Kimball - Start your own specialty food business: your step-by-step startup guide to success

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Production and Composition: Eliot House Productions

2016 by Entrepreneur Media, Inc.

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ebook ISBN: 978-1-61308-333-8

Table of Contents

Contents

S tarting a specialty food business is not for everyone. Just because you like food, and even if you like to prepare meals for your family or do it regularly for a few friends, making food your business and having food provide you with income is a different kettle of fish.

First, you need to have that entrepreneurial gene or the unwavering desire to start and build a business. There are certainly myriad businesses to get into besides the food business. You can even get into the food business without dealing with foodas a food writer, a supplier of food-business-related items like packaging or marketing services, or building commercial kitchens.

But for real foodies, the actual food is the thing. And for the specialty food foodie, it goes even one step furthertaking perhaps everyday food items and making them into something new and exciting, blending flavors or creating astounding presentations.

So, if you can stomach the stress of perishables, swallow the fickleness of the consumer of specialty food, and fortify yourself to keep up with the ever-changing trends in the specialty food category, perhaps the specialty food business is for you and you can create an incredibly rewarding and fun business. Reading this book will help you go into it with your eyes wide open.

The specialty food world is almost literally, as the clich goes, your oyster. The term specialty food covers a wide range of products. The mentors profiled in this book are purveyors of all sorts of specialty foods from toffee and olive oil to sweet potato salsa and gourmet chocolate bars. Specialty food also includes beverages like carbonated drinks, cider, craft beer, and local wine. Then there is yogurt, ice cream, pizza, homemade pasta, organic baby food... the list is endless.

And it doesnt stop there. Specialty food can fall not just under what you produce but how you produce it: gluten-free pasta, organic produce, sulfite-free wines. And it can also include how you package it: drinkable yogurt and wine in a box come to mind. It really is an industry that you can enter into under countless umbrellas.

Throughout this book you will see statistics that point to a growing industry. Consumers are becoming more discerning of the food they eat. And with that has come a desire for local and specialty food. As you enter the specialty food industry, you must, however, always keep in mind that a specialty food business is still a business. You may make specialty whoopie pies, which sounds like a heck of a lot of fun, but the bottom line is there is still a bottom line to think about. If you were always the one to make whoopie pies for your friends and family and decide to make a business out of making and selling whoopie pies, you will need to put a different cap on once you start thinking about your whoopie-pie making as a business. All the things that make a business work apply to something as seemingly fun as food.

That means you still need to create a solid business plan; you likely need to find funding; locationwhether its a retail shop or a production facilityis critical; employees still are the highest cost of doing business. Add keeping track of inventory and cash-flow issues and trying to fit in all the social media marketing that seems to be a requirement in todays business world, and you will quickly realize that business is still the operative word even when it comes to food.

All of the mentors interviewed for this book pointed consistently to planning as a key to success: Make a business plan, plan for a period of time without the business making income, and plan to start your business with more upfront investment than you think you will need. Maybe you even need to plan to plan. If you do more planning than you think is necessary you will go into your business with your eyes open.

As with any business, read everything you can get your hands on and talk with everyone that is even remotely involved with the food business before you spend a dime on your business idea. And, our mentors also consistently mentioned, think about the kind of lifestyle you want to have and make sure your business model fits that lifestylethere is nothing that will get you more quickly out of the business than creating a business that does not fit your lifestyle and your personality.