If you find joy in cooking and getting people to savour your food, but you just can’t start a restaurant right now, then the homemade food business may be the right business for you.
Earning income through your hobby or creative skills is one of the most fulfilling experiences that an individual can have. The best thing about the home-cooking business is that you can start as small as you like and invest more money when you can feed more people.
I would recommend starting small so that you can learn the ropes and test the waters to see if it is the right kind of occupation for your personality and your schedule.
So here are four crucial steps to starting your own home cooking business right from the comfort of your home:
- Start with the Right Information about selling homemade food
I was speaking to a restaurant owner who had some interest in expanding his business by starting a steak house. He was preparing to take a course on how to make world-class steaks in preparation for the business. However, he assumed that there his steakhouse was going to be the first steakhouse in the city. All he needed to do was to open a search engine and type a search for steakhouses in his city.
When starting a new business, including a home cooking business, do some research and never assume anything about your business, your industry, or your target customers.
Some easy ways to get information and understand what’s going on or how things work in your business is, first of all, to speak to those who are already into the home cooking business. Find out how they started, what challenges they face, and how they overcame these challenges Secondly, speak to your family and friends. Get them to taste your menu items and give you feedback on them before you offer them to strangers.
2. Start with Your Niche in Mind
My husband once made some unique porridge for our neighbour’s birthday. The porridge was so good that the neighbour’s guest who ate it left his place and came knocking at our door, asking if they could have more of the porridge! They were really disappointed when he told them that there was none remaining. I have been ruminating over the idea of taking that recipe commercial for years.
Knowing that you have a reliable level of demand for your service is crucial to the success of your business. Your business idea may not be everybody’s cup of tea but it ought to have enough customers to sustain your business for the foreseeable future. You can find out whether your service or goods will attract enough customers by doing some simple market research and asking some vital questions about your business and the market, that is the people, you wish to sell to.
Knowing exactly who you would like to cook for will help you decide on what kind of ingredients to use, which menus to create, how to reach these people and how to get them to eat your food.
Focus on cooking what you are excellent at cooking. When trying out a new recipe, cook it enough times to make the recipe your own before offering it on your menu. If there is a special or unique recipe that few other cooks may know, then focus on offering this to your customers as well.
I know a Pizza restaurant where they use a special kind of mozzarella cheese for their pizzas and I advised the chef to make sure that his customers are aware of the extra mile that they go to prepare them a delicious and premium pizza. If you use specific niche ingredients as this restaurant does, you should highlight this to your customers while promoting your business.
3. Invest in Quality Equipment and Work Tools
Running a food delivery business means that you will need disposable catering supplies. Disposable items you will need for your business include plastic cutlery, paper napkins, plastic drinkware (if your menu includes drinks), appetizer plates, foil pans, aluminium foil, and cardboard packages for food. Don’t forget that some customers may judge your food by its packaging, so do spend money to get packaging that leaves a great impression on your customers. Branding your packaging will set you on the right track to building a foodservice brand that can be easily identified with quality home foods.
To maintain excellent food safety practices while cooking and delivering meals, you will also need to invest in a suitable garbage can, hand sanitiser, antibacterial handwash solutions, designated towels and cloths for various uses, and disposable gloves for handling food items with your bare hands.
Investing in high-quality equipment will help you cut food preparation time and empower you to serve quality food to your customers. You will also need to invest in storage space, containers or extra refrigeration.
If living in Ireland, you might want to check with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) for the national rules and regulations that are required to promote food safety for consumers. Don’t forget to keep all your home-cooking business equipment and tools apart from your regular domestic kitchen items.
4. Getting the Word Out on Your Homecooking Venture
When managing a food business from home, the first thing that comes to the mind of the average home cook is to tell their neighbours, friends, and colleagues about their new income stream and passion. This strategy is perfect for getting initial feedback and honing your food preparation skills but it will not sustain your business forever or expand at a rate that your business could eventually sustain all your budget needs.
For friends, family and neighbours, I recommend you invite them over for a food tasting party. You could even ask them to buy a low-priced ticket to help you fund the event. You can also encourage them to invite their contacts as long as you have sufficient space arrangements for everyone to enjoy the occasion.
Beyond this, you will definitely need to have Instagram and Facebook business pages with great photographs and videos of your food, your catering activities and even you speaking to your customers to connect with them. You can promote a great offer on your business pages that will attract locals. Great offers and discounts can help you reach more potential customers and get more exposure for your home cooking business.
When creating your Facebook and Instagram business pages, choose a catchy homemade food business name that’s relevant to your type of menu and looks attractive at the same time. Avoid business page names with numbers and hyphens and underscores as much as possible. Many great or obvious food-related names are taken but you perhaps have a business name idea that is not so obvious but that would resonate with your vision and your audience at the same time.
Decide how often you would like to share content on your business pages. You can share daily, several times daily, or a few times a week. Using a content plan will help you avoid abandoning your audience for days or even weeks.
The content you might like to share would include food images, home-cooking activities, shopping for ingredients, types of ingredients you use, recipes, and even your workspace at home. Make sure you arm yourself with a good phone or DSLR camera to get the best quality pictures and videos for your platforms.
Once people start commenting and liking your posts, spend a bit of time responding to them so that you can start building some warm contacts online. To grow your contacts quickly, join groups and interact with others within the groups, inviting them to visit your business pages.
Finally, the best way to promote your homemade food business is to sign up with Escamenu.com and get access to foodies who want to savor culturally authentic cuisines from all over the world.