| I’m approached just about every week by people who want to
run food based businesses. There are even more people who, when
I say that I help small businesses, confess that they’ve
always wanted to run a café, sell cakes or open yet another
sandwich shop.
When I point out that running a café or restaurant is
a very high risk business with only 1 in 3 restaurants surviving
their first 3 years, people are still determined to go ahead.
Why people want to run a food business
Many such people have no experience of working in the trade,
and seem to base their desire on a mixture of their love of food
and wanting to be their own boss.
Now being self-employed can be a great way to develop a flexible
lifestyle and to have control over what you do, but the very
nature of running a food based business means that you soon
lose the control that you craved. The café and restaurant
trade in particular is very hard, often physically hard work,
and the need to have set opening times means that there is very
little scope to take a day off when you want to, or to have
those days when you can kickback a little and sit in
the park doing some creative planning. The need for constant
quality control, problems with absenteeism and staff retention
in a traditionally poorly paying industry means that the owner
can rarely relax. You might be able to set the menus and decide
on the décor, but you will rarely have control over your
own time.
Marketing is more important
than cooking skills
Another popular idea is to make food to supply to shops, restaurants
and delis. Many people seem to think that skills in the kitchen
will automatically make them good at creating thousands of bottles
of salad dressing. Unfortunately, supplying even high end gourmet
items is more a matter of chemistry and engineering than cookery
and the skillset is completely different.
The other skill that
is essential for success in this area is being able to sell
your wares to the right channels. It’s very difficult
to get outlets to agree to take a new product, especially in
an industry where new products are being launched every week.
The businesses that I’ve seen succeed in this area have
benefited from persistence in sales, and offering something
unique.
People are often motivated by their love of food, and think
that they have something to offer because they can cook. They
end up either giving up because it’s too hard (and who
can blame them?) or succeeding because they have the right marketing
skills. It’s rarely anything to do with food at all at
the end of the day.
Get help to develop the right skills
So if you're tempted to start up a food based business or you have one already, and you would like to talk about how to develop the business skills you need, come and buy me a cup of coffee and we'll talk turkey.
Julia Chanteray
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