How Successful Are TV Food Chef Contestants?

Apparently your future success as a television career competition winner really various. Maura Dieringer of USA Today provides an interesting follow-up on the careers of various reality food/fashion/design competition show winners, and it’s not all peaches and cream.

Here are three examples out of several that USA Today gave:

HGTV Design Star, Season 2 (2007): Kim Myles

Myles, known for her use of unconventional design on a tight budget, is in her third season of Myles of Style. She was a hairdresser in New York before the show and earned an associate’s degree in theater in Bakersfield, Calif., her hometown. She lives in Los Angeles and has been a guest designer on several HGTV shows


Hell’s Kitchen, Season 2 (2006): Heather West

With a reality-show victory under her belt, West is working on two books while shooting the pilot of her own show, Eat This. As her prize from the show, West was the senior chef at Terra Rossa in the Red Rock Casino Resort in Las Vegas for a year. She graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 2003 and is chef Gordon Ramsay’s sous chef on this season of Hell’s Kitchen


The Next Food Network Star, Season 3 (2007): Amy Finley

Finley completed her six episodes of The Gourmet Next Door for Food Network, but decided not to sign on for a second season. In February 2008 she became the first columnist for Bon Appetit‘s new column, Family Style, and stayed for about a year. Then she left the magazine, moving to France with her family to write a regional cook book. She remains out of the public eye.


On the other hand, none of them can be called losers. Most in general of the food types are or have started their own restaurants, which many had wanted to do before the shows but couldn’t. So for many it has been career building, even if that career isn’t on television.

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