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
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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 participateāas 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, letās look at small business as a whole.
fun fact
This heading probably should be āEew!ā 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 āedible insect marketā?
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 nationās 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. āSmall 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.ā (āThe State of Small Business in 2015,ā May 5, 2015, by Betsy Scuteri, www.business.com.)
State of Small Business
Wasp Barcode is a barcode and system software technology company. Their āState of Small Business Reportā (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.
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, itās 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 couldnāt do much better to start your small-business research here.