College has been a bit of a difficult adjustment for my 17-year-old daughter, but she recently decided she needed a job and checked out the campus job bank. I think she motivated by the need for something to do more than the need for money, but I’m glad she’s working.
She got a job cooking supper each night for a divorced father of three. She also makes a snack for one of the kids to take to sports practice. The kids were apparently surviving on Ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
She calculated that she would need about 12 hours per week to do the job, with two hours of shopping and two hours a day of cooking. In fact, on days where she has had things to do she has managed to rush things and prepare dinner in an hour or less. A few days she has gone over two hours. They pay her $120 per week regardless of the number of hours worked, so in effect she is making more than $10 an hour, although that doesn’t include travel time. The family has repeatedly asked her to dine with them, but she says that feels that is an invasion of privacy so she declines.
The family is eating well, everything from Shrimp & Grits to barbecued chicken with corn-on-the-cobb. Today she texted me a photo of a homemade apple pie that she served last night. I am envious! Her employer said a neighbor might want to hire her for one or two days a week, which suggests that they must be happy with the food. DD’s dorm fridge has a 2.2 cu. ft. freezer, and her shared dorm area has a typical refrigerator with about 3-plus cu. ft., so I’m encouraging her to make up a bunch of casseroles that can be frozen and prepared on short notice, either for her currently employer or to sell. Apparently there is a market for food out there.
So to any of you who have kids that might be looking for a college job, this is something to consider. Obviously it helps if the parents have done a reasonable job in teaching the child to cook!
Kudos to your daughter!! Besides doing what she’s obviously good at and enjoys, she’s learning invaluable lessons in economics and time management.
(BTW, a former boss of mine, a senior marketing VP, quit corporate America and is now a private chef for three families who live in an exclusive resort town. She’s never been happier, and her business just keeps growing.)
She could also prepare a crockpot meal at the same time as a regular dinner, and have her clients plug it in in the morning if she can’t get there one night.
If she starts selling casseroles, beware of laws that might require a commercial kitchen.
My sons former girlfriend had a job cooking dinners for a family in their college town. She was into health foods and so were they. She would shop for the meals and cook several at their home at one time and place in their freezer for the family to defrost and heat later. It worked out well.
@cbreeze She might raise her rate at some point, but $10-12 an hour for a 17-year-old kid is good money in our neck of the woods. Don’t wanna kill the Golden Goose!
@twoinanddone@thumper1 My daughter has no intention to go into the frozen food business. Anything she does will be by word of mouth, and she will likely deliver the casserole and perhaps stick it in the oven. So hopefully she won’t have any problem. The Deep South isn’t highly regulated.
YOU have done a very good job in teaching her how to cook. My S was the only one who knew much about cooking among his group of friends. He tired of being the chef for every camping trip and cabin stay after a while. The crock pot idea is a good one.
Another is to pull those kids in to the kitchen and teach them to cook, perhaps increasing her hours, but giving them a badly needed skill. Cooking skills are fun for kids to learn, and badly needed if the parents don’t know their way around a kitchen, or are too busy.
@EarlVanDorn, clearly I haven’t had enough coffee this morning. I read your title about “cooking” then skimmed through your post and saw mention of a “bank” and the “need for money” and wondered why so many people thought that was a good thing. Then I realized you meant she was cooking dinner, not books.
That’s a terrific job. Good for your daughter for lining up work that she enjoys so much. She’s probably wise not to stay for dinner. She won’t be at college forever and she doesn’t want her eventual departure to be more difficult than it needs to be.
This is so cool. It is something I could have done in the 70’s if I had ever thought about it.
I did work 15 hours a week in the Alumni Office so her hours seem reasonable but her work way more fun.
Still, I am a huge fan of freezing casseroles and planning ahead. Maybe a few days
a month she could spend a Saturday or a longer day making things for the freezer.
That way when she needs to study for an exam or write a paper she know that her job is completed.
Also, doing big shops on a more infrequent basis.
I love the idea of teaching the kids a few basic skills.
Cool daughter and cool you.
@sorghum First, my daughter is judgment-proof, as she has no net worth. Second, failure to be properly certified as a commercial food preparer in no way increases the chance that one’s customers might get food poisoning.
I dealt with our local health department over my fraternity’s kitchen, and they threatened to shut us down because the little squirt hose that was used to wash plates was hung upside down when not in use. They wanted it hung the other way, so we had to spend hundreds of dollars, and thousands of dollars over all. I would say the chance that someone would contract food poisoning from the way we were doing things versus the way the health department insisted that we do things to be about a million to one.
I wasn’t really referring to your daughter’s situation, just to the general litigiousness or lack thereof of the people of the Deep South.
A commercial kitchen should have procedures in place to minimize the food safety risks, and anyway they should also have insurance. Maybe, your daughter being under 18, your net worth, which I suspect is considerable, would be at risk?
I live in the deep south. My parents used to make jams to sell out of their home. In the commercial kitchen in their basement that was inspected by a health inspector regularly.
Don’t perpetuate the stereotypes about the south that already are rampant on CC. The deep south has health regulations just like other states.