Cooking Up a New Biz While In Between Jobs

Editor's Note: This piece is part of a series about ways people generate extra income while working a regular job.

The entrepreneur: Emily Dellas, 27, had been looking for extra income as she mapped out a career change and hunted for a new job in a new city.

The business: Ms. Dellas operates First Class Cooking, teaching people in the San Francisco Bay area how to cook simple meals using fresh ingredients.

The idea: Ms. Dellas had taught friends in New York City to make home-cooked meals, and they began hosting group-effort dinner parties, with Ms. Dellas as the teacher. These informal get-togethers, she says, had shown her that there were plenty of people who wanted to learn practical cooking skills.

"What I learned was that their questions weren't: 'How do you cook this complicated meal?' " Ms. Dellas says. "The questions were more: 'Can you take me to grocery store and teach me how to shop?' "

As a child, she developed a passion for cooking and spent two seasons working on farms. Her job in New York also reinforced the importance of simple cooking and the need to get people into the kitchen, Ms. Dellas says. She worked in marketing on the Kraft Food account at Young & Rubicam Inc.'s Wunderman division (now part of the WPP Group PLC), on one of Kraft's magazines, Food & Family.

She'd left New York to pursue a career in nutrition advocacy in her hometown of San Francisco. She thought holding cooking classes in her home would be a fun way to earn extra money as she mapped out her next career move.

Getting started: The Friday before Labor Day 2004, she posted a listing on Craigslist.org for cooking classes and left for the weekend. When she returned, her ad had drawn dozens more responses than expected. She set to work on a menu and a class schedule, and First Class Cooking was born.

Despite the initial response, there were times that first month when she sometimes struggled to fill a class. "I would call up friends and ask them to attend," she says. "Even if I wasn't making any money on the class, it was better to have the class than not to."

That problem didn't last long. Through word of mouth, her classes soon were full, she says. Even so, Ms. Dellas says, until recently she assumed she would get a "real job" eventually.

"I just thought I would keep doing it on the side to supplement my income," Ms. Dellas says.

The business plan: The goal of the classes is to teach people to cook simple, fresh, delicious meals in a friendly, family-like atmosphere, Ms. Dellas says. To do this, she keeps the classes small -- eight to 10 people -- so that each student gets to participate. Once the cooking is over, the group shares the meal together.

Each week she holds four group classes open to the public and usually about one private group lesson. On average, a class -- including the meal -- costs $45 per person, although the price varies according to what's served, Ms. Dellas says.

Ms. Dellas spends a good portion of her time planning each session's menu and recipes, adjusting for what's in season. She says she hopes to write a cookbook of her simplified recipes. She would also like to develop a cooking starter kit, with a pan, knife and other kitchen essentials. "It would be designed for parents to buy their kids when they get their first apartment," says Ms. Dellas.

Beyond that, Ms. Dellas is keeping the door wide open. "I'm not saying the Food Network is going to call, but if they did, I wouldn't say no," Ms. Dellas says.

The pitfalls: Growth has had its challenges. Her house isn't commercially zoned. The success of the classes as a full-fledged business has her now looking for commercial space to hold her classes.

Saying "no" also has been difficult, Ms. Dellas says. She says she hates turning away people, but she's found she has no choice. Early on, she'd allow her classes to grow to beyond 10 people, but doing so limited students' participation. Teaching two classes a night proved too time consuming.

The payoff: Ms. Dellas says she has almost doubled her marketing salary, which she says was around $30,000 yearly. But the real payoff for her has been imparting her love of food to other people.

"I had a husband call me up the other day and tell me his wife was in tears because she was able to cook a whole dinner," Ms. Dellas says. "It's fun to see people get really excited about cooking."

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