Thinking of Starting a Food Business? See Which Are the Most Profitable

Most everyone, at some point or another, thinks about starting their own business. Many gravitate toward the food business because, all other considerations aside, people need to eat. So what better way to make a business a success than giving the people what they want?

Because starting a food business from scratch can be very costly and lacking in support, many would-be owners gravitate toward food franchises instead. Franchises are generally require less of a financial investment, and have a brand name associated with them so the likelihood of success is greater.

Of course, if you're considering starting a food business, your first step will be to decide which food you're going to sell. If you don't have a specific preference, it only makes sense to invest in whatever's most profitable.

Profitability is, of course, hard to predict for any business venture. There are so many unknowns and so many variables that make one business and instant success and another a failure. But one sure way to get off on the right foot is to choose a food business that's popular.

Here are a few food businesses that are popular, and therefore most likely to be profitable.

Hot dog business

Whether it's at a mall, near a ballpark or at the beach in the summertime, hot dogs are always big sellers. Popular with people young and old, hot dogs are an American tradition that are hard to beat. Investing in a hot dog franchise is a good choice.

Ice cream business

Who can resist a sweet, tasty treat on a hot summer day? Or even a cold winter one, for that matter? Ice cream is a universal best seller that never seems to go out of style.

Pretzel business

Opening a pretzel business can be a very sound and very profitable investment, especially if you choose a pretzel franchise. With many pretzel franchise opportunities available, you'll have a smaller upfront investment and the support of a franchisor behind you.

While it's true there are forces beyond your control that will determine the popularity and profitability of your franchise, there's a lot you can do to make sure your food business is a success.

Learn the ins and outs of the business. Nothing will help you maximize your profits more than having a firm grasp on all of the nuances of the food business you've chosen. Knowing the business like the back of your hand from the get-go will help you make decisions along the way that will help with profitability.

Advertise. Make sure you get the word out about your new food business venture, whether that word is online or in the real world. The more people know about your business, the more customers you'll have, and the more profit you're likely to make.

Seek help. This is especially easy when you're part of a franchise, but regardless of how your business is structured, you can ask fellow business owners for help and advice. Most people are perfectly willing to share their knowledge and experience.

Profitability isn't the only marker for success, but it is an important one. Do everything you can to maximize your profits, and you're sure to have a long and successful career as a food business owner.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Thinking-of-Starting-a-Food-Business?-See-Which-Are-the-Most-Profitable&id=9478799

How to Calculate the Cost of Food for Your Culinary Business Venture

Are you hungry for information about launching your food-service small business? While there’s a lot of shared information to get started across all industries, the food industry poses unique opportunities and questions. One of the most common we see is how to calculate the cost of food. Here’s one approach from small-business expert Sam Ashe-Edmunds, who dishes out food-cost calculations into nine steps to help ensure that you’ll be able to keep a consistent menu, please customers and remain profitable.

 

Here’s what he has to say:

 

Step 1: Pick a dish to start and list all of its ingredients – even condiments and garnishes. You’ll want to make sure that the portion for each dish is the same so that it always costs the same.

 

Step 2: Calculate the cost of each ingredient. Take a head of lettuce, for example. If it costs 75 cents and you get 30 leaves, the lettuce cost for a dish that includes one lettuce leaf would be about 2.5 cents. Ashe-Edmunds reminds us to include a proportion of any expenses directly related to purchasing foods, such as delivery fees or interest.

 

Step 3: Add up the costs of all the ingredients for the dish, but don’t include costs for labor or actually serving the dish.

 

Step 4: To start figuring out if you’ve priced the meal right, divide the menu price by the food cost to calculate the percentage of the price that comes from food. If you charge $10 for a meal for which food costs are $5, then your food cost is 50 percent.

 

Step 5: Now, you’ll want to determine overhead cost per meal, which includes everything not related to food that’s required to run your restaurant. This includes things such as labor, rent, marketing, taxes, etc. So, consider what it will cost to run your restaurant on a daily basis – then divide that number by the number of customers you think you’ll serve every day. If your overhead is $1,000 per day and you have 200 customers each day, your overhead per person is $5.

 

TIP: Keep employee meals and food theft in this overhead figure as well, because they’re not included as direct costs to serve a meal but can’t be left out.

 

Step 6: Using your overhead costs as a guide, decide your ideal food-cost percentage. If you charge $10 for a meal and your overhead cost is $6, then your food costs can’t be more than $4 to break even. Want a $2 profit per meal? Then you’ll have to charge $12 for that particular dish.

 

Step 7: Take a look at the prices listed in your menu to figure out if they’ll cover your overhead and food costs – and if you’ll be able to make a profit. So if you’ve calculated an ideal food-cost percentage of 20 percent and a dish uses $4 of ingredients, you can’t sell that dish for any less than $20.

 

Step 8: You may need to calculate different food-cost percentages for different services or items, such as a breakfast menu versus dinner menu, because of different requirements – some less, some more – to satisfy each dish.

 

Step 9: Finally, examine your sales by item to determine if your food-cost percentages are adequate to keep your restaurant in business. If it turns out you’re selling at primarily a low cost, you might need to raise prices (or lower food costs) to be profitable.

 

TIP: Get a more complete picture of your food costs by checking out total food costs per service and dividing them by total sales. Then you won’t have to calculate the actual cost of each menu item.

 

 

http://www.sba.gov/community/blogs/how-calculate-cost-food-your-culinary-business-venture

Charlie Bigham: Cooking up a successful food business

Inspiration can often come from strange places. For UK ready meals boss Charlie Bigham it was being unable to sleep at the border between Iran and Pakistan.

Mr Bigham was 28 years old at the time, and he and his then girlfriend were travelling from the UK to India by camper van.

"It was very, very hot, and we were in a really tough place," he says. "I couldn't sleep, so I just laid there restlessly thinking about what I was going to do for a living when we got back home.

"I decided there and then that I was going to set up a food business, and it was going to look a bit like this."

Work experience

Mr Bigham had previously worked as a management consultant in London, before he and his girlfriend quit their jobs to go travelling for nine months.

His ambition was to set up his own company when they returned to the UK, and now he had his idea - he was going to establish a business that made upmarket ready meals.

Mr Bigham was not going to let the fact that he had never worked in the food industry before put him off, and instead he decided he would quickly set about gaining the knowledge and skills he needed.

And so upon his return to the UK he got a job at a delicatessen in London's fashionable Notting Hill area.

"I've always been really interested in food, but I had no food industry experience, so I knew I had to get some cheese under my fingernails, so to speak," he says.

Business inspiration can come from unlikely circumstances

He ended up spending almost four months at the deli, and at the same time did lots of research, and working on recipes.

"It became clear that the idea of making meals which are then sold via shops was a very good idea for a business because it was a massive market, yet one which was very straightforward to start up in," says Mr Bigham.

"I knew we could start under the radar before any bigger rivals could crush us, and then build quite quickly."

'Knocking on doors'

In November 1996, 11 months after his return from travelling, and now married to his girlfriend, Mr Bigham launched the business with £25,000 of savings, calling it simply "Charlie Bigham's".

To begin with, it was just him and one chef based at a small facility in London's Park Royal business estate.

Mr Bigham says: "We had just three product lines to start with - zesty Caribbean lamb, Cajun chicken with salsa, and salmon with a dill and cream sauce. I think we made just 20 meals in total in that first week."

To get sales moving, Mr Bigham, now 47, says he simply started "knocking on people's doors".

"I went round all the posh delis in London, and the big department stores with food halls. Everyone was approachable, and said, 'Yeah we'll give you a go'.

"I just had to be mildly persuasive, and I'm not a salesman.

"What greatly helped us, is that you have to remember that at the time, most ready - or convenience - meals, as I prefer to call them, were pretty dreadful.

Charlie Bigham's food is now stocked at Waitrose, Ocado and Booths

"We were one of the first to make quality ones without anything artificial. This set us apart and made shops interested in stocking us."

But while selling to posh stores in London was pleasing, Mr Bigham realised that in order to grow the business he needed to win a contract with one of the UK's supermarket groups. And so he cold-called Waitrose.

"I just picked up the phone and rang the Waitrose switchboard. I managed to persuade a lovely woman on the phone to put me through to a buyer. I got a meeting, and the buyer said she would give us a go."

Charlie Bigham's meals have been stocked by Waitrose ever since, initially at 40 stores for a successful trial period, and then nationwide. Online supermarket Ocado, and Booths, the north of England supermarket chain, have since followed suit.

Good timing

The company now employs 200 people across two sites at the Park Royal business park, and has an annual turnover of £20m, which is now growing at 19% per annum. 

Charlie Bigham's best sellers

1 Fish pie

2 Steak and ale pie

3 Lasagne

4 Moroccan chicken tagine

Mr Bigham says his former job as a management consultant helped him manage the company's growth over the past 17 years.

But he is the first to admit that luck and good timing played a major role in his success.

"The only way you can ever set up a successful business is to be lucky," he says. "It is the thing you need more than anything else. Anyone who says otherwise is just lying."

Mr Bigham says that most important piece of luck was all to do with timing.

"I set up a food business just as interest in food was blossoming in this country. Suddenly there was a wealth of TV chefs, and the national newspapers all added food sections at weekends.

"And the supermarkets were all being brave and looking outwards towards new suppliers. There was no planning or forethought about all this on my part, it was pure luck."

'Hugely privileged'

Mr Bigham today gives himself the job title "chairman and creative director". This followed his decision back in 2010 to bring in someone else to handle the chief executive role.

The company has no plans to start exporting

"It has enabled me to focus on the bits of the business I'm really interested in - product development, and the big strategic picture - working out plans for the next three to five years," he says.

"The bit in the middle [the day-to-day financial decisions etc] I'm easily bored by, and is best done by someone else."

Looking ahead, Mr Bigham says the company has no plans to start exporting, because the freshness, and therefore limited shelf life of his products, makes it too expensive.

Nor does he ever intend to move production away from London to somewhere cheaper, because he says he is loyal to his hard-working staff.

"I'm proud of what we have done to date, but I'm in no way complacent. Owning your own business is a hugely privileged position to be in, because I work with people I have chosen - not many people can say that."

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24434154

Big interview: Gloucestershire business woman Susannah Moffatt - from the dole to director in four years

 

It could be the plot of an inspirational film

A young woman, unemployed, needs a job; so starts work on the minimum wage behind the counter in a cafe. A few years later, she’s running coffee shops and cafes all over town and looking at a massive expansion of her business.

But it is no film script, it is happening to Susannah Moffat.

The 34 year old started her career in catering a mere four years ago as an alternative to sitting about on the dole, having graduated with a degree in creative writing from the University of Gloucestershire.

She is now director of two companies, Cheltenham Coffee Co and In The Park, running the Central Cross Cafe and the Boathouse in Pittville Park, as well as the cafes at Sandford Parks Lido.

There’s nothing new about aspiring writers getting a gig in a cafe, but what drove Susannah into being such a successful entrepreneur?

She said: “I spent my 20s singing and playing in bands – I still do that – and then did a degree in creative writing.

“I got the job in the cafe in Pittville Park in 2010 because I needed something to do, I don’t like not having something to do, but I’ve found that there’s a real outlet for creativity in running a business.

“It’s all about how you look at problems, having new ideas about doing things.”

 

And in her new venture at the lido, Susannah has certainly shaken things up.

Having just opened for the summer season, the cafe has been split into two operations.

Café Lido is available for swimmers and will, as usual, close at the end of summer.

But there’s a second coffee shop – Park Cafe, Sandford Parks – branded with green livery and aprons instead of the aquamarine blue branding Susannah has chosen for the pool cafe which will stay open all year round.

Susannah said: “I’m hoping this cafe can do for Sandford Park what the Central Cross cafe will do for Pittville Park. “It can become a destination, somewhere to meet and bring people to the park.

“At the Central Cross cafe we’ve provided blankets for people to sit on the grass and newspapers and we’re providing a community service, “I want to have jazz events linking the three parks, a big Hallowe’en event and we’ve done Christmas carol singing in Pittville which is really popular.”

But how did Susannah go from just working behind the counter to running an expanding empire?

Susannah smiled from under her dramatic red hair and said: “The cafe, which was just known as the ice cream hut at the time, closed for the winter and the council put it out to tender.

“They wanted someone to run their cafes, that one, the boathouse and the one in Montpellier Gardens. “I only wanted to do one, so I got together with two friends to form Cheltenham Coffee Co and I got loads of books from the library, books about running a business, doing a business plan, running a coffee shop.

“Because it was a council tender it was about 80 pages long – but I think they also knew that because I’d been working in the cafe and had often been on my own, managing it in effect at those times, that I knew what I was doing.”

Susannah’s new ideas included extending the opening hours, whereas the cafe had been open from 10am 5pm, she realised there was a trade to be found from people walking through their park on their way to work.

In three years the cafe’s turnover has nearly quadrupled, Susannah has taken over running of the Boat House in the park after her business partner Gene Waterhouse decided to follow other opportunities and she is bouncing with enthusiasm about her new venture in Sandford Parks.

She said: “We’ve only just opened – we had a month to get it all sorted out, decorated and the new colour scheme up. We’ve got pictures on the wall of the history of the place. It’s such an amazing asset for Cheltenham, I love the lido.”

And news of her success is spreading. She was invited to speak to business students at her alma mater at the University of Gloucestershire.

She added: “That was an honour. I had to start by telling them that I didn’t have a business degree.”

Susannah’s particular expertise at running cafes in parks and gardens has even seen her approached by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea; she was asked to provide a report on how to improve the catering operations in places like Holland Park and Kensington Memorial Gardens.

Susannah said: “I went down and had a look. There’s five parks and gardens. I went to their Holland Park offices.

“At the moment they’re providing instant coffee and packaged biscuits and they wanted something more like what we’re doing here, with homemade food and really good coffees and teas.

“ They’re going to put them out to tender, I think.”

And might she put in a bid?

“I might. I don’t know. I’d have to spend half the week in London if I did that.

“I’d also definitely have to get an office. At the minute I don’t have one, it’s my front room. So that would have to change.”

Susannah, who still sings and plays in bands when she finds the time, admits that she hasn’t done much creative writing since she graduated.

There’s definitely a screenplay to be written in her experiences over the last four years – but it might get turned down for being unrealistically easy – surely no one can be that good from a standing start? Except it would appear, Susannah is.

She’s only four years into her business career, and there’s a long way to go, but soon parks all over the country may be filled with cafes run by a Cheltenham girl who once took a job in a café because it was that or the dole queue.

 

http://www.southwestbusiness.co.uk/news/10062014080928-big-interview--gloucestershire-business-woman-susannah-moffatt---from-the-dole-to-director-in-four-years/