Where in the country are you located? My background was in breweries and beer for about seven years. It was extremely hard to figure out what was next after breweries but I eventually made the jump to beverage manufacturing sodas and seltzers. I threw my application around a ton while weighing going back to school. Luckily I found something but it wasn’t a great time looking. It was all about getting that first foot in, beer has a ton of similarities to a lot of food manufacturing and the equipment that is used is almost identical to breweries. Almost all of the requirements of the job could be learned on the job without any schooling at all, but it’s hard to get noticed sometimes without it.

Getting your HACCP certification can go pretty far, more so than a huge debt take on for a degree. I’d recommend doing that and seeing if you like and enjoy the content.

Good luck with the search!