My mother has a very small food business. It started out by selling homemade breads, some cakes, and entire meals for christmas and other occasions. She also started working with frozen meals and so on. It's very small, she does all the cooking on her own with no employees or anything. I made her a logo, a website, an instagram account, taught her how to take pictures of the food, excel tables for clients and prices, etc.
Last year though we barely broke even. We could, of course, seek for expanding it, hire assistants, mass produce, etc. But that's not what we want at the moment because it would have to be a massive investment for our standards.
What I think is the problem is that we are not properly organized and I want to know from you what do you think is a good strategy for selling food, both from the point of view of those who sell it and from those who buy it. Do you think setting a specific day of the week for delivery, like a system in which you pay for the month and get a different bread every week could work? In the case of prepared meals, it's only affordable if she does a lot of the same meal, but she can't find the clients for it. And I told her that the menu has too many options (not only does that confuse people, but also she is bound to cook different things and work much more than what is worth).
Do you know examples of small food business that I could take as inpiration? Do you know of articles and resources that could help me out? What's your opinion?
Their website is truly kind of a mess though, I like ours better, even though we are much more simple anyway.
Lucas Evans
Would totally jack it on your mom’s feet
Charles Evans
be my guest user, maybe we can use your seeds and her feet's sweat in some of the recipes
Tyler Parker
...
Colton Gomez
bump
please don't talk about my mom's or my wife's daughter's feet again
Brody Morris
bump
Thomas Baker
Give up the food business and sell your mom's used socks instead
Ian James
I don't know anything about this, but maybe you could work more like a catering service and look for jobs making plenty of the same meal for weddings, retirement homes, stuff like that. What size area are you operating in? You should see what you can do about getting yourself on google for 'delivery nearby' and etc for your area of operation. If people are like me, then they just use google maps for 'delivery open now' and etc and pick what's available.
Leo Martinez
>sell your mom's used socks instead You mean her dirty panties.
There's big business in that -- fifty bucks per thoroughly-slimed pair. They sell them over on le reddit.
Julian Powell
Depends where you live OP, but I can't imagine you'll make much unless you're prepared to invest in something more substantial.
Dylan Wright
What type of food yall specialize in? Is it asian?
Jace Reed
OPs mom might be hideous. He'll have to show more pics before it's possible to decide whether or not its a potential money-maker.
Xavier Wilson
Have you thought about looking at local farmers markets, and selling your products there?
Asher Rodriguez
Thanks for the input user. The issue is that she is working at home and usually take individual orders and only then prepare them to deliver the next day. Idk, it's a slow process.
She worked for events before, not weddings which are too big, but meetings and conventions. Maybe it' something she could focus on doing more.
I live in a city with 1 million people more or less, that's the area.
She uses high quality ingredients, she specializes in food that you don't normally see out there, special breads with nuts, fancy pies, fancy meat dishes, etc. She also has vegetarian, vegan, low carb options. One of the things that granted some money was to cook meals for some old people with diabetes and also low salt meals, stuff that they would have to cook themselves, but that she offers as a custom thing.
Jacob Russell
I said socks and I mean socks, it's the next new thing in the footfag circles.
Adam Cox
>I made her a logo, a website, an instagram account, taught her how to take pictures of the food, excel tables for clients and prices, etc. >Last year though we barely broke even. Nice of you to handle social media for her, but word of mouth is what will get it moving. Offer free or discounted services for good ratings/ good write ups/etc. Social media is nice but only works AFTER you have a decent following. I've seen this at 3 places in the last 5 years. Get a IRL following and then use it in social media.
So many variables in this that it's not worth trying to figure it out, but figure out what you do well, what people want, and what you think people want. There's going to be a happy medium that you will find. ...you'll figure it out. GL
Nolan Gray
Do you have a detailed idea of the costs? As in per ingredient, not forgetting things like oil and salt, and for electricity, gas, water, cleaning materials, packaging materials, replacing equipment, other maintenance including replacing lightbulbs. Include some percentage of wastage for ingredients, and try to get a clear idea of how much actual wastage there is so you can reduce it wherever possible.
Come up with a sensible wage for her, and include her time, not forgetting shopping, delivering, taking orders and cleaning, divide it between dishes to help get an idea of how much you should be charging per dish. Something like 30% for produce, 30% for wages, 40% to pay for everything else above is reasonable as a minimum, but charge more if people are willing to pay it even if it's just a bowl of rice. Things like that are going to help because you're not selling things like drinks, so if there are add on side dishes that are cheap and quick to make, upsell people on those.
Parties, offers and special occasions feel like good things to do, but don't go into them blindly without checking the numbers, especially the extra work and delivery time it's going to take, as well as "overtime" if she's still going to be taking regular orders.
Nathan Perry
>asking Veeky Forums for advice
really? i would suggest you to try your luck at Veeky Forums but after seeing it myself there is nothing but shitpost.
what is your selling point? your target market? work on your food costing you dont expand when you barely broke even. location of shop get some feedback from your customers on how to improve
