How to become a Retreat Chef

Jennifer Earle  

Hi, I am joined today by Bettina Campolucci-Bordi, who is an incredible chef, food writer, podcast host, and many other things. Just a queen on social media too. So I wanted to chat with Bettina because she has so many different strings to her bow. She has been in the industry – in the food industry – for a long time. And I particularly wanted to pick her brain about being a retreat chef, which is how you started your food industry? 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Pretty much, yeah. 

Jennifer Earle  

Bettina runs Bettina’s Kitchen Academy, which teaches people how to be a retreat chef. So we’re upstairs from the Academy right now. And I’ve just been teaching the chocolate session. So obviously, I am slightly biassed that the course is amazing, because I’m one of the teachers. But it really is incredible. And I think like a must do. if you think that becoming a retreat chef, is going to be a great way for you to earn income and a living and a life. I think it sounds amazing from everything I hear. So first though, let’s talk a little bit about you. So how long have you been working in food?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

I’ve been working in food since I was 15. But not cooking. I was always  in food and beverage and sort of Front of House waitressing, that sort of thing. 

Jennifer Earle  

Yeah. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

And then 10 years, actually cooking, which is what I wanted to do, right from the get go. But then my parents were like, Yeah, you’re not doing any chef training. So the closest I could get to that was doing Hotel Management, which sort of,

Jennifer Earle  

For your degree? You did a degree like studies in Hotel Management.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yep. So then I did lots of food and beverage, basically. And so I decided to cook.

Jennifer Earle  

How did you sneak into the kitchen then?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

I snuck into the kitchen, by cofounding retreats. 10 years ago. 

Jennifer Earle  

Wow. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

And I was like, great. I’d like to run them. But I’d also like to cook on them. And this might be a really good opportunity to get into the kitchen. Did my first retreat, absolutely loved it. I was like, great, I can actually earn money cooking, which is my passion. That’s it. I kind of banana slid into it.

Jennifer Earle  

I love it. So you actually hadn’t done any chef’s training?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

No, lots of cooking. From a really early age. But oh, and actually in, in Hotel Management. University, the way it works is – or the uni that I went to – was you do six weeks of actual stuff, like you’ll do six weeks in the kitchen, six weeks front of house, six weeks of housekeeping.  So you get to experience it?  Exactly, and then you do six weeks of theory.

Jennifer Earle  

if you’re bossing them around you at least like exactly what it’s like to be in their shoes exactly, can be empathetic. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

So that was pretty good. But yeah, other than that, I didn’t do any formal training.

Jennifer Earle  

I love that. And that is particularly why I wanted you on because I think some people see food, and they’re not really sure what to do in food. Like when I, I had never heard of the word food buyer before, like, well, after I graduated university, and I was like, oh my god, I love buying food. That sounds amazing. Yeah. And I think people just need their eyes open to like, so many different pathways in the food industry. And I love that people can come to your Chef’s Academy, to without knowing how to cook. I mean, they ideally know how to cook, but

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

They have to have passion for food, but they don’t have to be professional at all.

Jennifer Earle  

You don’t have to work doing…  Sometimes it’s actually better.  Really?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Because they don’t have bad habits that they need to sort of get rid of.

Jennifer Earle  

Interesting! Have you got an example of a bad habit? 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Um, I just think with retreat cheffing in particular, you have to be really flexible. And with some chefs, if it’s not just like “that”, or if there’s not that type of equipment. Or if you can’t find an ingredient. It’s like, “oh my gosh, what am I going to do?”  Whereas with retreat cheffing you don’t know what type of venue you’re gonna you’re gonna rock up to. You don’t… sometimes I’ve ended up in countries where they produce cashew nuts, for example, but you get to Costa Rica, and there’s not a cashew in sight, because they’re all for export. So you’ve got to be really flexible, and you kind of have to be good in a crisis. I guess chefs are going to be good in a crisis. It’s just it’s different. It’s a different type of industry. So that’s why people come to me.

Jennifer Earle  

Yeah.  Because that’s, that’s what I love, though, that I think that it’s really important to know if you’re choosing what you want to do in any industry, like, if you’re trying to make a living, then it’s important to consider what things you like doing, like whether you like being around people or not, and whether you like problem solving, or whether you like to have, you know, routines… all those things matter. Like, I could never be a chocolatier because I’m not tidy enough and don’t like doing the same things over and over. I think even though you also need to be creative to be a chocolatier because you’re ideally coming up with new recipes, you aren’t making if you get big, you’re making a lot of the same.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Exactly.

Jennifer Earle  

And so what are the things if somebody is thinking, “Oh, that sounds interesting to be retreat chef.”. What kind of personality traits or like interests or skills do you think people should have? Being good in a crisis?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Got to be good in a crisis. Got to have good attitude. Because anything can sort of happen. Yeah, calm and collected.

Jennifer Earle  

Because it would not be good for somebody who kind of moved through the world with fairly high functioning anxiety then. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yeah, that’s probably not very helpful. You’ve got to be really good with budgets. You’ve got to be really good with working in a team and with new people that you don’t know. Sometimes your kitchen teams don’t speak a word of English. If you’re doing well, overseas retreats like I do, so

Jennifer Earle  

You speak several languages. So there’s probably a language you can communicate in?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yeah, well, sort of. I guess food is a universal language, but calm and collected, I think good attitude, being flexible. You know, being curious and loving food and ingredients, of course. And I guess the one thing: it is long hours, I mean, lots of people think, oh, my gosh, I’m going to become a retreat chef and travel the world and see lots of things. And, you know, you spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Yeah, and it’s one of the most… it’s really hard work, but it’s also really gratifying when you’ve been through a week and your group. And you’ve taken people on this food journey with a beginning, a middle and an end, and they absolutely love it. Or if you’ve had this food exchange with a local team, and they’ve learned lots of skills from you, and then they can take those on, become better at what they do. And there’s this whole food and cultural exchange that happens, which is really beautiful. So it’s very gratifying. Yeah, it’s hard work. Like don’t get disillusioned. 

Jennifer Earle  

Yeah, I think anything good is hard work. But I think that’s there’s that disconnect, when you see oh, I can go to Thailand, join a yoga retreat and just do the cooking. It’s like “just doing the cooking” is meals and snacks and lots of preparation in between and managing all the people who are helping with you, if you’ve even got people helping you to do all the tidying up and figuring out you’ve got everything for the future days, as well. So I can definitely see that that’s required someone with a level of organisation that that satisfaction of constantly cooking for the same people, like I know a lot of chefs, it’s really important to them, and being able to see the people who eat their food. So they first of all the restaurants where they might have regulars and things but to actually be cooking for the same group the whole way through would be very cool.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yeah, it’s great. You take people on a journey, which is amazing.

Jennifer Earle  

So most of what you do is plant based. The amount of ingredients that Bettina teaches people how to use and all the different creative ways. So the cheeses that you make out of different nuts and all different milks, and then breads and different cakes or different things like it’s just tofu making from scratch. Like it’s a really, really intense Seven Day Course, which allows for options depending on where they are in the world, being able to create things and that… that toolkit to pull from, to be able to work with whatever’s around you. So yeah, if you’re somebody who like really thrives on variety, like I can see it just been an amazing, amazing job.  So what you can you tell us a bit about what else that you do? So you run The Retreat Chef Academy? You’ve written three books.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yes, three cookbooks, three book babies.

Jennifer Earle  

You have a real human baby. Well, child!

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yes. A real human. Happy Vegan Food, Seven Day Vegan Challenge and the latest one, Celebrate. They’re all plant based. The last one, the first two are vegan and gluten free. Or I prefer the word plant based. And the latest one actually contains flour, which was interesting because I spent many years not working with flour, and I’ve kind of included it into my repertoire again, just to sort of broaden the audience and have both options. What else do I do? The Retreat Chef Academy runs between two to four times a year, obviously with what’s been going on for the last two years, I have been sort of touch and go and then I also run wellness retreats. I do one in Bali, which is amazing. That’s my favourite one. And then I also collaborate and freelance with a company called Reclaim Yourself. There are the weird and wonderful ones that I do in places like Mongolia. We’re doing Ecuador and India this year. And I’ve done retreats in Iceland Zanzibar, Azuls, all over the place.

Jennifer Earle  

It does sound very sexy.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yes, very sexy. 

Jennifer Earle  

Presumably you can add on like another week afterwards?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yes. You know, I mean, husband and daughter are allowing, but usually on the Bali one, my daughter and my husband come out, and then we spend an additional three weeks there, which is nice.  I make sure that it kind of falls into her holidays. 

Jennifer Earle  

Yeah. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

And then the Mongolia one, they come as well. So they my daughter’s nine now. So…

Jennifer Earle  

Perfect, she can help out!

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

..sshe can kind of come along, or at least be there after we’ve done the retreats, which is nice.

Jennifer Earle  

 That’s really nice. I’m looking forward to doing more travel.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Me too. Oh my god, I’ve missed it.

Jennifer Earle  

Yeah, I know it’s hard when it’s part of your life and then it hasn’t been for a while.  If someone, obviously apart from just signing up for your course, which I really think ,would recommend, I have two questions. One, like what would you say are the things that people need to think about? Like, where would they start if they wanted to do this? Like, what kind of networks would be helpful? Would it be useful to like, go spend some time in kitchens or? And then the other question is, how much money would they need to get started? Like, do they need a bank loan? Or can you kind of really bootstrap into becoming a retreat chef.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Oh, my gosh, you can really just start. So I guess, the Academy is a great start, because you walk away with something that’s tangible, you walk away with a menu.  Yeah, it’s a… so you, the project is creating a menu with a budget and with an ingredients list, so you kind of leave with that. And then also, what we do is we place students in job opportunities. So actually, a lot of the graduates, a few of them, then end up trialling with Reclaim Yourself, or I get quite a lot of requests for retreats that I don’t do because I don’t travel as much as I used to. And then we’ll place different students in different situations. And there’s also an opportunity: Jules, that runs reclaim yourself does an NHS retreat, which is on a volunteer basis. So we trial the Academy students from the NHS retreat, because it is an actual retreats. And then from there, they can get picked to do different retreats as well.

Jennifer Earle  

And so could somebody without doing your retreat, if they weren’t sure yet if that’s what they wanted to do, could they go in like just like shadow? I guess you could pay to go on a retreat, and then spend some time in the kitchen? To chat to chat to the people. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yeah.

Jennifer Earle  

Hopefully listening to this podcast will give you an idea of whether it’s something that would be worth investing your time into. Do they need to buy equipment as well?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Not a lot of equipment at all. We go through all of that during the course. You could, you could make back your investment by working on two jobs, basically, you’ll be able to make back what you’ve invested in terms of equipment and the course.

Jennifer Earle  

And so, if you, you know, if there was enough demand for retreats out there that you could sign up, would you feasibly be able to do like one a month? Like 12 a year?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yeah, I mean. 

Jennifer Earle  

Or do people do more?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yeah, if this is what you want to do. And you can definitely do one a month. And I think what’s happening at the moment is that the wellness industry is absolutely booming. Yeah, comparatively to what it was, like 10 years ago, when I was starting out, there was a handful of retreats that were well known. So it was kind of easy to stand out. Whereas now so many yoga teachers, people that are trainers, there’s, I mean, there’s a retreat for everything that’s writing retreats, there are bootcamp retreats, 

Jennifer Earle  

Okay, so the people that they hired weren’t up to standard?  Yeah, that’s true.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

there’s, like, coaching retreats. So there seems to be a much bigger need for chefs on these retreats, which is great. This is such a niche thing that I’ve decided to do. And the reason it was sort of born was because lots of the people I used to cook for would message me and go, “Oh, my God, this has happened, or that’s happened.” And I’m like, “is your chef not doing this? Or is your chef not doing that?” Yeah, like oh my gosh, surely they should know. They should be doing this or they should be doing that. So I was like putting out fires via WhatsApp messages with people that I’d worked with before. I was like, maybe maybe there is something here that could be done. 

Jennifer Earle  

Yeah, I think even for people who are just like not interested becoming a retreat chef, just if they want to… I mean, I know that there are some people who have opened cafes, but also just if you want to improve the way you eat at home, like it’s fascinating.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s also… lots of people have got allergens. So there’s lots of options for that. One of the students that came I think, I don’t know if it was the last time or the time before, she had a chocolate business. So she’s applied lots of your really good tips to her business. She does these amazing, raw chocolate grazing boxes that she started before she came but then obviously told topped off.

Jennifer Earle  

Amazing, Ill mention her in the show notes as well. It would be nice to promote her.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yeah, definitely have have a look at her stuff. So it completely depends. You kind of pick and choose, there’s so much going on during the week that everyone that comes will have their favourite bit. And it’s great. Because there’s, there’s lots of options. 

Jennifer Earle  

And yes, you don’t necessarily have to become a retreat Chef to travel the world. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

No, not at all. 

Jennifer Earle  

So what’s the earning potential then? Like? Where would it what would be the minimum they could get at an entry level? What would they be able to earn in a year? And then what could that go up to?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

As a day rate the minimum should be £250 a day. Which is what is sort of the going rate. And the more skills you have, the more you can increase that.

Jennifer Earle  

And would your flights be paid for you if you were going?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yes, that’s £250 a day plus excluding travel excluding ingredients, excluding accommodation. And you should also be paid for travel days, because obviously, you’re not doing any other work during that day. Okay, except for travelling to wherever you’re going to.

Jennifer Earle  

That’s really good guidance. And because even Yeah, just to be clear, that even you’re being paid for the travel days and the working days, but you probably will need to do some preparation and ordering food and things so those things won’t be included in what you bill for. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yeah, so that’s menu planning.

Jennifer Earle  

But it’s still … so just don’t think that it definitely works out exactly at £250 a day. And that would be kind of minimum. So

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Minimum, yeah. 

Jennifer Earle  

as you get better and even more in demand then you can start increasing your prices, because people want you back.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Exactly. And if you look at it from a sort of, if you’re working in food and beverage, and in a kitchen, I suppose it’s a really good day rate.

Jennifer Earle  

Yeah it is, Yeah. So you could you work probably like half as many days and make as much money as someone…. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

And it’s a good it’s actually a good thing, too. So we’ve had quite a few chefs come and it’s a great sort of way of topping up your income. 

Jennifer Earle  

Yeah. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

As a sort of normal chef.

Jennifer Earle  

Yeah. So you take your take your holidays and make your holidays into … you’d probably need extra holidays.

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yeah, so we’ve had a few chefs who are professional chefs sort of retrain to have that in their back pocket.

Jennifer Earle  

And I imagine they charge more than £250 a day because it if you’re already a chef, you’re going to look impressive, because it’s also about how the retreat sells you. Because when they’re saying, “Come on my yoga retreat, we’ve got a chef who’s worked in x x x restaurant”, that’s gonna be a bit sexier than somebody who is just, “we’ve got great food” 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Absolutely. 

Jennifer Earle  

Which is harder to quantify until you get known as the retreat which has amazing food, because they’ve got people who’ve been trained by Bettina. So that’s also valuable, too. That’s really interesting. I love this. So if you are thinking about becoming a chef that travels the world, then you should definitely get in touch with Bettina. And, is there anything else people should know or think about?

In terms of becoming a retreat chef? 

Jennifer Earle  

Yeah. Or if any, if you have any tips for people coming into the food industry?

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Yeah, I think I think the main tip is to be really passionate about what you do, because you’re gonna have good and bad days. As everything. So as long as you’re really, really passionate and love what you do, that will get you a long way.

Jennifer Earle  

Thank you very much. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Thank you so much for having me.

Jennifer Earle  

This has been wonderful. We might have you back another time. We talk more about the other strings to your bow and terms of collaboration with brands and getting sponsorship and things. I think that’s another interesting story. But yeah, I think you’re doing amazing things in the retreat chef world and I don’t know anyone else who’s doing that quite the same way. So if that is a career that interests you, then check out the Bettina’s Academy, and I will see you there. 

Bettina Campolucci-Bordi  

Thank you so much.

Jennifer Earle  

Thank you