How to Make a Culinary Portfolio

Last Updated: December 2, 2022

If you are a culinary artist or student seeking a culinary job, a portfolio can help you showcase your accomplishments, promote your services or restaurant, find a position, and build an online presence. Upload your portfolio to your website to share information about your experience, including samples of past menus, photos of your food, recipes you've created, and any awards you've won or certifications you've earned. You can also include the services you offer and other pertinent information relating to your career as a chef. We'll help you create a one-of-a-kind portfolio to show off all of your hard work!

Steps

1
Think about the reasons why you are making a portfolio. Are you trying to get a job? Are you trying to promote your restaurant? Are you trying to promote your catering business? This will shape how the portfolio comes together.
2
Take a photo of yourself and plenty of pictures of your food. These should be high-quality photos that make you and your food shine. If you do not feel comfortable taking the photos yourself, you can have a friend or colleague do it for you or you can hire a professional photographer.

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3
Get copies of any menus you have designed. You will need to scan the menus page by page so they are in a digital format and can be used on your website. If you cannot do this task yourself, hire someone to do it for you.
4
Gather all the recipes you have developed. These can be recipes you created while in school or created for one of your signature menus. Your recipes will speak volumes about your cooking style and experience.^{[1]
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5
Look at your resume. You don't necessarily want to list your experience online exactly like in the resume. However, you do need to keep track of the jobs you've worked because you will need to list them on your culinary portfolio.
6
Write an autobiographic page that details who you are and what your style and philosophies are. This is a vital piece of your portfolio.^{[2]
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7
Write detailed information about the services you offer, so that customers will know what you are available for. This is a particularly important step if you are a chef looking for catering or private chef jobs.
8
Contact past clients and colleagues to get references to give to future customers.^{[3]
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9
Gather proof of any awards and certifications you have received. This can increase your marketability to potential customers.^{[4]
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10
Include your contact information on the website to enable potential employers and customers to reach you.
11
Build your portfolio website. There are 3 different ways you can go about doing this. You can build it yourself with basic website design software or HTML knowledge, you can hire a designer to work with you to create it, or you can use an online service designed specifically for building an online portfolio.

Community Q&A

Question

How do you use the standard recipe?

Community Answer

You just take that standard recipe and turn it into something fun. Have pictures and decorate your paper. You can also present it in a clean way and come off strong, but not too strict or too strong which would make it very serious and ruin the whole thing.