Becoming a Professional Chef: The Benefits of Multiple Culinary Degrees

Charlie Ruffolo • September 15, 2021

The road to becoming a professional chef is paved with passion, experience, and education. The more you have of each of these ingredients, the farther you’ll go. There are a variety of skills needed to be a successful chef. While your passion can carry you far, opening up opportunities for valuable experiences, a culinary education will provide the resources, lessons, interactions, and relationships you’ll need.

 

There are many different culinary concentrations that complement and enhance one another while still focusing on their core subject. So, it makes sense to argue that if one culinary degree is good, two is better. But is that feasible? Is it actually advantageous to pursue a double culinary major? The answer is “yes,” and here is why and how.

 

Completing multiple programs can significantly enhance your marketability as a professional. Your exposure to different lessons and perspectives provides a distinct competitive advantage when it comes to communication, strategizing, and collaborating across a variety of concentrations and business lines.

 

Having multiple degrees can also make it easier to grow and transition within your career. If you want to be in the kitchen, the skills and lessons learned while you pursue an advanced culinary arts degree are priceless. If you want to be in a bakery, the techniques and practices learned while pursuing an advanced baking and pastry degree are invaluable. Pairing these curricula can make you an even more well-rounded chef. Or, if you decide to add a hospitality and culinary management degree to either, you will have the skillset not only to operate as a chef but run and lead a business in the industry.

 

For most students, especially culinary students, as soon as their culinary arts program is complete, they are ready to get out into the real world and put their talents to work. This is why at Louisiana Culinary Institute, after the completion of one program, students have the opportunity to complete additional programs in an expedited time period. This offers additional education in a minimal amount of time, creating a highly marketable skillset when stepping off campus and into a restaurant.


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From Music to Kitchen Mastery: Student Spotlight on Ben Messina

By Charlie Ruffolo • March 25, 2026
Some people know from childhood exactly where they're headed. Ben Messina took a different route. He started college as a music major, took a gap year to find his footing, and leaned on his brother's encouragement before landing exactly where he was always meant to be: a professional kitchen . Now a senior in the Savory program at Louisiana Culinary Institute (LCI) in Baton Rouge, Ben is weeks away from graduating in May 2026. He arrived at LCI with a love of cooking and a family connection to food. He's leaving with a world-class culinary foundation, a mentor who pushed him to be his best, and a dream of opening multiple restaurants of his own one day. His story is proof that the path to a culinary career doesn't have to be a straight line. Is It Too Late to Change Careers and Go to Culinary School? For Ben, food has always been part of the family fabric. Growing up in Baton Rouge, he spent time in the kitchen with his grandmother, learning to make snickerdoodles as a kid. Those early memories planted a seed. But Ben initially followed a different passion. He'd played trumpet and piano since a young age, so he enrolled at Southeastern Louisiana University to study music. It wasn't long before the questions started creeping in: "What am I actually going to do with a music degree?" He took a gap year to figure it out. And the answer, when it came, was simple: go back to his other love. Cooking. His brother, who owns a food truck, had been encouraging him to consider culinary school. More specifically, he encouraged Ben to look at LCI. And then, without warning, he signed him up for a campus tour. 
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