By Justina Strebel
Are you thinking about starting a food company - baking and selling homemade food items from your house?
There is a growing trend toward natural, pesticide-free and healthy food items, so it's not a surprise that custom food items are becoming more lucrative. Food products are widely distributed as gifts, they can also provide a fix to certain nutritional restrictions.
If you enjoy making foods and creativity is one of your assets, you can be in your element in this type of business while making your customers happy. Here are a couple of business concepts you may like:
Start a Catering Service
Catering can be a fantastic part-time or full time business opportunity. You can do business with a range of different customers, from small parties to huge corporate events. You can focus on imaginative laid-back outdoor entertainment or elegant sophisticated functions. Develop your very own distinct type of catering and meal preparation, and you can more easily draw in a faithful following of clients and client referrals.
Open a Cupcake Bakery
Do you enjoy cooking - with a knack for small desserts? There are a lot of choices you have when starting a cupcake bakery. Gourmet cupcake stores are opening up in every well-known city and are quickly becoming a regular treat.
But what about baby shower treats, wedding desserts, children's birthday cupcakes and cupcake bouquets? You guessed it - pretty much any event that would have a cake or cookies would surely like cupcakes too.
There is also an expanding market for gluten-free products, natural baked products and healthier desserts. With a cupcake service, you can begin small, from your kitchen or other cooking establishment. You can make deliveries to customers or sell to retailers or markets. As your business expands, and if you decide to, you can open a cupcake store and offer your cupcakes direct to customers.
Cookie Business
Would you like to start a part time business that involves food - where you can work at home? The cookie baking field is a good opportunity for this. Although there are many other competing businesses, you can serve just your local market and do rather well.
You do not require lots of supplies, equipment, ingredients or space to start - as compared with various other food operations. You can begin with small orders and expand over time as customers find out about your products.
Instead of cooking the conventional chocolate chip cookies, search for niche markets where there is minimal or no competition. Some examples might be gluten free cookies, organic cookies, vegan cookies, one-of-a-kind tastes, forms or sizes, etc. By being unique, it suddenly becomes much easier to gain the market's attention and get them to purchase your items.
Become a Food Writer
Food critics offer an useful service to restaurant owners and eaters alike, however, their comments can also be amusing to read. This unique field may not get much attention as a money-making idea, but food critics can have a big impact on the success of a restaurant, and even the audience of a publication or newspaper.
If you are good at offering useful feedback and have an intriguing writing style, you can excel as a food critic, and you'll be able to enjoy a lot of interesting meals too.
Become a Bakery Owner
If you would like to work for yourself and enjoy making baked goods, a bakery can be a creative and fulfilling business that lets you do exactly what you enjoy: producing recipes and preparing tasty treats.
Additionally, you can open a pet bakery, or specialize in baking and offering cookies, focus on healthy low fat treats, uniquely-shaped cakes, open a bakery/bookstore or any of a number of other specialty bakery niches.
Bakeries can thrive on word-of-mouth marketing, referrals and repeat buyers. Nevertheless, they first need those first initial customers to get that word-of-mouth business. Considering that a bakery costs money to run from day one (and prior to), it is necessary to bring in customers as quickly as possible to create profits.