Tag: food business

Should You Start a Food Company in the Midst of a Pandemic?

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date February 18, 2021

This may surprise you, but one of the industries that have thrived across the world during the pandemic is the food industry. With a growing number of successful food delivery services, there has never been a better time to boost the your food company’s visibility or even start a new food company altogether. Food really does bring people together, and the popularity of ordering restaurant-quality meals and having them delivered to your front door shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.

So what should you know before jumping into opening up a new food company?

Check what permits you need for a food company

Sure, you can build a company from the safety of your kitchen. Create baked goods, bread, speciality meals and so on. But you still need to make sure you have the correct permits and are trading legally. This is especially important if you plan to use food delivery services to deliver your goods to customers. You also need to make sure you are aware of health codes regarding preparing foods and keeping excellent hygiene levels in your working area at all times.

Look at Your Competition

How many other businesses sell what you are planning to sell? It may be that the demand is greater than the supply for certain foods, for example Asian food is always a popular option, as is pizza. Make sure the market isn’t saturated by small restaurants and food outlets and bigger, nationwide chains that can easily meet demand without a problem. You can check out Food industry reports to see how well your sector and the local area is performing.

Products and Pricing

The quality of the ingredients and the type of packaging you use will all need to be factored into the final meal costs and pricing options. You will be responsible for making sure the food is not only delicious but arrives at the customer’s house safely and preferably hot if it is meant to be. This will affect whether or not people return to order from you and the feedback they leave.

Delivery options

Restaurants and food outlets reach more customers when signed up to one of the major food delivery networks. They take a portion of your fee and charge delivery but take care of getting your goods to the customer. It may seem like you are losing a lot of money initially and deciding to go out on your own is also a viable option. However, you need to be sure you can reach your ideal customer base and keep up with demand and deliveries yourself.

Marketing a food company

You need to have an online presence so people can check you out and see what you have to offer. Making yourself accessible online through a website or social media can really help people spread the word about how amazing your food is. Reviews, tags and shares on social media–it all counts towards building yourself a reputation. The better your reputation, the more chance you will have of succeeding with the support of your customer base.

Invest in good quality photography to really show off what you make and don’t be afraid to be who you are and share your journey, how you make your food and what you are about. The more authentic you are, the more people feel they can connect with you. Social media is a great place to build this relationship with people.

Tags food business

The Business of Food

Neighborhood Pop Ups Help Women Build a Home-Based Business

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date February 19, 2017

Last weekend, while driving around a neighborhood looking for homes to rent, my husband and I discovered a phenomenon called the “neighborhood pop up.” A sign stuck in someone’s front yard invited us to come and sip, snack and shop. Since we both enjoy flea markets and rummage sales — the last time we happened on one we found my more than a dozen Doctor Who T-shirts at $1 a piece!. So we took the sign’s invitation and drove to the event.

What we found was a mini fair being held in someone’s front yard. Each booth was run by someone from the neighborhood — usually a woman — and featured goods she made by hand. Many were jewelry and decor, but a couple were food-based businesses.

One Delightful Cookie

First, I have to say, you can’t each just one. These cookies are da bomb! I purchased a box of three and took them home. They didn’t last the night!

One Delightful Cookie is run by a woman named Audrey out of her home kitchen in California Heights, Long Beach. She loves baking cookies and after getting plenty of compliments from a wide variety of folks, she started her home-based business.

She is an example of one expression that kitchen creativity can take. She developed her how unique, signature cookie and is building a business around it. Isn’t that how Mrs. Feilds got her start?

You can find One Delightful Cookie on Instagram.

Sweet Ness Treats

Right next to One Delightful Cookie was Sweet Ness Treats, featuring the best chocolate dipped strawberries I’ve ever tasted. The woman behind these decadent treats said her secret was washing the fruit in alkaline water. Like Audrey, she’s running her food-based business out of her home kitchen.

In addition to chocolate dipped strawberries, she also offers cookie pops, brookies, cupcakes and more.

You can find Sweet Ness Treats on Instagram and Facebook.

Home-Based Business Take Away Lessons from this Experience

It was really nice speaking with both these lovely ladies and when I left the Pop Up my mind was abuzz with ideas, possibilities and things I wanted to share with you. Here they are in summary:

1. Neighborhood Pop Ups are a great idea for building your home-based business. The ladies I spoke with there said they were a group of women entrepreneurs who held these events to support each other. If you are an entrepreneur — whether with a food based business or not — couldn’t you network with fellow entrepreneurs in your neighborhood to create such events?

2. Both women I spoke with above liked the idea of me sharing their business in social media, but both jumped out of the picture when I went to take them. I didn’t say anything at the time, but it seemed odd to me. Yes, their food is the center of their businesses, but their warm, enthusiastic personalities also help sell the products. If someone wants to take a picture of your business offerings and share them on their Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or whatever page, get in the picture! Show off your enthusiasm for what you offer. This adds emotional context and personality to your business. This is especially important for soloentrepreneurs.

3. Do you love being creative in the kitchen? Do you live for those times that you can be in the kitchen creating your signature dish? Then maybe you can build a business around that passion. I’m doing it with Carma’s Cookery. These ladies are doing it with their home-based businesses. You can do it too!

Tags food business, home-based business, One Delightful Cookie, Sweet Ness Treats

The Business of Food

Launching A Gourmet Eatery: Everything That You Should Know

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date October 10, 2016

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Over the past few years, gourmet foods have become somewhat mainstream. By this I mean that more and more casual restaurants are offering “gourmet-inspired” menus. However, just because there are already plenty of gourmet eatery establishments around, that doesn’t mean that yours won’t be a success.

Especially as, many of the places calling themselves gourmet, are in fact not offering a gourmet experience at all. Their food may be fancy, but to be a gourmet establishment, it’s about more than just the food. A gourmet restaurant isn’t called gourmet for any old reason; it’s because it offers something above and beyond the norm.

With this in mind, if you’re thinking of launching your own gourmet eatery, here’s what you need to know:

Your gourmet eatery menu needs to be unique

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In order for your gourmet eatery to have any chance of being successful, the food that you offer needs to be unique. It doesn’t matter if you sell the same type of cuisine as other local establishments, such as Spanish tapas for instance. However, it does matter if the food that you serve is exactly the same. To launch a venture that has the potential to be successful, the food that you serve has to have a unique twist to it.

It can take time to make your menu unique but don’t rush the process. You need to serve a selection of dishes that not only taste amazing and are unique, but that are also quick and easy to whip up. So that when your restaurant is packed on a Saturday night, there is time to create them. What you don’t want is for your dishes to be hard to do in busy periods because they’re too time-consuming. You want to be able to offer a gourmet experience regardless of how busy you get.

There’s more to running a gourmet eatery than meets the eye

A mistake that many people make when it comes to starting a restaurant is thinking that it’s all about serving delicious food, and that’s it. However, there’s a lot more to running a successful restaurant than that. Of course, the food is important — it is a restaurant after all — but it’s not the be-all and end-all of being successful.

Just like in any business, running an eatery requires you to manage it efficiently. This means organizing ordering, creating an efficient rota for staff, keeping on top of the accounts, and so much more. You need to be able to keep up to date with all of the must-have items for your restaurant. As well as knowing who to call should you suffer an emergency or problem. For example, what do you do if you have a Magic Chef HVAC failure? This could leave your restaurant without heating or air conditioning. The last thing you want is to offer guests an atmosphere that’s below their expectations.

Marketing a gourmet eatery needs to be “upmarket”

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Last but not least, it’s crucial to ensure that your marketing is as effective as possible. As well as in keeping with the tone of your place. While the aim of marketing is to build awareness of your brand, it’s important that the marketing is also well suited to your target audience — otherwise, it may not appeal to them. When your marketing is mismatched to your audience, you may fail to get the customers you need to succeed.

Launching a gourmet restaurant isn’t something that you can do without any planning. It will take time to get your new venture up and running.

Tags food business, food marketing, gourmet eatery

The Business of Food

Food Business: How to Run a Restaurant as a Former Chef

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date September 29, 2016

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When great chefs want a little more independence, they decide to buy their own restaurants. There are many reasons for doing this. To begin with, it means that chefs don’t have to take orders from other people. But they often don’t realize what goes into running a great restaurant. Being a chef and being a business owner are two very different tasks. If you’re thinking of making the move, here are the key differences to be aware of.

Cooking is Not Accounting

One of the most important tasks you’ll have when running a business is balancing the books. This is essential because no business can survive if its accounts are not in order. This is how businesses get into financial tangles, and many businesses fail as a result. And just because you know how to cook, that doesn’t mean that you know how to manage money. You should take courses and learn from others if you have no experience of managing a business’s accounts. Hiring the right help is important too.

Shouting at Your Team is Not the Same as Managing Them

We all know that chefs that run kitchens are under pressure. And this is why they often end up doing a lot of shouting when trying to keep everything ticking in order. This is fine for a hot, busy kitchen environment. But if you try to run a business and manage a wider workforce in that way, you won’t get very far at all. You need to learn how to manage a team and give them the support they require to do their jobs well. Running a business is more about taking calm and practical steps, as well as decisions.

Good Food Alone is Not Usually Enough for a Good Food Business

Creating good food is obviously essential when you run a business. You can’t afford to shy away from the task of creating great food because this is what customers care about. But, at the same time, you will have to wear your business hat and be aware that good food alone isn’t enough. You also have to think about how you can reach out to people and turn them into paying customers. Companies that provide things like social media for restaurants can help you reach people in a modern way. And you will also need to make the exterior of your restaurant appealing to attract people inside.

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Creativity Matters for Both Tasks, But in Different Ways

Creativity matters when you are a chef. And it also matters when you run a business. This is one of the areas of overlap that should be embraced. But they are different forms of creativity, and you should be aware of this. For a start, when a chef is creative, he or she creates great food and gives people a taste experience they haven’t had before. But creativity in the world of business is all about making the business more appealing to target customers. Think about how you can transfer your cooking skills across to your marketing efforts.

Tags chef, food business, restaurant, restaurant business