Where are the big bucks in cooking?

[johnsmith45678]

Where do you think the biggest bucks are in cooking? Is it:

- Authoring a cookbook or other food-related book?

- Having a TV show?

- Having your own restaurant(s)?

- Having your own product line? (food, knives, etc.)

I'd say there are many more cook book authors than anybody else on the list -- any idea how lucrative cookbook authoring is? I'd suspect most authors don't earn enough to quit their jobs.

Of course many people do more than one on the list, and they very likely create synergy (TV publicity feeds book sales, etc.): Rachael Ray does 1 and 2 (not sure if she's ever done 3 or 4); Batali -- 1-3 (not aware of 4); Puck -- 1-4 but seemingly very little of 2; Ramsay -- 1-3 -- VERY big on 2, though certainly no slouch on 1 and 3; and there are many others.

And of course, it's probably next to impossible to do any on the list without toiling away on salary for years.

[SuzySushi]

(I can hear the uproarious laughter now....)

[johnsmith45678]

Yeah yeah, I'll try to think of them when I'm extraordinarily wealthy!

Also, I can't help but thinking that Alton Brown's Good Eats body of work will be worth a gold mine to him (can you say syndication?) -- not bad for somebody who's hardly cooked professionally (i.e. restaurant).

[johnsmith45678]

Here's Forbes' list of the 400 richest Americans, filtered to the food industry:

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/54/biz_06...Food_8Rank.html

Founders of Subway, Mars, Wrigley, ...

Top "chefs":

http://www.forbes.com/2006/06/12/06celebri...-list_land.html

R Ray $6M

Puck $16M

Emeril $10M

Batali $5M

Bourdain $100M (just kidding But he's probably not doing bad.)

No Gordon Ramsay?!?

[kutsu]

Gordon isn't American?

[docsconz]

Both rachel ray and Mario Batali have their own cookware lines. I would think that tv is where it is at, at least as far as money. Except for the hit restaurant everything else spins off of that.