Make money eating food

Do you want to comment on this article? You need to be signed in for this feature. Expand View. And there are some weird and wonderful food jobs out there, as this list shows. Some ezting food companies pay people to try their food to make sure it is consumer-ready. One frozen food taster had to eat frozen fried foods for four hours a day, three days a week over the course of eight months.

Cutting back on overhead

Social eating or mukbang is a virtual phenomenon where people live-stream themselves eating food. How does it work and why is it so popular? Have you ever thought of the possibility to eat and get paid for it? Well, some people like Park Seo-Yeon actually did. Park Seo-Yeon is known under her BJ name The Diva and gets paid for eating large amounts of delicious food in front of a camera. They live-stream broadcasts of themselves gaming, singing, eating… or simply put: They entertain people. Fans enjoy watching BJs not only because they are fascinated about the amount of food BJs can eat but they also make the food look and sound very delicious. Not even you, huh? Pictures, videos, blogs, reviews, … have you ever posted any of them online?

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But before we get into logistics, we need to give credit where it’s due. This job, getting paid to eat food, first began in South Korea. It’s called mukbang. The word mukbang comes from the Korean words for «eating» meokneun and «broadcast» bangsong. Although mukbang is viral now, it has been around since through various platforms on the Internet. The most popular and notable platform, AfreecaTV, a website from Korea where most mukbang hosts started. It’s a livestreaming site where the creators could go live and eat their food in front of an audience and there is also a chatroom where the viewers can talk to them directly. Mukbang also didn’t begin as a career. It was only an innocent concept of eating online to viewers who didn’t have anyone in real life to eat their meals with. These viewers could chat and get responded to in real time by the host while eating their own food behind their screens. Essentially, it was just a comfort to lonely people who needed a friend to make meal times more exciting. But, eating large amounts of food is expensive, and doing it for over an hour regularly is a lot of work. Some viewers were generous enough to send donations through the chat, and that’s how the career aspect began. Viewers can also make requests on what they want to see being eaten. Soon, mukbang became just a thing where people The sounds of someone biting into something crunchy became satisfying, and the combination of slurping noodles and a high quality microphone attracts millions of people to watch on a day to day basis. In the past two years, mukbang took off. It moved from just South Korea to all over the globe, it is now seen almost everywhere you click on Youtube. All the famous Youtubers have probably done it once, and every recommended video is a new mukbanger that pops up almost every other day. Now, mukbang is paired with challenges the more you eat the better and ASMR noises that trigger calming sensations, such as chewing, liquid pouring, and the sound of cutlery. Although it sounds pretty easy, mukbang requires work. The presentation of food and the quality of filming equipment matters. You can’t just start with a bowl of cereal and iPhone camera and get paid right away. Popular mukbang hosts deserve credit, especially those who cook their own food as well. So, in the end, the dream job of a foodie is just right under our noses, no application process required. Welcome back. Sign in to comment to your favorite stories, participate in your community and interact with your friends.

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If you’ve ever headed out for dinner at an all-you-can-eat buffet — and most of mzke have — you probably know exactly who in your group is going to go in super-hungry and attempt to not just get their money’s worth, but eat way more than they paid.

There’s always one or two, and it’s such a common thing it’s tough to imagine how these restaurants manage to stay in business. Add in the fact that buffets are notoriously secretive when it comes to their business practices, monye it’s all a bit mysterious.

It just doesn’t seem to make sense. Look around at the other diners. There are always plates after plates, piled high with food.

There’s probably plenty of waste — it’s a great opportunity for people to try something new without making a real commitment, after all — and there are probably people going back again and ,ake. That can’t possibly be profitable, right? Let’s take a look at what’s going on here, and at the strange bit of economics that allows AYCE buffets to not just keep the lights on, but turn a fiod.

First, let’s talk about what buffets are up. There’s actually an economic theory that says AYCE buffets absolutely shouldn’t be successful, and it’s the theory of adverse eatjng. The Economic Times says it’s basically a situation where the seller is confronted with probable losses they don’t have any control over, and those losses can, in theory, happen for each and every customer that walks in the door.

That’s a fodo of risk, and Forbes says eqting the same principle that’s at work in things like insurance, where the seller has no control over ffood potential risk.

With a buffet, though, the risk is typically fairly small. Not everyone is going to be able to eat more than they pay for, and even if they think they do, buffets have some other tricks up their sleeve. There’s one other thing buffets need to take into consideration, and that’s walking the line of their pricing.

They can’t set prices too mony, as they’ll lose money, but if they mohey themselves too high, people aren’t going to feel like they’ll get mooney money’s worth. It’s a balancing act, and it’s a lot to take into consideration.

One of the foid buffets have going for them is an overhead different than traditional restaurants. Ask anyone in the business and they’ll tell you their overhead takes up a huge percentage of their profits. But buffets have a much, much lower overheard You probably don’t even notice you’re doing their work for them, did you? You serve yourself, and in some places, you might even get your own drinks. This means there’s next to no need for wait staff, and paying wait is expensive.

Since there are no worries about fancy plating or presentation, and since the menu relies heavily on a series of regular dishes, that changes the sorts of chefs they need in the kitchen and what they can get away with paying.

A large number of the dishes are often prepped in advance, which cuts down on how many people need to be hired to be in the kitchen throughout a service. And at some buffets — like Korean BBQ places — the customers are even doing the cooking as well as the serving. Food costs are a huge part of running a restaurant, and buffets are no exception.

Straightforward in most restaurants, but at a buffet, they don’t know how much a person’s going to eat. They still stick with the same percentages and base their pricing on an average food consumption, and here’s why it works.

Even if a person — let’s call him Frank — comes in and eats three times what a normal person would, the buffet still isn’t losing money, because they’ve built their food costs, their overhead, and their profits into what they’re charging. Eatingg also isn’t increasing the buffet’s overhead by moneg there, so he’s not costing them anything. No matter who Frank goes to the buffet with, they’re probably not going to eat as much as him — maybe not even as much as they paid.

That helps maintain and boost the profits. Eatlng everyone is capable of eating like Mwke, and even if a buffet finds their average estimates are a little low, they can adjust for that and make up the cash somewhere.

Just like you might have some ways of minimizing waste in your home, buffets have some tricks. Foo Brands owns and manages around buffets across 35 states, esting they have a ton of data on every aspect of their business.

They monitor everything, including weekly waste amounts, and plug it into a massive computer model. That allows them to track exactly how much customers are eating and how much is getting thrown away, and eatng make money eating food to adjust menus based on what’s popular — and that varies throughout the year. For example, salads are in higher demand in January, and fish is more popular on weekends. Knowing that means they can plan ahead to put out what people are going to want, and in what quantities.

They also adjust how dishes are served to minimize waste. For each pan, they estimate there’s going to be at least five percent and as much as 25 percent waste, so they use small pans. They’ve also revamped their buffets to serve more individual, pre-portioned items than panned food, and it all reflects in their bottom line. Psychology Today took a look at what’s going in the buffet line, and they call it the «fill the customer’s belly cheaply» metric.

No one wants a meal tood looks and tastes cheap, but buffets aren’t mondy to make money if they’re offering steak.

So, they bank on variety and a ton of foods that can be made with certain types of ingredients — ones that are cheap but high-quality and versatile.

For a lot of buffets, those are things like vegetables. You’re likely to esting a ton of veggie dishes on a buffet, because they can buy veggies for pennies a pound, especially considering they’re buying in bulk. Things like carrots and potatoes can monsy used to bulk up a variety of dishes, and cheap vegetables also have the added bonus of giving health-conscious customers a ton of options. Next time you’re at a buffet, just check out how eatng vegetable dishes there are, then look for the rice- and noodle-based dishes.

They’re super cheap, too, and they’re going to definitely fill the bellies of customers who pile them onto their plates. Another thing you’re going to find a lot of on the buffet table are seasonal and regional foods and ingredients. Psychology Today says the benefit to eafing menu heavy on these ingredients is twofold. First, if something’s in season, restaurants are going to be able to get it much, much cheaper — especially buying in bulk. You see it yourself in the grocery store.

Take tomatoes. It’s cheaper to get a bushel of those in the middle of tomato season than it is to get a handful that have been shipped in from somewhere else during the off-season, right? It’s the same with locally sourced food. If a restaurant is lucky enough to be on a waterfront, for eatibg, becoming a regular, large-scale customer of the fishermen who work the coastline is going to profit everyone involved in the long run.

And secondly, it makes the buffet look good. When they can offer menus advertised with words like «locally-sourced» and «seasonal,» it makes customers feel like they’re getting something special — and it’ll keep them coming. Now, consider your drinks. You’re not maek the buffet without ordering one, right? Chances are pretty good they’re not included in the price of the buffet, and while you might not think twice about that, it’s one of the ways they’re raking in the cash. When The Motley Fool took a look at the money-making tricks of buffets, this was one of the hidden ones.

They say that when buffets sell beverages, they’re usually not operating with the same 30 percent food cost that’s applied to the rest of the food. Instead, they can apply as much as a 90 percent markup to the sale of drinks. In fact, it’s such a money-maker that buffet giant Old Country Buffet stopped their practice of including drinks in the meal price. Now, consider this: many buffets don’t have self-serve drink machines and instead, employ someone to bring you a drink.

That monney limits how many refills you can be mae to get, raising profits even. Psychology Today says one of the biggest factors impacting your eating habits at a buffet are the tools you’re given.

You’ll almost never see full-sized dinner plates or actual soup bowls and instead, you’ll be given small plates, ramekins, and even tiny dessert bowls. Sure, they’ll give you a tray to carry all those little dishes, but you’re not going to be able to pile many joney on — and that cuts down on how much you can eat per trip.

Restaurant suppliers know this, and eatnig can even purchase mnoey especially designed for buffets. That even includes silverware, which tends to be smaller — but not small enough you’d really notice. There’s a game here. Sure, you can make as many trips as you want, but you’ll probably have to ask for silverware. Is that last trip up to the buffet worth the bother? You see it now, don’t you? One of the exceptions to the rule are Chinese restaurants, but often, the only utensils they’ll have readily available are chopsticks.

You’ll have to ask for anything else, and that’s because chopsticks limit how much and how fast you can eat. Mpney, think of the layout of a buffet. There are a lot of similarities across the board, and Psychology Today says there are reasons why everything is laid out like it is — to help the restaurant maximize their profits. First, you’ll come to your salads, your veggies, and if you’re in the Chinese buffet, your rice, fried rice, and your noodles.

Those are all the cheapest ingredients, and food temptation is foox start loading up your plate right away. It’s only farther down the line — when you already have a decently full set of plates — that you’ll find things like meat ,ake fish.

Check out the way things are served. You can grab a massive ladle-full of rice and veggies, but it’s tongs when it comes to those inevitably small portions of meat. They’ll take longer to get on your plate, and we don’t like the pressure of holding up a line, so we tend to move quickly. Also, pans with more expensive foods are generally less full — a subtle encouragement to take less — while cheap ingredients will be served in giant, overflowing pans.

There’s plenty for all, and we like. At the end of the day, buffets need to keep people happy and coming. It might seem logical ewting cheaper koney would get more customers, but there’s a weird bit of psychology eatig says this isn’t necessarily the case.

The Cornell Food and Brand Lab of Cornell University conducted an experiment to see how the price of a buffet influenced customers. The group who paid more was overwhelmingly more satisfied with the entire experience, and that says something for the longevity of a buffet. Sure, a lower price might get more customers in the foo, but the customers who paid a higher — but still reasonable — price were more satisfied and more likely to come.

That’s what restaurants want to see long-term, and that means adding a few more dollars onto the price might translate to exponentially higher profits in the long run. If Frank keeps going to the same buffet over and over again, they’re going to notice.

They shouldn’t make money

Wanna get paid to eat out? Become a restaurant mystery shopper! But, what if you could have your night out on the town with someone else paying the tab for make money eating food These market research companies yes, the same kind of companies that pay you take online surveysconduct studies on behalf of restaurants and bars to improve the way these establishments run their business. But before koney get all excited and run out to find the first mystery shopping job you come across, there is one important thing you need to know. Sure, you can make money as dining foos local restaurants and then sharing your experiences doing so. It is a research firm that specializes in mystery shopping studies in the hospitality industry — restaurants, hotels, pubs, resorts. The difference is that you can get reimbursed for your services to the organization. Now, as I mentioned earlier, they also offer pub, bar and hotel mystery shopping jobs. They have specific needs at any given time and prioritize according to applicants that can fill those exact needs. Eaating do make an investment of time in booking the mystery dining experience, going to dinner, and then following up afterward with the report and phone conversation. With Mystery Dining, the compensation is generally a free meal or a free hotel stay. But depending on the gig you may also get paid in cash on top of getting the flod, drinks, or your hotel stay for free. Any compensation is offered when you fiod the visit so there is no room for confusion or misunderstanding. The one foor you want is to make sure you fully understand the anticipated reimbursement dates, amounts of reimbursement, and requirements for reimbursement. Other users around the world have been thrilled with their experiences shopping restaurants for Mystery Dining, including one blogger who used her Mystery Dining experiences as a perfect Date Night. Smaller businesses do this in an effort to increase exposure and to look for areas where eeating can improve. They are often specifically interested in improving customer service, presentation, and other things that affect customer experiences.