Ways To Get Paid To Eat In 2024– Make Money By Eating

All the photos on social media and all the food blogs prove that foodies are taking over the world.

If you’re a fan of fast food, street food, or gourmet food prepared by Michelin-starred chefs in Michelin-starred restaurants, you probably wish someone would pay you to eat what’s best.

Well, now you can!

Today, let’s look at a few ways you can get paid to enjoy food.

8 Ways to Get Paid to Eat in 2024

1. Join Restaurant Mystery Shopper Agencies

Restaurants, bars, ice cream shops, and other places that sell food want to ensure that their workers are doing their jobs right and following the company’s rules.

In this case, mystery shoppers are sent by mystery shopping agencies to the restaurant to order food, inquire about services, and complete any other tasks they have been assigned.

You will have to take photos and videos, send receipts, fill out a survey, or just fill out a report form and send it to the agency. The agency will then send the results to the restaurant owner.

Remember that the agency will pay you directly, not the owners of the places you’ve visited.

How much can you earn?

You’ll get to eat out for free as a “mystery shopper” for the food business.

In some cases, this also includes all of your drinks. If you work in a hotel restaurant, you usually get to stay for free at the hotel.

But some mystery shopping companies will pay you extra money on top of the free food, drinks, and hotel stay.

Mystery Shopping in Restaurants: Where to Find It?

If you are new to this industry, don’t miss MSPA Americas and learn everything you can about mystery shopping.

This site also has a marketplace and a job board, where you can look for jobs.

Survey Junkie

At Survey Junkie, you can be an influencer and work directly with brands to help them shape their products while getting paid.

Every time a member does an activity, they get extra points. Then, they can use these points to get gift cards or cash through PayPal.

The points you earn with Survey Junkie never expire, so it’s worth joining just to see what offers you can get.

2. Food Testing is an Exciting Career Opportunity

Food tasting is a bit more complicated than secret shopping in restaurants.

As a mystery shopper, you get to see how food is handled or served, how well customer service is kept up, and how the venue looks from your point of view.

Almost anyone can become a “mystery shopper,” as long as they live near where the job is.

Food testers, on the other hand, need to be able to recognize tastes and smells, not have any food allergies, and be able to describe the food as clearly and accurately as possible. Food testers must also be over 18 and live close to the place where they test the food.

How much can you earn?

Food tasting and testing aren’t common part-time jobs, but if you see sites that invite people regularly, you might be able to find them. Usually, these jobs don’t pay cash, but instead, give you points that you can trade in for gift cards.

There are more full-time food tester jobs, and they go by a lot of different names, like “food taster”, “sensory panelist,” “food scientist,” “sensory tester,” and many more. Keep an eye out for these jobs on job boards like Indeed.com.

If you get a full-time job as a food tester, you might make between $16 and $20 an hour and have fun tasks like trying out frozen food throughout the day.

3. Eat Out and Earn Cashback

You can earn cashback in a lot of different ways.

From buying groceries online and trading in your receipts to using cash-back cards to get 1% of your total bill back when you eat out, you’ll be surprised by how much money you’ll either make or save.

If you’re new to the world of cashback, you might feel overwhelmed by how many food-related rebates you can take advantage of.

Download a cash-back app like Ibotta and check it out before you decide where to eat out to keep things simple and organized.

Here are some more apps you can download to get money back when you eat out:

• Dosh
• Mogl
• Gambeal
• Neighborhood Nosh
• Seated
• Drop – points can be converted to cash or gift cards for many other brands besides restaurants

4. Become a Member of Food-Based Studies

I’ve talked about online research studies before, but in this case, I’m talking about studies about food.

For example, people in Southern California were asked to take part in a 6-month study about the benefits of eating an avocado every day.

Universities often do this kind of research, so stay up-to-date on local news and universities near you.

5. Review Restaurants and Earn Money

If you’re good at writing and like trying new things, you can get paid to review restaurants and eat well at the same time.

An official food critic goes to several restaurants, orders their specialties, eats them all, and then writes a review of the food, the service, and the atmosphere.

Remember that critic reviews can make or break a restaurant, so make sure to go there more than once and write a review that is as detailed, fair, and informative as possible.

As a freelancer, you can do this. Start a blog and use it to make money from your reviews. If your reputation grows, you may be contacted by bigger publishers, and you may be published in blogs, newspapers, magazines, and travel guides.

6. Take Part in Competitive Eating

Competing in eating is not for people who are easily scared. It is a real event—some might even call it a sport—in which people train for months to increase the amount of food they can eat and how fast they can eat it.

On the bright side, you get tonnes of food for free. On the other hand, you must eat all of this food at once.

As well as ribs, oysters, hotdogs, ribs, jalapenos, strawberry shortcake, poutine, and many more foods, people compete to consume the most.

The fees of up to $10,000 for a day or two of competition make the “sport” appealing, despite the obesity promotion and risks like weight gain, heart attacks, and choking.

7. Become a Camera Person and Get Paid to Eat

This trend started in Korea and is called “mukbang,” which comes from two Korean words that mean “eat” and “broadcast.”

In a mukbang, someone eats a lot of food while talking to people online and streaming the whole thing live.

The video eating trend is spreading quickly across the globe, and you can even get paid to do it.

One of the most well-known Korean mukbang eaters was TV Diva, whose real name is Park Seo-Yeon. On camera, she has eaten four boxes of pizza and 3 kilos of beef.

She has since retired, but people say that when she was working, she spent more than $3,000 a month on food but made at least $10,000 a month just from her broadcasts.

Alternatively, you may prefer eating smaller portions of mukbang called sosik mukbang if you don’t like this much food.

You can do the same as The Diva by broadcasting your meals regularly on live streaming platforms like Twitch, Facebook Live, Instagram Live, or YouTube Live.

Every platform has its own rules about how to make money, so learn how to do it right.

8. Become a Recipe Tester and Earn Money

Before a restaurant puts out a new dish or a chef or celebrity puts out a cookbook, the recipes need to be tested to make sure that if someone follows the recipe to the letter, they will end up with a tasty dish.

A recipe tester makes the recipe exactly as it is written in the instructions. This means that they gather the ingredients, measure them exactly, and cook them in the exact order, way, and temperature that are written.

Then, they carefully write down the time it takes to make the dish, any changes that could be made to the ingredients, measurements, and steps, and give feedback to the person who made the recipe.

First, get your resume together by going to America’s Test Kitchen and testing recipes for them for free. Also, ask your favorite food bloggers or authors of cookbooks if they can help.

Then you can start looking for clients, like restaurant chefs, food scientists, and food writers, who will pay you for your knowledge and experience.

It might take a while before you get paid, but once you get paying clients, you’ll get paid well, and it could turn into a full-time job.

Quick Links

• How Much Do Food Bloggers Actually Make ?
• The Definitive Guide To Create Online Courses
• How To Get Paid To Drink Wine And Test Alcohol

Conclusion- How To Get Paid To Eat in 2024?

Did it surprise you at all to learn that there are ways to get paid to eat?

Of course, these aren’t the only traditional jobs that have to do with food. A chef, a food scientist, or a food buyer are just a few examples. You’d get paid more, but to be successful, you’d have to study more and get formal training.

What’s holding you back? Go out and start getting paid to eat!

Note- All image credits to pixabay.com.