Our Right to Self Reliance

Tomorrow, February 23, is National Pancake Day .  Sounds like a great opportunity to take a couple of people out and discuss how to make some lettuce starting up a food business over free pancakes.  Use the Share button just to your right here and tell all your friends!

There are a myriad different possibilities for self employment in the food industry. Fortunately or unfortunately there are also a myriad of rules, laws, requirements and certifications in the food industry, too.  I say fortunately because it would seem there needs to be some sort of oversight for the sake of consumers (ever watch Kitchen Nightmares ? Oy!), and unfortunately because the level of bureaucracy controlling food has reached such levels that one may hesitate to even look at a food industry startup.  But, there are ways and there are ways.

Sometimes it’s a matter of degree of contact between the food handlers and the consumers.  If you simply discover that a large office building has no access to cookies and muffins and you arrange to push a cart out front that carries prepackaged individual cookies and muffins, chances are very good that you will not even need a food handler’s card.  Sometimes it’s a matter of what kind of food is being handled—I understand that in most places, vegan cafes for instance have less stringent requirements because they are not handling meat, milk or eggs which are major contamination and cross contamination concern foods.  Likewise, if you have a couple three bang-up recipes for dry salad dressing mixes, you are likely to need fewer inspections and controls.  In some states, you can prepare pet treats very many fewer controls.

You are most likely to need access to a commercial kitchen—that is, a kitchen that has been inspected and approved by your local health department.  To find those, start checking churches, grange halls and fraternal organizations to see if they have a commercial kitchen and whether or not it’s for rent to the general public.  You might check with your local health department; some of them have lists of commercial kitchens available which cuts out a lot of your foot and phone work.

A step up from simply renting a commercial kitchen would be to find a kitchen incubator, which raises the chances of your food startup suceeding.  A kitchen incubator not only provides the kitchen, they provide consultation on the business itself.  Any leg up that you can find when starting any business is a plus, and this is a gem.  There is even a national database of kitchen incubators at CulinaryIncubators.com.  There doesn’t appear to be many listed, but perhaps there is one in your area…and if there is not, perhaps opening a kitchen incubator in some small failed restaurant business would be a canny business move.

Selling your products on line can certainly simplify marketing.  You could build a website, even a simple one, and get your product out onto the internet or as mentioned in Make Your Own…and Sell It! you could sell your product on Foodzie.

Have you ever been told you should sell your cookies?  Some told Mrs. Fields that at some point!  Have you thought about selling some sort of food?  A dry mix, perhaps, or even opening a restaurant or cafe?  Small scale food industry enterprises can provide a comfortable plan B, and in this economy getting started on one may just be the smart choice.