Publishing details
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HARRIMAN HOUSE LTD
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Copyright © 2012 Harriman House Ltd. Images © iStockphoto.com. Quotes and excerpts remain © respective sources.
First published in Great Britain in 2012
Country Living is a registered trade mark of The National Magazine Company Limited
The right of Bruce McMichael to be identified as the Author has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN: 9781908003492
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data | A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publisher. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without the prior written consent of the Publisher.
No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person or corporate body acting or refraining to act as a result of reading material in this book can be accepted by the Publisher or by the Author or by The National Magazine Company Limited
With many thanks to my children Lucy and Robbie, and my Mother, for their unstinting support and humorous encouragement throughout the writing of this book!
Introduction
Who this book is for
MANY OF US dream of being our own boss, working from home and turning a hobby into money. With a bit of hard work, planning and help, the dream is certainly within reach.
Whether you are in full-time employment and wish to earn a second income or are looking for a complete change of lifestyle, this guide will tell you everything you need to know to start your own food business.
The only thing it doesn’t cover is recipes, and that’s because it’s designed to help people with interests in every kind of food: from cupcakes to crabcakes, sausages to salads.
Now is a great time to start your own food business. You’ll be tapping into the public’s desire for a return to traditional, well-cooked, homemade food. You’ll also be able to sell your products at a growing number of local food fairs, farmers’ markets and food festivals. Supermarkets, too, are increasingly receptive.
And with modern technology and social media, it’s never been easier to promote your products.
Working with food is great fun. Yes, it’s demanding. But the rewards can be substantial, both financially and creatively. You don’t need to be a Michelin-starred chef to earn money from food. All it takes is the ability to learn fast, work hard and be adaptable.
What this book does
This book will help you:
turn your love of food into a thriving small business, with the right idea and a watertight business plan
create a home-based kitchen that complies with health and safety legislation
use social media to promote your produce and brand cost-effectively
become part of a vibrant community selling at farmers’ markets and food festivals across the UK
sell into shops, pubs and giant supermarket chains.
This book is sprinkled with real-life stories of people making money from cooking, baking, blogging and much more besides. We’ll meet soft drink producers, beef burger and sausage makers, chocolate and fudge specialists – all of whom started from scratch and are now successfully selling into everywhere from farm shops to supermarkets.
I hope this book will be the recipe you need to become a successful food entrepreneur just like them.
Bruce McMichael
CHAPTER 1. Cooking up a Great Idea
Starting your home-based food business
TAKE A PINCH of optimism, a spoonful of passion and a good measure of hard work and you have the basic ingredients for a home-based food business.
Have you always worked for someone else, but secretly dreamed of being your own boss? Faced with a discouraging job market, perhaps you’ve thought about creating your own job? Maybe you have a book full of recipes just waiting to get out there.
Whatever your motivation, running your own food business from home is a wonderful opportunity and should, I believe, be grasped with both hands.
It’s important to understand what it isn’t, though.
It isn’t merely an expansion of ordinary kitchen life – cooking and baking for family, guests or fun. To an observer, scaling up to commercial production is just a matter of more – more ingredients, more measuring, more cooking.
The full picture is not quite so simple.
Creating a profitable business demands investment in time, skills, equipment. Perhaps, too, in facilities and business and technical support. Most of all it requires a different mindset: a shift from producing for your own pleasure to producing for your own profit.
None of this, of course, need be daunting, expensive or soulless – and this book will help you navigate your way through it all. But the difference in approach – really in attitude – does need to be borne in mind from the start.
Running your own food business is more challenging than cooking for fun. Thankfully, it’s also a lot more rewarding.
Key steps in creating your business
This is the age of ethnic cooking, gastro pubs and local produce. Provenance, animal welfare and culinary innovation are important as perhaps never before. The British food revolution demands high quality food, backed up with a story and integrity. It also increasingly seeks value. This is the space which a new wave of food entrepreneurs are successfully occupying, and the arena this book is all about helping you to enter.
The route to success today looks something like the following:
Research – is there a market for your product or service?
Business plan – write a plan; a route-map to business success.
Get cooking – deliver food that beats your customers’ expectations.
Marketing and selling – use everything from word-of-mouth to websites and social media to share what makes your produce the best.
The rest of this chapter and the next will focus on getting and perfecting your idea through research, with the remainder of the book taking you through the other steps.
“There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart ... pursue those.”
– Michael