiths Diploma, what goes on in the kitchens week to week? Sign up to our Diploma Kitchen Newsletter to see the progression of the current students. From skills, guest demonstrations to all day cooks and assessments. You can also find out more on social using #leithsdiplomalife.