3 Simple Steps to Starting a Specialty Food Business

Have you ever thought about starting a food business? Commercial success however is not contingent on your ability to cook up a tasty meal. Starting a specialty food business involves a lot more than simply having a great idea. It’s important to have a firm grip on some of the basic business concepts to insure your specialty food business is off to a good start. However if you feel a need for an in-depth education on how to start a food business, The New School, a premier New York University, is a good place to start. The school offers bachelor degree programs as well as adult education courses in various subject areas including Food Studies. If time does not permit, below you’ll find a 3 step guide to starting a food business.

1.    Conduct Market Research

Before you do anything, research your target market. Conducting market research is not an easy task and will require you utilize various resources. Before doing research brainstorm what you already know about your potential customers. You’ll be surprised how much information can be garnered without actually doing any research.

Once you’ve exhausted inner resources, learn more about your customers’ demographic data, interests, likes, dislikes, and habits through various government agencies like the census(dot)gov, bls(dot)gov, and bea(dot)gov. Keep in mind when conducting market research your primary goals should center on identifying the needs of your potential customers, making sure your offering can satisfy these needs, and identifying niche market opportunities.

Paramount to any market research today is the ability to identify opportunities online. A successful business must incorporate online market research from the get-go. Find out how your customers search for your product online. What is the intent behind online search for your offering? Are customers simply looking online to find your business locally? Are customers actually purchasing your or related products online? Answering these questions will help make sure you have a robust understanding of your target market.

2.    Identify Your Competitors

Incorporating competitive analysis into your market research is always a good idea. Identifying competition within your market will help you discover new niche opportunities and budget for your marketing campaigns. Identify your competitors and study them thoroughly. Look at their various business processes, marketing, location, distribution, layout, customer sourcing, etc. Look online. Do any of your competitors have a significant online presence for related search terms? You may discover that your online competition differs significantly, or that none exists, in which case you have an excellent market opportunity to dominate the online segment.

3.    Positioning – Differentiate Your Product

Starting a food business is difficult, starting a food business in a saturated market makes it that much harder. If you don’t have a large marketing budget, make sure you are able to differentiate your product offering in consumer’s mind. By differentiating your product from the competition you are able to offer a perceived value added benefit. How can you make your product stand out? If you can find a niche to exploit, you will be able to differentiate your product in a way that will offer maximum return on investment. Start by conducting research online. Search data can offer plenty of ideas for you to differentiate your product offering. For example let’s say your thinking about opening a cupcake bakery. We can tell that almost 10 thousand searches for “cupcake bakery” are performed monthly on Google. We also see that “cupcake birthday cake” is a term searched for almost 4 thousand times per month. Would you consider specializing in cupcake birthday cakes?

This is a guest post from The New School, a premier New York College offers online degree programs for busy, working professionals.

Comments

[Tony]

This is a good post. I've always wanted to get into the food business but I've never had the kind of expertise needed to venture out. I think this article is quite helpful to someone who really is interested. do you have any recommendations for good books to read through the subject? thank you in advance.

[Christian Tisby]

Researching your niche (to determine if it's profitable) identifying your competitors within that niche ( to determine how you can present your product as being better than theirs) and positioning yourself as an authority in that niche (branding) are all important aspects of marketing, one aspect is just as important as the other. If you desire to excel within any niche, these are the most important aspects of the marketing aspect, then comes the action part.

[Emp]

Great post!. It's clear, helpful and so interesting.

[Anthony]

The food business is tough. On top of all the obvious things such as knowing what your food costs and other overhead will be and knowing exactly what kind of customers to expect, there's an incredible amount of work that has to go into it. Next time you go out to a big restaurant during a busy time, take a minute to notice how many people are rushing around doing things, and how difficult it would be to manage everything. Add to that the hours you'll have to put in and how your family life will suffer. Remember, that any night or holiday you would probably like to spend at home with your family is likely going to be a night your customers would like to spend with their families at your restaurant.