For Lara Luck, it all started with a simple question: What am I going to cook for dinner tonight?
She’d forged a successful career, working in HR for a decade, and while she was good at her job, it wasn’t her true passion – it was food that really interested her.
‘I’d spend my lunch breaks flipping through food magazines and then keep thinking about the recipes and how amazing they looked for the rest of the day,’ she tells
‘It was a little naughty, but I’d get distracted at work thinking about which dish to make for dinner that night.’
Even when she wasn’t in the office, Lara was thinking about food and getting creative in the kitchen in her free time.
‘On the weekends I’d watch Lorraine Pascale on the BBC and I was so inspired by her. I really wanted to cook good, healthy meals for my kids, but there was also a part of me that wanted to know how they made everything look so amazing in these magazines and shows.’
Curiosity ultimately got the better of the mum, which is how she came to find herself aged 31, heavily pregnant, and considering a brand new career path.
Lara gave birth to her second child in October 2016, welcoming a little boy, and just seven weeks later she was out of the house, heading to a photo studio to meet with a food stylist.
She’d realised she wanted to learn just how those photos in her favourite food magazines were created, and she had almost a year off of work to do it – thanks to 11 months of paid maternity leave, a backlog of paid holiday time she’d accrued, and childcare help from her husband.
‘People probably thought I was crazy going out so soon after having a baby, but I knew this was my chance to explore that avenue and work out if it was something I wanted to do. If not, I knew I was always going to wonder, “What if?”
‘I’d reached a point in my career where I was looking for more balance between work and family, and I didn’t really have that with my office job, so I took a risk on something new.
‘I was very fortunate to have a supportive partner as I wouldn’t have been able to do this without him, and I know not everyone has that. He really believed in what I wanted to do and had to juggle a lot to make it work.’
Lara started emailing as many food companies and photography studios, as she could, asking for opportunities to assist on food shoots, shadow photographers, and learn more about the whole process.
Numerous rejections came in, but there were a few more positive responses and finally she found some brands willing to take her on for work experience.
‘People do treat you differently when you’re working as an assistant in your 30s, but I think with age you become better at dealing with certain things, because you know what your end goal is,’ she said.
‘I wasn’t bothered about being older and starting over again with my career, I wasn’t going to be intimidated or let people judge me for wanting to learn.’
And her tenacity paid off, after several months of work experience, she started getting offers for paying jobs, with Lara securing her first official role as an assistant to a food stylist in 2017.
She quit her HR job and began working for numerous brands such as Waitrose Magazine, helping to source ingredients, prep dishes, and plate things up creatively for photoshoots.
‘We’d normally try and do 10 shots a day, so I’d be helping the lead food stylist with half of the recipes,’ she says. ‘It was my job to make sure they had everything they needed, ensure everything was clean, and keep things running smoothly.
‘Doing this taught me everything I needed to know to be able to go on and lead my own shoots.’
But just as she was starting to feel like she was ‘riding high’ and working her way up in the food industry, the pandemic hit, and suddenly she was without a job.
She had to start over all over again – but thankfully, this was something she’d become adept at doing, and with a government grant through the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme, she was able to stay afloat and keep working with food.
‘Everything changed and I was trying to work out what my next move would be. I couldn’t go out and work on photoshoots anymore, so I had to get creative and figure out what I could do instead – and that was building my Instagram account.
‘You couldn’t go to restaurants, or get takeaways, so I started working on my own recipes to share, making Caribbean food and family-friendly meals at home and posting videos of them on social media.
‘People were stuck inside and didn’t want to be eating the same thing week in and week out, so the recipes were a good source of inspiration.’
And they did inspire many, with Lara building a strong community online garnering more than 10,000 followers.
Her content proved so popular that she was even able to start writing original recipes for some of the magazines she previously assisted at, taking her work full circle.
After a few false starts and a lot of hard work, Lara, now 40, has managed to land her dream job working as a self-employed recipe developer and chef.
She hosts supper clubs, has won various awards for her cooking, and couldn’t be happier that the risk she took in leaving her office job has well and truly paid off.
‘I love what I do now, it’s really nice to be able to share my passion for food with others.
‘I’m creating recipes and making food full-time, and I balance that with being a mum of three kids – I’ve got two daughters and a son, all aged between 13 and 6.
‘One of the biggest perks of how I work now is that I get to pick my hours, so I can be there with the kids, go to appointments and see their school plays. They’ll never get their childhoods back, so I want to be as present with them as I can be.’
Even with all her success, Lara’s still thinking one step ahead to what her next move will be and how her passion for food can reach new audiences. She’s got no plans to slow down any time soon.
‘For me I’m only as good as my next job. I’ve worked so hard, I can’t afford to be mediocre because I’m reliant on myself to bring income in,’ she explains.
‘I really want to put a cookery book out one of these days, and I’m working on lots of new recipes. I’m also hosting a Love & Flavour supper club in November paying homage to my Caribbean roots.
‘I think Caribbean food is still very underrepresented in the industry, there’s so much more to it than just Jerk Chicken, so I’m trying to get more of these amazing dishes out there into the mainstream, and educate people.
‘Food is for everyone and it would be great if we were all be able to enjoy Carribbean and African meals regularly in the same way we love to eat Italian cuisine, or Indian and Asian dishes – things like Brown Stew Chicken should be up there as an everyday meal.’
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.