Chef's talent for cookery has turned into a media business

Peter Sidwell is a chef whose career is about much more than cooking.

In fact, he says cooking is the “easy bit” of his work compared to the video and content creation business he has built over the last 10 years.

When Peter speaks to in-Cumbria he is fresh from experimenting with recording a potential new podcast format where he cooks a recipe in his kitchen and describes it in real time so that listeners can follow along.

"We're trying to record the noises and make you feel like you're in my kitchen and I'm in your kitchen,” he says.

However, this is just the latest of many ideas Peter has had in developing his career as a media chef.

Peter and his wife Emma moved to Cumbria from York 20 years ago and set up restaurant Good Taste in Keswick.

In 2007 Peter self-published his first book Simply Good Taste, which led to a book deal with publisher Simon and Schuster and ultimately a Channel Four TV series Lakes on a Plate.

"Being a chef is not just about putting food on plates,” he says.

“There's other commercial opportunities in what I can do.

“When I went to college, it was just about learning to be a chef, but now you can be a nutritionist, you can be a food stylist, you can be a product development chef. There's all kinds of different avenues and careers in food that didn't really exist before.”

The particular avenue which Peter decided to follow was developing a food media business, making his own content as well as supplying it to other brands.

He has now been creating content for clients for over a decade, a business which was supercharged during lockdown and the subsequent focus on online promotion.

"We did a five-year journey in five months in lockdown in the way that everyone was accelerated towards online,” says Peter.

The three-person team at PJS Media consists of Emily Grey, from Whitehaven, and photographer and videographer Carlos Reina.

A native of Spain, Carlos moved to West Cumbria in 2017 and works with Peter as well as a variety of other clients.

Emily began working with Peter at 17 to get some work experience and is now in her mid-twenties.

"She naturally gravitated to the camera, so I helped nurture her natural curiosity to photography, invested in more equipment and allowed her to just capture my food,” says Peter.

“Now she's very much the lead direction on food photography for our business,

"Carlos is a great portrait photographer and he does a lot of edit work. So he's very good on Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. He's very technical. Emily and I will capture something and Carlos makes it better.”

Together they produce weekly online cookery show Peter Sidwell’s Kitchen, which makes revenue through the use of particular products and brands.

This is in addition to making bespoke content for other brands and businesses to use online and on social media.

They also run a digital image library called Jam Eater, which produces content which can be bought and used in a similar way to footage and pictures on digital platforms such as Shutterstock.

"We create recipes, videos, PDFs, and we put them in a digital library,” says Peter.

“If you have a company, if you have a supermarket anywhere in the world and you need recipe content for your social media, you're able to buy non-exclusive content from us and just use it.”

Four years ago, Peter developed a purpose-built family home, complete with two kitchen film and photography studios.

"It's very much been designed for food photography with single source natural daylight," says Peter.

"We're able to work with brands to create the content and the digital assets that they require for their online marketing.”

The studio is equipped with state-of-the-art video and audio equipment, as well as 4G satellite dish to allow for reliable broadcast of Peter Sidwell’s Kitchen.

"We've got cameras, we've got lighting, we've invested in automated trackers and gibs, we have a rig that allows us to broadcast eight cameras live. So we do a live edit, and then we polish it with graphics, QR codes and then we broadcast it.”

Peter and the team are continuing to embrace technology, for example in the form of AI software to automate the process of equalizing audio recordings.

They also use AI tools to monitor and improve the SEO performance of videos, as well as converting content into overseas formats and splitting long-form videos in shorter clips for different platforms.

He says this has enabled them to speed up processes such as recording voice overs.

"It's just that thirst for knowledge and self improvement. We're all qualified or experienced in what we do, but we still want to learn more. You can't teach that, you've got to nurture it.”

Brands they work with include kitchen builder Symphony Group.

"They get beautiful images of me and my kids in the kitchen, just doing what we do and for them the marketing is priceless, because you can't really set that up in a studio easily, whereas we try and capture the moment,” he says.

Home and kitchen appliance maker AEG are another client, with Peter using and promoting their equipment.

The directions Peter has followed have been a combination of personal and commercial decisions.

Moving to the Lake District was a lifestyle as well as a business decision, while moving into media rather than running a restaurant business has allowed him to spend more time with his family.

Peter’s home and studio sit on the Sunset Hill business park, which he purchased five years ago and which is also home to local companies such as Dark House Coffee Roasters and Magic Mountain Pizza Co.

"You've got to make your decision and you've got to make an informed decision and weigh up the risks,” he says.

"I'm forever planning numbers in my head, right from the days of having a cafe.

“How much money do I need to take an hour, a day, a quarter, a month, a year. I always say to people when they're looking at business numbers; divide by 12, divide by six, divide by 52 and work out what you need to take to get where you want to go.”

This month, Peter will release his sixth book Peter Sidwell’s Kitchen featuring 100 recipes, complete with QR codes linking to videos of him making the dishes.

"Emily and Carlos captured all of the book between them. Emily focused on the food, Carlos focused on the people and the edit,” says Peter.

With so many different strands to his business, he says the easiest part of the day is coming up with new ideas for delicious recipes to share with his followers.

“I do it every day for my family,” he says.

“If I'm cooking for the kids I can turn that into content. That is the beauty of it.

“I do it two or three times a day, so I might as well make it my job.”