Start Your Own Specialty Food Business

Your Step-By-Step Startup Guide to Success

Cheryl Kimball

• Publisher: Entrepreneur Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781599185835
• eBook ISBN: 9781613083338
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Food Industry
• Index: Business

Bring Your Fresh Ideas to Market and Profit
Fueled by growing consumer demand for new tastes, cleaner ingredients, health benefits, and more convenient ways to shop and eat, the business of specialty food is taking off at full speed. This step-by-step guide arms entrepreneurial foodies like yourself with an industry overview, the hottest trends, important research and statistics, and insight from practicing specialty food business owners on key growth drivers, opportunities, and how you can differentiate from other food businesses.Discover how to:
Find the right avenue for your specialty food business: home-based, retail shop, production, wholesale, or distribution
Create a solid business plan, get funded, and get the essential equipment
Get the right licenses, codes, permits, insurance for your operations
Gain a competitive edge using market and product research
Find a profitable location, partnerships, and in-store shelf space
Promote your business, products, and services online and offline
Attract new and loyal customers using social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest
Manage daily operations, costs, and employees
Plus, get valuable resource lists, sample business plans, checklists, and worksheets

CHAPTER 1

Who Puts the “Specialty” in Specialty Food?

From cheeses, meats, and seafood to shortbreads, toffee, and maple syrup, the specialty food industry has such a wide range of entry points that if you have a food skill and feel passionately about letting others enjoy the fruits of your skill, you should certainly consider taking it to market. And not only is the range of food types broad but you can choose how to participate—as a producer of a specialty food, you can make your product and sell it in your own retail store or via mail order or be strictly a producer providing your product to retail stores or mail order catalogs to sell.

But first, let’s look at small business as a whole.

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fun fact

This heading probably should be “Eew!” but the Specialty Food Association reports that the next wave in the edible insect market may be cooking oils made from insects. Who knew there even was an “edible insect market”?

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The Current State of Small Business in America

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, small businesses (defined as those with 250 or fewer employees) employ 56.1 million of the nation’s private workforce. Firms with fewer than 100 employees make up the largest part of small-business employment.

That said, small business is far from immune to the ups and downs of business cycles. It has taken a while for the small-business sector to recover from the recession in the late 2000s. Just in 2015 did birthing of companies exceed exit rate, a trend not seen since 2007 according to business.com. “Small businesses are the forefront of our economy . . . every minute, a new business in the U.S. is started and according to some people, more than 50 percent of all workers will be self-employed by 2020.” (“The State of Small Business in 2015,” May 5, 2015, by Betsy Scuteri, www.business.com.)

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State of Small Business

Wasp Barcode is a barcode and system software technology company. Their “State of Small Business Report” (www.waspbarcode.com) found the following statistics:

47 percent of small businesses were more confident in the economy in 2015 than a year before.

Product companies were anticipating higher revenue growth than nonproduct companies.

57 percent expected revenue growth in 2015.

56 percent expected to invest less than 3 percent in marketing.

38 percent were expecting to hire employees in 2015.

38 percent planned to spend money on IT in 2015.

35 percent view their company website as very or even extremely important.

54 percent spent over $5,000 in on IT-related equipment and software in 2014.

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The Small Business Administration (SBA)

With statistics like the ones from the U.S. Census Bureau showing that small business (defined as fewer than 250 employees) employ 56.1 million people, it’s no wonder the U.S. government has an administration devoted to small businesses. Anyone thinking about starting a business should have the SBA (www.sba.gov) bookmarked for quick access. There is a wealth of information on this site; you couldn’t do much better to start your small-business research here.

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tip

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Who Puts the “Specialty” in Specialty Food?
• Chapter 2: You Like to Eat but Is this Business Right for You?
• Chapter 3: Meet Your Mentors
• Chapter 4: Pass the Salt and Pepper: Business Basics
• Chapter 5: You’ve Been Chopped!: Market Research
• Chapter 6: The Necessary Ingredient: Financing
• Chapter 7: Home Is Where the Stove Is: Location
• Chapter 8: All Things Digital
• Chapter 9: Chef, Sous-Chef, and Kitchen Help: Employees
• Chapter 10: How to Not Cook the Books: Accounting
• Chapter 11: When “To Market” Means Something Else
• Chapter 12: Social Media
• Appendix: Specialty Food Resources
• Glossary
• Index