Why The Food Business Is So Hard To Break Into

If you are a bit of a whizz in the kitchen and you love nothing more than settling down in front of the TV to watch Masterchef, you might be tempted to give up your steady wage, excellent career prospects and office banter for the allure of setting up your own restaurant. The food business is a fickle creature and what is in one moment is out of fashion the next. To make it in the food industry you have to be tenacious, have supreme business acumen, and of course, be an extremely talented cook.

Food businesses take on many forms, from the corporate sandwich makers to the wedding caterers, and the street food stall owners to the restaurateurs. The camp that you find yourself falling into can be a tricky one to discover. You might love the idea of pitching up your fully converted catering horsebox to the masses with your Caribbean offerings, but you might equally be swayed by the formality and rigidness of a little bistro. Discovering the best way to sell your grub to the masses can be hard to work out. However, hopefully, by reading this article you will be a little clearer on the sorts of food business outlets you can aspire to and the pitfalls that you should be avoiding.

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Food Festivals

If you are just starting out in the food business, it's a sound idea to make your set up as flexible as possible. You could choose to purchase an outdoor gazebo, some camping stoves, and some tables to set up your mobile eatery at a range of street food events across the country. As you are dealing with food, you need to ensure that your business is fulfilling its legislative requirements. You need to ensure that you have had an environmental health officer at your premises to check out your kitchen area. Your paperwork needs to stringent, as do your temperature checks, hygiene standards, and public liability insurances. This all needs to be in place before you can even begin to think about trading.

Street food events are a great way to sell your food to the masses. Little tasty morsels showing off a sample of your menu will be devoured by foodies who have chosen to come to a specific street eats event. Think about the sort of cuisine that you want to rustle up. You could jump on the vegetarian bandwagon. Perhaps you are obsessed with food from your heritage whether this is food from Trinidad, bangers and mash Cockney style, or all American grits. Consider how best to serve up your food, and consider your eco-credentials.

Being a street food vendor, you will need to price your dishes appropriately. Too low, and you will find that your turnover needs to be too great to make any sort of decent profit. Too high, and you stand a chance of selling very little, especially if the food being served up around you is flying out of the gazebos for less money. Consider the ingredients that you have used and work out how much it costs to cook each dish. Then try an eighty percent markup. If this equates to the retail price you were considering then you are onto a winner.

A pitfall you need to avoid is using too costly ingredients. Buying at retail establishments like supermarkets is not wise as you will be paying over the odds. Go for bulk buying at cash and carry type retailers to get more bang for your buck. While you might want to serve up a red snapper ceviche or a lobster thermidor, the markup will be too high, you won't be able to sell many units, and your profit margins will sink.

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Restaurants

If you want to launch yourself head first into the restaurant trade, then you need to consider the sort of establishment you want for your gastronomic delights. Does your food lend itself to fine dining? Or is a less formal eatery more your bag? The answer to this question will dictate your target market. If you want to open up for the busy lunchtime window, then young professionals on a break in the middle of a city center might be your ideal target market. Price your grub accordingly, make it easy and quick to get out to the diners, and ensure your premises gets plenty of foot fall.

The old adage of a smaller menu means a classier eatery is true. There is an ethos of exclusivity to these places and they often charge more because of their allure to the foodie. As you are only just starting out, keep your menu succinct and ensure that you know the recipes like the back of your hand. People want quality not quantity so fulfill this wish.

If you are looking to hire staff whether these are waiting staff or kitchen help, ensure that you check out https://getsling.com/blog/restaurant-interview-questions/ for some sample interview

questions that you can ask any potential candidates to be sure of their skills. Poor front of house can lead to slow service and mixed up orders. This, in turn, leads to negative reviews online. This can be the death knell for your business as restaurants and eateries rely on the reputation that they can build online. It's vital that you avoid this pitfall and hire the right people.

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Catering

If you’re considering going down the catering route, you need to work out the sort of events you wish to provide food for. Weddings can be highly lucrative when working out the price per head for a buffet or sit down three course meal. Corporate events can also charge higher prices than your average dinner party. Because they are willing to pay more, they expect a certain caliber of food so you must make sure that you’re up to scratch.

Tweak your menu and practice in your kitchen as much as possible. Hone your sauces, your jus, and your side dishes. Make sure that you are bringing something a little different to the table. People catering weddings are sick of the standard three course meal with prawn cocktail starter steak main, and chocolate dessert. Fusion food is all the rage, new taste sensations are being sought after, and you need to provide this to your clientele. You can specialize in a cuisine but you also need to be willing to try new techniques and understand what your diners want. This is why you must conduct thorough market research before you begin trading.

Get Visible

You can have the most fantastic eatery known to humankind, but if no one knows about it, then what’s the point? Get online, get an SEO bod on board like the ones listed at https://themefuse.com/best-seo-experts-you-should-follow/ if you need, and set up a barnstorming website to attract clientele. By hiring an SEO guru, you can be sure of appearing on the first page of Google. With an online presence, your food will get a global audience. With any luck, they will see your website, notice your social media links and start following you.

Social media is the perfect free way to publicize your restaurant or catering outlet. Use Instagram as a tool to display perfectly filtered image of your grub. Show people eating and enjoying your food. And post snippets of exceptionally glowing testimonials to enhance your reputation. Keep the content fresh, regular and relevant. People can be seduced by awesome images, so utilize the hashtag and show your gastronomic delights to the masses.

The food business is hard to break into with restaurants going out of business on a weekly basis because overheads are too much, premises rents are too high, or business acumen wasn’t up to scratch. Ensure that you don't fall into this trap by working out what it is you want to achieve in the food industry and using this guide to help you.

Ensure You're Always Prepared For That Meeting

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Does anyone ever actually ‘enjoy’ the process of meetings? It can often feel like a lion's den, no matter where on the hierarchy you are. Making the effort to be assertive and have your voice heard while also listening to everyone else is a valuable skill in balance, and sometimes, your colleagues do not possess that. Of course, meetings aren’t as horrific as they’re made out to be.

A simple weekly roundup can be enlightening, or a celebratory meeting can be satisfying to experience. But sometimes, you need to defend your corner, or you need to put forward a game plan you think is truly going to make the difference. To that extent, you need to be prepared. Much like a police officer questioning a suspect and placing every small element of evidence on the table, when it comes to the important meetings, you can’t afford to leave any stone unturned.

Thankfully, this is achievable. With a good amount of preparation and no small amount of self-belief, you can ace each and every meeting you attend. Let us consider how:

Have The Right Documents on Hand

It’s important to have the right documents on hand before you present anything at a meeting. This is because if you’re not careful, you can be referring to matters that you might understand, but that others aren’t quite aware of. From department to department awareness might differ, and other colleagues may not have put in the same time to a subject as you have. Even if you don’t need them, having backup materials can be important, either printed in a folder with handouts or on a tablet you can bring in. The ability to edit PDF files can also be useful here, as you can customize certain documents to their most prescient points for clarity.

Be Punctual

Being on time for the meeting, ideally even five minutes before, can help you remain in the loop. Not only that, but part of a meeting is about visibility and attentiveness. If you know you have a big meeting in the morning, perhaps set off thirty minutes beforehand to get to the office on time, instead of dealing with an unfortunate amount of traffic that forces you to arrive ten minutes late and miss some pressing introductory points. It might sound obvious, but remaining punctual can certainly be a big deal here.

Ask Questions

It’s not enough to simply accept everything being said. If you feel you do not understand you may ask for further clarification later. Or it might be you wish to challenge someone’s summary with your own ideal. If you phrase this in a manner that seems non-confrontational but inquisitive your colleagues will often be more than happy to further clarify, or potentially elaborate more on the point. So long as you don’t do this for every single point brought up you will be seen as contributing to the meeting (providing it’s within your role to,) and can generally help a higher standard of conversation flow.

With this advice, you’ll always be prepared for that meeting.

Things To Keep In Mind When Running A Business

Running a business is no easy task at the best of times, but when things start to get tough, this is when you really start questioning whether or not you have chosen well. That being said, there are some things that you need to keep in mind when you run a business, and we are going to look at some of these down below. As such, if you are interested in finding out more concerning the things you need to keep in mind, read on.

Funds

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You always need to have money on your mind when you own a company. Movies and songs may try to tell you it’s not all about the money, but it is when you are a business owner, and unless you want to be hiring a chapter 13 bankruptcy lawyer any time soon, we recommend you realize this. If you are not good with the money side of things, then you can always hire an accountant to take care of this for you. By doing this, you are going to receive the specialist help that you need while freeing up your time to take on other roles and responsibilities within the company.

You will also find that if you hire an accountant, they will be able to give you money-saving advice as well as where you could allocate your funds better. Knowing that your finances are in safe hands is always a load of pressure off of you as the owner.

Staff

You always need to be thinking in terms of your staff. Do you have enough? Are they doing their job to the best of their ability? Is this good enough? Are they happy? And so many more important questions. Often business owners forget that their staff is the backbone of their very business and that without them there would be no company. If you are not considering how your staff then one of two things is going to happen: either your staff are going to leave, or they are not going to do their job to the best of their ability, and you are going to have to fire them.

Neither of the options mentioned above are good ones, and that is why you need to make sure that you are thinking of them. Conduct performance reviews, ask them for feedback about what it is like working for your company and implement any measures that you can think of that will make working for you better.

Marketing

The final thing that you need to be thinking of constantly is your marketing. You need to know exactly what methods you are employing, how well they are doing, areas where you can improve and a whole range of other things. It is not necessarily the case that you are going to need to hire an entire marketing team, but certainly, one person who has a background in it is going to be helpful.

We hope that you have found this article helpful, and will keep these things in mind when you are a business owner!

Out-of-the-Box Date Ideas

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut with the type of dates you go on? Do you ever want to try something new or exciting? Do you want your first date to be truly memorable? When it comes to dating, try to step out of the old clichés. Skip dinner and a movie. Forget about miniature golf and pizza. Ditch the boring and try something new. Here are four out-of-the-box date ideas.

Murder Mystery

Murder mysteries allow you to step out of your comfort zone. Get into character as the actors play out the murder and give clues. Then take the time for you and your date to discuss what you’ve seen and try to solve the mystery. This a great way to show your creative and fun side. Many murder mystery shows include dinner. Some even have a unique form of transportation like the dinner train Tampa Bay.

Escape Room

Escape rooms are a growing craze in the country. While this experience is not a great choice for people who get claustrophobic, most people can have a great time. You are locked in a room with your date and you get one hour to figure out how to escape. You are given clues and puzzles to solve. As you solve each one, it leads you on a trail to new puzzles. The challenge is to find all the clues and solve all the puzzles before time runs out. This is a great way for you and your date to show your communication skills and see how compatible you are.

Scavenger Hunt

Another fun idea that won’t cost you much is a date night scavenger hunt. There are dozens of printable scavenger hunts on the internet. Find one that you and your date will both enjoy. Scavenger hunts come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some require that you collect items on a list. Others might require you find items and take a picture. Some may require you to interact with other people. No matter which you choose, a scavenger hunt is a great way to have a few laughs and enjoy time with your date.

Unique Museum

No matter where you are in the country, there is bound to be a weird museum near you. Maybe you live close to the world’s largest collection of dolls. Perhaps there’s a haunted house museum. Find one of these unique museums and visit with your date. While the venue might be odd, you will neither one ever forget the date.

Try one of these ideas the next time you go out on a date. Leave the ordinary behind and try something new.

               

Sweet Gift Ideas for Mom

If your mother’s birthday is coming up soon, now is the time to start planning for the perfect gift. Skip giving her the same old flowers she gets every year. Give her something fun, exciting, and new to show her that you really care. Here are a few ideas to help you find the perfect gift for the most important woman in your life.

Forget Flowers; Give Her Food

Every mother will admit she loves getting a beautiful bouquet for her birthday, but why give the same boring flowers again and again? Everyone loves cookies, and cookie bouquets are the perfect gift idea to shake things up. They can be bought online and delivered to your doorstep, so you don't even need to leave the house to impress your loved ones.

Inexpensive Jewelry Is a Mom's Best Friend

Just about every mom would appreciate a beautiful piece of jewelry, but it doesn't have to break the bank. Inexpensive jewelry can be found easily online, or at local craft markets in your area. Small vendors will sometimes do custom work so you can give her the perfect piece to show off. Plus, you can feel better about supporting smaller local businesses, and she can brag about having a socially conscious child.

Help Grow Her Skills With a Good Book

One of the most obvious tips to personalize your birthday gift is to think about her hobbies. What does she like to do in her free time? If she likes gardening, buy her a book on gardening. Does she love cooking? Buy her a new fun cookbook to challenge her skills in the kitchen! Instructional books like these are an easy way to show her how well you know her, which is always appreciated.

Your mom doesn't need an elaborate gift to help her have a happy birthday. All she wants is a thoughtful present that shows how much you appreciate her hard work over the years.