A Star Chef Talks About Combining Business and Cooking

Nick DiGiovanni has packed a lot into his 26 years. The chef and food personality auditioned for Gordon Ramsay’s MasterChef TV competition in 2018 during his senior year at Harvard College. He made it onto the show, finishing in third and building a huge fan base along the way—today, he has more than 20 million followers and subscribers collectively on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, where many of his culinary feats and high jinks play out. He’s an entrepreneur, too, as co-founder of the specialty salt business Osmo. We caught up with DiGiovanni recently to talk about what’s motivated his choices in and out of the kitchen.

I learned recently that you were accepted into Harvard’s MBA program. Why did you apply?
I’ve always thought a lot about the intersection between business and food. And since college I knew I wanted to pursue that combination. I saw that in a lot of restaurants, you have two people—a chef who knows the kitchen and the person on the business side who handles everything else. My master plan was to go into restaurants and work and learn everything, and really get good at the food part. Then use the MBA to become a restaurateur.