10 Weird and Whacky Ways to Make Money: Professional Food Taster Tutorial

10 Weird and Whacky Ways to Make Money: Professional Food Taster

So if you've been following along in my series of 10 Weird and Whacky Ways to Make Money. You would see how weird these ways are but all still perfectly legitimate and working ways to make money from doing something you love doing anyway!

Talking of which, if you love your food like I do, then this will sound like the perfect dream job for you! You can make a lot of money being a professional food taster. And since everyone has got to eat to stay alive, good food is big business! Food companies, restaurants and brands all around the world, want people to travel all around the world, eating and tasting food.

Related Post of Interest: Top 10 Hottest Apprenticeships Available Right Now in 2016.

Become a Professional Food Taster Extraordinaire!


Image Source: Sarah Fannis blog.

You can earn from $15,000 to $115,000 per year just testing, eating and tasting food and doing it for a living! However, as nice as it sounds, and even if you're an ideal candidate for this type of work, it's not really easy to find work as a professional food taster these days simply due to the high number of people applying for them and because people with degrees in the culinary arts are preferred. Even if you do get a job for someone you may have to pass their taste and smell recognition tests first.

However, if this is something you'd like to do, perhaps you're someone that is just passionate about their food and wants to expand their food palette and try new foods while learning about them as well. Such as chefs and people who work in the food and retail industry. Those that might want to open their own restaurant in the future or something. Then you can find work and make money being a food taster!

Here are a number of sites that hire people to be food tasters:

http://www.tastingfood.co.uk/
http://tasteofsolae.com/
http://contracttesting.com/
http://mmr-research.com/careers
http://northlandsensoryinsights.com/
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$depar...sf/all/fpdc10831
http://www.mccormickcorporation.com/

How to Get Work As a Food Taster?

One thing to say about being a food taster is that it's not like one of those jobs you get every once a while from a survey site or focus group where you have to complete a task given to you within a certain time frame. This is a job that you will be doing all year round annually as a full time job. But if it's something you want to do, then you can start applying round but they do prefer to hire people who already have a lot of culinary arts and a wide food palette. You could possibly fly wing this but you'd probably need the gift of the gab at least!

However there are quite a lot of food taste testing jobs out there and by joining up to sensory testing agencies and panelists for market research companies in the food industry. You can get to take part in studies that big brand name restaurants and even local restaurants and food manufactures hold every now and then in your country or city.

While you can definitely find the work, you will need some food experience at the least and be willing to travel and take part in food tasting studies. It might not be a case of regular, consistent work and you may only end up bagging a few tasting sessions per year. So it could supplement your earnings and you get to stuff your face as much as you want too!

So being a food taster could either mean a full time job and living, or a part time, every now and then thing. However still a fun thing to do even if it's only once in a while. You can increase your chances of landing a job as a food taster by joining all the sensory testing companies and services that you can in your country or area.

So yeah, not a bad job if you can score it!

Have you ever been a food taster or is this something you'd like to do?

Do you know of any other sites or services that want food tasters?

After all...


Talking of testing food in the lab. You can also get a job being a pet food taster too! No you wont be eating pet food yourself. That's just wrong! But you will have to be able to identify flavors that most dogs like, or those that most dogs don't. You'll have to have an infinity for animals or just dogs, and you'll need to be pet orientated and able to think logically and be meticulous in detail. But if you have those skills then you can bag a real paid job and earn up to $45,000 per year as an entry level pet food taster. A fully qualified and experienced pet food taster can earn up to $115,000 per year if hired by some big well known household name pet food brands like Eukanuba and Whiskers etc.

You can find pet food jobs online on job sites like Indeed.com.