In the last decade, with the influence of social media, home businesses, such as homemade food, have become promising and, in some cases, lucrative businesses. To have a successful home business, one has to be familiar with the rules and regulations surrounding home businesses and create a business plan that considers the limitations of the business. The homemade food business is a great way to start a business with no money
Regulations on Homemade Food
Regulations on cottage food vary from state to state. You must know your state’s laws and keep checking the rules.
Keep Your Customers at All Costs
If you run a business from home, your best chance of making a profit is to keep your customers loyal. It might be more challenging for homemade food businesses to offer customer services than other companies in the food industry. However, your business is at home, so people expect you to offer different prices or services than a restaurant. Many people choose homemade food because it reminds them of a simpler time, and the whole mom-made food theme of these businesses adds a genuine feeling of wholesomeness. This genuine feeling underlines the urgency and importance of customer loyalty in the market.
An upside to owning a home-made food business is that unlike other businesses or local restaurants in your area, in fact, you do not have to spend a lot of money on branding and outdoor advertisement, the difference lies in the clients’ expectations which mostly is the nostalgic genuine feeling of support, mother’s house or in general the taste of their past. Many examples of home businesses use the profit they make by selling homemade food to open their restaurants or start other companies. Taza Chocolate—Started as a small bean-to-bar chocolate shop in Somerville, Massachusetts; Taza Chocolate now sells its products in restaurants and stores nationwide.
Offer What Others Can’t Offer
As a home business, you cannot compete with restaurant chains or franchises regarding supply and customer services, but you don’t have rules and regulations like they do. Without tight, rigid laws, you have room for creativity. What I’m implying here is that if you cannot provide services and food as much as your competition, provide something they are not providing at all.
Characteristics of a Unique Menu
The first thing that you must consider regarding the foods and baked goods that you want to put on your menu is the regulations of the state where you live. Then, you should at least have two options on your menu that are considered local food to attract local customers faster.
Many homemade food and bakery businesses try to attract customers by offering international foods or foods you can only eat when visiting your grandparents. While offering international food can attract customers from various ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, other ways are far more efficient, require less budget, and are less time-consuming. For instance, you can put special drinks on the menu, drinks that are easily made and are visually designed to look unique. While restaurants usually offer Coca-Cola and Pepsi, you can create drinks for your business. You are free to even put the name of your business on the drinks you design and make it a brand of its own. Remember to check all legal policies before deciding to provide your drinks.
Homemade Bakery Menu
Homemade bakeries have more potential than homemade food for creativity. You can design cookies and cake in so many ways that it is impossible to say one design is better than others. So, to prove that your bakery is unique, you need other people in the food business to vouch for the quality of your products. Many influencers on social media review bakeries, but collaborating with them may cause several problems since you have to give them a reason to vouch for your product. You have to pay them for advertisement or negotiate alternative payment methods.
If you have the budget, it makes sense to pay for advertisement as it is believed that it will pay back by attracting more customers quickly. But if your budget is limited, you don’t need to worry because there are other ways to make up for it. For example, by focusing on social media content, you can gain the attention of food bloggers. You can donate your products to organizations, schools, and homeless shelters; by documenting the donation process and posting it on your social media account, you can shed light on your business and provoke influencers to reflect on your work.
Stay Authentic on Social Media
Authenticity is not just a suggestion but a necessity for your homemade food business. Authenticity is key in the online world and will help you connect with your audience on a deeper level. In some states, there are regulations on the amount of food you can sell as a home business, so maintaining an active account on social media could be crucial because you have to reach a wider audience and promote your business.
Remember that your online activities are not just for promoting your business to attract more customers. The idea is that your persona on social media apps such as TikTok and Instagram could grow so much that it becomes more prominent than your home-made business. I don’t want to become an online influencer; I only want to focus on my business. At the same time, there is no doubt that exposing yourself to the world and having active participation on social media can be intimidating because you get a lot of feedback, and some online feedback can be upsetting. However, the benefits of having a successful online persona make it easier to deal with negative feedback. Remember that collaborations with others can do wonders for your business as you reach a wider audience. And by others, I don’t mean just the people active in the cottage food industry; it can be anybody who likes your account and business.
Mark your calendar for more profit
Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and Fourth of July are opportunities that you cannot just miss. At least ten holidays in your calendar involve traditional food or food. Even if your business is tiny and you cannot compete with others, you sure have the upper hand in holidays because holidays are when people crave mom-made food. Imagine this situation in which a college student could not go back home for Thanksgiving; which option do you think he prefers: going to restaurants like McDonald’s or a homemade meal that reminds them of the memories they had in previous years? So before the holidays, you have to identify what group of people need the ingenuity of homemade meals.
You can find bars and colleagues weeks before a holiday and target those places for advertising your business. Specifically, you can find bars with online low-rated food reviews and target them for your advertisement. Your mentality in this scenario should be that your genuine intention behind selling homemade goods is to bring a smile to your customers’ faces during holidays.
Holidays like Thanksgiving aren’t just problematic for lonely students; many people with extended families also experience a hard time preparing Thanksgiving meals. These people resist ordering food from a restaurant because the holidays are a time to be with family, and what unites family more than sitting around a table eating the food that the mother of the family had spent a whole day preparing? You can break these families’ resistance because your food and baked goods are of the homemade quality people want on holidays.
Teach While You are Cooking
The most straightforward way to create content for social media is by posting educational videos on how you prepare your products. You can document the preparation process, from grocery shopping to packing meals and baking goods. Showcasing your cooking like a journey attracts others to follow you because it creates curiosity. Your audience knows that you go grocery shopping and spend a lot of time packaging your food and bakery, but when they see where you shop for your business, they start to trust you more because you share a massive proportion of your life with them. You can also promote grocery stores, butcher shops, and farmers market shops.
Your primary focus should be teaching your audience how to prepare food and baked goods. You can even share your receipts with them and teach them how to prepare the food and bakeries you are selling. By posting educational videos, you can interact more with your audience because they will ask many questions in the comment section. Interactions with other people mean at least one customer; you can also be sure that if you answer the comments, they will share your answer with their friends.
Before sharing your educational content on your Instagram page or YouTube, you must know some points. First, the way you share your receipt is critical. You have to present your receipts effortlessly and turn them into something everyone thinks they can easily imitate, but in reality, they cannot do it as smoothly as you. Whether you can create content that can be qualified as easy yet abstaining depends on your narration, characterization, and artistic capabilities. If you cannot imagine yourself spending hours creating scenarios for a one-minute reel on Instagram, you should hire a social media manager for your business.
Impress your customers with social responsibility
You can easily attract customers by proving that you take social responsibilities seriously. Especially nowadays, corporations are trying to avoid social responsibility activities due to the budget cuts that cost them. Unlike corporations, it is less expensive and even more effective for small businesses to act according to social responsibilities such as Philanthropy, preserving the environment, and Supporting local community events or initiatives Supporting local community events.
Millennials and the Gen-Z generation have a keen eye for environmental perseveration. As homemade goods producers, you can attract younger generations. The first step is choosing environmentally friendly containers. Composite containers are a good choice since you can design them however you want. Composite containers are also more durable than plastic containers. consider customer services as passive income.
Remember that finding composite containers at a reasonable price can be challenging, but if you sign a long-term contract with a reliable supplier, you can get a good deal. To prove that you genuinely care about the environment, you can offer your customers a reasonable discount if they bring their containers. The discount may set you back a little, but there is no need to worry because the feedback you get from your customers is worth it even if you don’t attract customers, which is a worst-case scenario that rarely happens.
