If you receive thousands of compliments every time you make casseroles or cupcakes or find yourself with requests from your friends and relatives to be their personal recipe book, you should really consider a home-based food baking business.
You will be doing what you most enjoy – cooking and feeding, and in return make an income out of it. So, if you are planning to give a shot to start a freelance food delivery business, check this blog out as we have listed 9 things you should know before opening a food business.
As with any freelance service or work, food delivery business also needs planning, research and commitment.
So, here we go….
You have to find out if there is any law that states home-based food businesses to meet certain parameters to pass as a certified commercial kitchen.
In USA, food and hygiene gets paramount importance. And so, there are local and state requirements for running a food business at home, such as business licensing, permitting, zoning, production and safety.
If you reside in some other country, please refer your state’s law and litigation process.
Before you jump into making those delectable rice muffins or that basbousa cake, make sure you have people who will buy them. There should be a thriving market for your product, else you will not be able to make a revenue out of it.
What you can do is make small batches of your foods and sell them to retailers, such as café, supermarket, petty shops etc. around your locality and see the response towards you.
Don’t spend a lot on this pilot batch; rather use inexpensive packaging and moderate quantities. However, don’t compromise on the food quality, as ultimately that would be your USP.
You should run your freelance food delivery business like an entrepreneur and consider it a legal entity. Even if you have built the business out of a hobby, it is a business after all that’s gonna fetch you money. You should form an entity as a business owner should.
In the long run, if your business is properly managed, it will help you keep the liabilities separate from the assets. You should also consider registering your foods as trademark, make a logo, pick a brand name, carry insurances and keep business and personal accounts separate from each other.
Today websites speak a lot more about a company than us talking. Therefore, it is imperative for you to hire professionals to design and develop a high traffic generating website for your business.
Considering hiring professionals in making your business prominent, including accounting, auditing and web designing aspects. Even though you may be qualified to these tasks, we advise you to spend your time in growing the business and reaching out to more clients.
However, if you have limited budget to start your business, you can also host your own site in less than $7 a month.
Food business can be tremendous once it’s starts to grow. You will probably end up having more than 100 clients to feed at a time within a year if you do your business right.
This is huge. You will soon be needing assistance in delivery, managing stocks, taking up orders and billing invoices. To secure yourself and your company, you need to file and document all papers and create contracts with all relationships.
This is even more crucial if friends and family are involved, who might have helped you with the capital investment to launch your business.
Even if you bake your cakes in your pajamas while wearing a messy bun, you have to look professional and established in front of your clients. In order to do so, you need to have a professional looking business card, brochure, Facebook page and website.
Your food quality, quantity and product packaging should reflect high standards. When you go out to meet your clients make sure you are professionally dressed and carry your brand image royally.
Although taste of your food would speak thousand words, it is the outer appearance, such as packaging, quantity, presentation and the chef that appeal the customers first. So, these are essentials you should always work on.
Even if your cakes are immensely loved, don’t assume that people will continuously buy it. Taste change and so do people. Customers and food lovers will flock in only when you market your business and promote your services attractively and endlessly.
Food industry is a tough competition. And moreover, if you are a freelancer or homebased, the competition doubles. This is why reaching out to more customers through innumerable medium should be your focal point.
You can market your products and recipes by blogging, vlogging, Instagram, Facebook, sending out free samples, conducting cooking workshops and setting up food kiosks occasionally.
Research, compare and then determine your food prices. You have to carefully weigh your pros and cons before setting up a price. Don’t set prices by the ingredients’ costs. Not all cooking jobs are created equal. For instance, flour is used to make both, pancakes and cake.
However, baking takes triple the amount of effort and time than making pancakes. So, you have to be rationale and include labour charges as well while setting your prices. Don’t set pricing too low either, as it’s hard to break.
You won’t make reasonable profit, which may be frustrating. While fixing prices, you have to keep the material charges, labour time, season, ingredients cost, market value and current economy in mind.
Before you start a freelance food delivery business, you have to invest on a huge refrigerator or pantry for storage purpose.
Don’t buy items for a week’s order to save cost; infact buying ingredients in less quantity can just double the price. Buying common items in bulk can help you plan your finance better.