Becoming a Professional Chef: The Benefits of Multiple Culinary Degrees

The road to becoming a professional chef is paved with passion, experience, and education. The more you have of each of these ingredients, the farther you’ll go. There are a variety of skills needed to be a successful chef. While your passion can carry you far, opening up opportunities for valuable experiences, a culinary education will provide the resources, lessons, interactions, and relationships you’ll need.

There are many different culinary concentrations that complement and enhance one another while still focusing on their core subject. So, it makes sense to argue that if one culinary degree is good, two is better. But is that feasible? Is it actually advantageous to pursue a double culinary major? The answer is “yes,” and here is why and how.

Completing multiple programs can significantly enhance your marketability as a professional. Your exposure to different lessons and perspectives provides a distinct competitive advantage when it comes to communication, strategizing, and collaborating across a variety of concentrations and business lines.

Having multiple degrees can also make it easier to grow and transition within your career. If you want to be in the kitchen, the skills and lessons learned while you pursue an advanced culinary arts degree are priceless. If you want to be in a bakery, the techniques and practices learned while pursuing an advanced baking and pastry degree are invaluable. Pairing these curricula can make you an even more well-rounded chef. Or, if you decide to add a hospitality and culinary management degree to either, you will have the skillset not only to operate as a chef but run and lead a business in the industry.

For most students, especially culinary students, as soon as their culinary arts program is complete, they are ready to get out into the real world and put their talents to work. This is why at Louisiana Culinary Institute, after the completion of one program, students have the opportunity to complete additional programs in an expedited time period. This offers additional education in a minimal amount of time, creating a highly marketable skillset when stepping off campus and into a restaurant.