My Top 3 Predictions for 2022 in the Online Culinary Industry
Are you wondering what 2022 has in store for your online culinary business?
It goes without saying that the last two years have been a rollercoaster ride for us all.
In the summer of 2021, life began to feel normal again, at least here in the United States. People hopped on planes to vacation with family and friends and re-experience life away from their laptops and Zoom meetings.
Later in the year, we experienced a shift as Omicron took over the headlines and made us question our new normal, yet again. Of course, no one knows what 2022 will bring but I’m excited to share my thoughts based on the trends and shifts that I’m seeing in the online culinary industry.
In this episode, I’m pulling out my marketing crystal ball and sharing my top 3 predictions for the year ahead. So get cozy, pour yourself a cup of coffee or tea and join me as I share my take on the coming year!
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Say hello to Cynthia on Instagram → @culinarycynthia!
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Cynthia Samanian: Hi friends! Welcome to The Experiential Table. I'm Cynthia Samanian, your host and creator of Cooking Class Business School. I absolutely love helping culinary pros like you create and market profitable online cooking classes, memberships, and more.
Today I'm pulling out my crystal ball and sharing my top three predictions for the year ahead. If you're wondering what 2022 will bring for your online culinary business, I want you to get cozy, pour yourself a cup of coffee or tea, and join me as I share my take on the coming year.
Here we are. Right at the start of 2022. For many of you, 2021 felt very different from 2020, especially in your businesses. This past summer things opened up again, people traveled and finally saw friends and family in person. Needless to say the online space was pretty quiet, not just online courses and classes, but also social media. Let's face it. People needed a break from their screens. I know I certainly did. We ended up taking a pretty long vacation in France to visit our family who lives there and finally introduced them to our one year old daughter. Then after the summer, Omicron popped up and you know, here we are back in a place where it seems like every day we're waking up a bit unsure about what's next.
Well, I want you to know this before I go into these three predictions. I am an optimist. For those of you who have worked with me in Cooking Class Business School, or have been hanging around this podcast for a while, you know that I am all about bringing positive energy to your work. But I'm also pretty realistic. So I'm not going to sugar coat things today, but I'm also not going to lead you down this path of thinking it's all doom and gloom. Because it's not. I believe that there is always, there is always an opportunity. You just have to adapt and focus. I believe that change happens whether or not you want it to, right? The environment is changing. The market is changing, your audience, your community - they are changing as well. So rather than be afraid of the change or act like it's not happening and ignore it, you've got to embrace it. And that's what I want you to think about as I walk through my top three predictions for 2022. How can you embrace the change? How can you adapt and focus on what matters most in your business so that you can take advantage of the opportunities ahead.
So with that, let's begin with my first prediction. Now I believe that in 2022, the corporate team building landscape is going to continue to grow. However, you've got to have it dialed in if you want to actually take advantage of it. The corporate team building space is lucrative. I've talked about it before on this podcast, and I continue to talk about it with my students in Cooking Class Business School.
There are a few key benefits that come with teaching corporate team building classes. The first is that you have higher profits. You essentially get to earn more in the same amount of time than you would if you were teaching a public class. You don't have to necessarily prepare more or spend more time teaching. Because of the nature of it being a corporate class and if you really make it this unique experience, you can actually command a higher price point. The second benefit to corporate is that you will eventually get more referrals and inbound customers. This means that you're spending less time selling and more time doing what you love, which is creating awesome virtual experiences and teaching them. The third benefit to corporate is having a greater freedom. This is a big one, right? You can teach basically any team, any company, no matter where they are, and no matter where you are. So you really get to go beyond your physical geographic location when you teach online and that applies to the corporate market. I've talked about these benefits before, so they may not be new to some of you who have been listening to this podcast, but I just want to remind you all as to why corporate team-building is such a great service for you to offer.
Now I talk to a lot of people, a lot of instructors who say, "Cynthia in 2020, especially the holiday season, I was getting corporate events left and right. They were basically falling on my lap. I didn't have to do any marketing. I didn't have to reach out. I didn't even have a website, but I had a full December." And you know, some of you have even said that you made more in December of 2020 than the months leading up to it.
I hate to break it to you all, but here's the truth. It was too easy. Now, 2020 was not an easy year, don't get me wrong, but selling corporate cooking classes or practically anything online was just easier during that time, because everyone was glued to their computers. If you had a Zoom account and some cooking skills, you could teach a corporate class.
Well, today things are different and I'm so glad they are, right? We don't want to be in a place where everyone is on their computers and the only way to engage with people is over Zoom. I know that many of you struggled to book corporate events over the holidays of 2021. Well why? Because you were waiting for them to come to you. And that's one of the biggest mistakes that I see. You have to make sure that you have a strategy to take advantage of this market. That is how things are going to be different in 2022, you have to sell it. You have to truly come up with a strategy, package up your offer and sell it in the marketplace.
Now there is a market. I'll just let you know. In fact, the global virtual events market was valued at 269 billion in 2022. That's right. That is up from 90 billion in 2020. This includes a variety of things, not just online cooking classes and events, it includes tech platforms, staffing, and other categories, but the market is growing. So just because you didn't find yourself filled with classes or even teaching any holiday events for corporate teams in December, it doesn't mean that they weren't happening. And it certainly doesn't mean that there wasn't demand for it, but you've got to have a marketing strategy.
And I believe this so much that I actually created a small group coaching program called the Corporate Experience Collective and it's for people who have gone through Cooking Class Business School, and want to take corporate experiences to the next level.
I tell you this, not because I am advertising it as something for you to sign up for, but because I want you to know it is so important that I'm creating a special program around it so that people can take advantage of the opportunity. That's how much I believe in this part of our market.
Now my second prediction is that for public classes, teaching to a niche is going to be more important than ever before. I'm going to repeat that teaching to a niche will be more important than ever before.
I've been talking about niche marketing for a while now, and the importance of having a niche based on what you teach, who you teach, most likely a combination of both. The instructors who I've seen be most successful over the last few years were those who focused on a niche. That being said, you didn't necessarily have to have a niche to still successfully teach classes, especially back in 2020, but things are changing. Similar to the corporate environment, what worked in 2020 isn't going to work today and it probably didn't work out for you in 2021. So you've got to think about why would someone take your class? Especially today, as things begin to open up, hopefully they remain open and we're in a place when we're not dealing with a pandemic.
Back in 2020, there was nothing else for people to do. They were sitting at home, locked down and they didn't have anything outside of the home that was competing for their time. But today that's changing. Traditionally, when I talk about niche, I talk about how you stand out from other online cooking classes. Well, we have to take out a step further. Today your competition, isn't another online cooking class. It's all the other ways someone could learn to cook. Or even more, it's all the different ways that they can spend their spare time.
And so one thing to ask yourself is why would they actually take your online cooking class? It comes down to teaching something that they care about. And it usually has to help them with their health, their wealth, their relationships, or their interests. What are you going to teach them that's going to improve their health, help them save money, help them have better relationships, help them pursue their passions. Consider how you can do one of those things really, really well and hone in on that in your marketing messaging.
If you're listening to this and you're saying, well, Cynthia, I've been able to teach a range of topics to the masses. I'm going to say great. That has worked for you up until now, but unless you have a huge audience chances are you won't be able to continue that success in the future.
This is where I'm not going to sugar coat it. Okay. Whatever worked for you in 2020 is fantastic. But keep in mind that that was just a different time. We can't simply copy and paste our strategy from 2020 and 2021 and think that it's going to work in this coming year.
And finally, my third prediction is one that may sound like bad news, but it's actually a great opportunity. My prediction is that overall teaching competition is going to decrease. The number of culinary instructors out there who are teaching online is going to decline. Think again, back to 2020, practically anyone and everyone who had a Zoom account and had the guts to make it happen, they were hopping on the online cooking class train. Not everyone jumped right at it in the beginning, but by the end of the year come holiday season, there were a lot of people teaching online cooking classes .Now these are people who had jobs in restaurants, they were caterers who had events, they were teaching in-person classes all before COVID hit. So it led to this, I want to say almost artificially high supply of online cooking classes.
That being said, things have started to open up again, right? Restaurants are open, in person cooking classes are happening, events are happening, and with that, the people who are in those positions are going back to work in person. Naturally what's going to happen is that they are going to let that online culinary side of their business fade because it's a lot of work to do it all.
Teaching online is a very unique kind of business. There's a lot that you have to consider that's different than perhaps teaching in-person classes: how you develop your classes, how you market them, how you sell them. It's a completely different game. I've always said that your online culinary business needs an online culinary strategy. And it's true. You can't just take what you've done to grow your in-person cooking classes and hope that that works online because it doesn't.
So the fact that competition is going down, the fact that there are fewer people who are really going all in on this space, it means that there's opportunity for you. There are going to opportunities for people who are truly serious about teaching online and are willing to do the work to make it work. You've got to approach this as a business. Other people aren't going to do that. Other people have dropped off. They've quit and that's okay. Because teaching online, building an online business, it's not for everyone.
So if it's not for you, that's okay. But I will say that the fact that it's not for everyone and the fact that this work can scare a lot of people away, or perhaps it doesn't feel as comfortable as what they do in their quote unquote normal jobs. That's gonna opportunity for people like you who are serious about it and who are willing, like I said, to do the work to make it work.
So to recap, my third prediction is that overall teaching competition is going to decrease. There will be fewer online culinary instructors because of things reopening again. I think that is great news, because it will really allow the pros who are invested in this and who are truly building a business around this to really shine.
So that's it, my friends. Those are my top three predictions for 2022. Now I want to hear from you. What do you think the future has in store? Do you agree with my predictions or maybe have some of your own to share. Or do you completely disagree? I welcome all of your comments, so please go ahead and send me a DM on Instagram. You can find me @hiddenrhythm. I personally read and respond all of the messages, so don't be shy and say, hello.
Alright, now if this episode has you even more excited to invest in your online culinary business than you are in luck, because I've just opened the doors to my free Planning Potluck.
If you've been wanting to teach online, but perhaps feel like you don't have enough time to make it work or you're doubting whether or not you personally have what it takes, this workshop is for you. My Planning Potluck is a five day free online workshop and it begins on January 24th. All you need is 20 minutes a day and by the end of the five days, you are going to experience a shift in how you think about your business and take action. You'll also get to know other culinary pros and ask me questions live throughout the week. And of course, there will be prizes.
As I shared earlier, this year is a filled with opportunities to make money teaching online cooking classes. But it's not going to fall right into your lap. What worked in 2020 is not going to work in 2022. That is a fact. You need to have a strategy and a plan. So why try to reinvent the wheel when you can join in on the Planning Potluck and get that strong start to the new year with a community of people cheering you on.
Now is the time to make it happen. Don't let this be the moment that you look back on and wonder what if you had taken action today? You can join me by registering at planningpotluck.com.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. And until next week, get excited to get experiential.
