business, preparing the food to sell, preparing to attend food festivals and enthusing everyone you meet about your food.
You’ll need to keep a close watch on your expenses and income to make sure the business isn’t wasting money. Overproducing and underselling is a danger that must be constantly watched for. Also, factor in the cost of exhibiting.
It’s vital that you test your products with your potential market before investing lots of time and money. Get a neutral opinion from the marketplace, and the views of traders already active in your sector.
Do you have the support of friends and family members? Your cooking and food preparation will take up a lot of space and time in your home kitchen. Are they prepared for the inevitable disruption of family life? (Are you?) Also, you may need to call upon their time (unpaid) to help you at a farmers’ market, early in the morning on a cold Sunday in January.
Hampers
One of the many routes-to-market for a producer is hampers. If you create the right product, you can get it included in a hamper sold by a local hamper company or regional food body.
CASE STUDY: Wenlock Hampers
Wenlock Hampers were initially created to tie in with the London Olympic Games and their historical links with the small town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire. A popular Wenlock Hamper is an assortment of food and drink products made within a 26.2-mile radius of Much Wenlock – a marathon’s distance!
Products in the hampers include cheese, chutney, meats, infused rapeseed oil, chocolate, beer and wine. All products are selected from HEFF-producer members, and made in compliance with the HEFF Standard, a health and hygiene third party audit.
HEFF | www.heff.co.uk
CHAPTER 3. Refining Your Ideas
HOPEFULLY THE FIRST two chapters have given you plenty of food for thought. Is your kitchen notepad starting to fill up with notes and ideas? Great – because now it’s time to start refining your business and product ideas.
“You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces – just good food from fresh ingredients.”
– Julia Child, American cook and author (1912–2004)
Focus groups
Gather a group of friends and family and share your ideas with them – if possible with samples. Try to also do this with five or six people who represent your target market. People are usually happy to eat a bit of free food in return for their thoughts.
Have question sheets prepared in advance – anonymised if you think it will help honesty. And you do want people to be brutally honest.
Encourage your focus groups to contribute as many suggestions as possible when discussing your ideas. Ask for normal and zany contributions. It will all help – you never know what inspiration it might spark.
Don’t be afraid to fail
Survival of the fittest is not based on strength but adaptability. When working through your ideas you need to base your thinking on why the business could work, not why it could fail. If you don’t try something out of fear, you’ll never know whether it would have been a success or not. Just be prepared to adapt.
Get help from food groups
Ask your local or regional food group for help. Deliciously Yorkshire, which covers Humberside as well as Yorkshire, says:
“It is easy to become too close to your products and not see the potential or what is stopping them being a success. We hold regular focus groups where you can submit one or more of your products for consumer panel feedback.”
Deliciously Yorkshire | www.deliciouslyorkshire.co.uk
Trend-watching
Trend-watching is a really important technique for any food business, especially at this stage. Trend-watching helps you deliver products and services to markets that are currently proving profitable. It can also provide you with ideas for products based on what has worked already in other countries.
For instance, China is arguably the fastest-growing consumer market in the world. This fact is not lost on London’s luxury department store, Harrods, which now employs several Mandarin-speaking staff. So, if you’re selling luxury puddings or drinks, consider having labels printed in both English and Mandarin.
Here’s a selection of food businesses reported on trend-watching site springwise.com to inspire your thoughts. Some maybe too avant garde or not relevant to your thinking, but they have a common theme: engaging with customers in new, innovative ways builds brand loyalty and sales.
Solar-powered pop-ups
Finland’s Lapin Kulta Solar Kitchen Restaurant is a pop-up venture using only the energy of the sun to cook food. The restaurant opens only on sunny days, and its offerings depend on how much sunshine is available at the time of cooking, ranging from full solar barbecues to lower-temperature meals and salads.
www.lapinkultasolarkitchenrestaurant.com
Food of friends
Food giant Heinz in the UK used Facebook as a platform for fans to send personalised tins of soup to friends suffering with a cold.
Home-made kits
In Alberta, Canada, Make Cheese enables households to produce their own cheese, with all-in-one kits containing ingredients, equipment and recipes. Providing consumers with simple ways to create their own produce in the home, initiatives such as these offer chemical-free and cheaper alternatives to supermarket shopping.
Foodie trend-watching on Twitter
@trendwatching
@springwise
@psfk
@kickstarter
@coolhunter
Avoiding useless USPs
When fixing on your business’s unique selling point, it’s easy to prioritise unique over selling. The current trend for chilli sauces provides a cautionary tale.
“One of the most common product ideas bought to our kitchens is chilli sauce,” says food consultant Olga Astaniotis of The Olive Grows. The prospective entrepreneur invariably claims their product is “not just any chilli sauce, but made with chillies from a specific region, using a specific mix of chillies and a secret ingredient from their ancestors, with a unique flavour like no other on the market.
“Whilst this is valid differentiation from competition, the question must be asked and answered honestly: does the consumer care enough about these differentiating factors? Deciding that they are a USP