Everyone loves a good meal. Even when you have no appetite at all, somehow you have to force-feed, and this is why food businesses are always flourishing.
If you love cooking and you have a few hours to spare every day, you can start a home-based food business with minimal investment. All you need are a few utensils, most of which you might already have in your kitchen and the love of food.
Before you start your business, however, read state laws on home-based food businesses. For instance, some states require that you keep your business cooking tools and ingredients separate from your personal tools. This is not a problem as you can have less personal tools and let your family eat what you cook for business. Information on home-based food businesses should be found in the state’s health department.
Once in a while, you might get a visit from the state health department to check the hygienic condition of your kitchen. Below are seven simple ideas for a home-based food business.
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Food Blogger
Most food businesses have a website – you might be running a restaurant but still, have a food blog where you share not only food health ideas and recipes but also fish for customers. Blogging about food only needs a computer and internet connection (two things that you might already have in your house), besides the passion for food.
Today, it is easy to start a blog as all you need to buy is a domain name, pay for hosting, and get a designer to tweak a few components of the blog, and you are good to go. You can monetize the blog by selling recipe books, cooking eBooks, hosting cooking webinars, and selling ads.
You can link your food blog with your YouTube channel where you make money selling ad space – the more the traffic you get to your channel, the more Google pays you for ads.
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Food Coach
How much do you know about food? If you know enough to teach other people, you can start a food coaching business online or offline. You can create videos and post them online or sell videos to people who need to learn more about food. You can also hold cooking classes in your kitchen.
If you have a small kitchen, you can coach your students from their kitchens – this is an even better idea seeing that you will spend less buying ingredients. While at it, you can write a book to facilitate instructions.
This business is ideal for foodies who love creating their recipes. You can come up with great recipes and teach people how to make the meals in your recipes.
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Baking or Grilling Business
Baked food is a staple in most families – most snacks have a cooked food item. If you have a passion for baking, you can start a home-based baking business. All you will need is an oven and ovenware. To succeed in this niche, you need to make your food items unique. One way to sell your baked items is to collect orders from customers – these can be for birthdays, weddings, parties, or breakfast. When you cook on order, you will have more control over your business. You can also bake and supply the baked items to retail stores – if you have an understanding with retail stores, your business will flourish.
Just the same way you bake food, you can grill food and sell to your neighbors. You can sell barbecued beef or pork or poultry from home or supply your customers to their homes. With a professional-grade grill and grilling skills, you are good to go.
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Become a Personal Cook
Some families have no time to cook their meals. You can step in and help them make delicious and healthy meals at a fee. Usually, you might be tasked with shopping for ingredients and coming up with a menu for the week. Your work will be to make healthy meals (and sometimes to serve the meals).
As a personal cook, you do not need special equipment since most families will require you to prepare the meals from their kitchen. In a day, you can prepare meals for three or more families.
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Catering Business
If you enjoy cooking foods for events, a home-based catering business will do you right. Here, you will need to get food orders for events, get the menu from the event organizers, make the food from home, and transport it to the event venue. Depending on the size of the event and the number of attendees, you might need to hire one or more people to help you.
Events are frequent on weekends, and this is when you need to be busy. Even when you do not have an order to supply food at a particular event, you can still carry some snacks to an event (if the organizers allow) and sell them to whoever is interested.
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Nutrition Coach
With so many lifestyle diseases, people are interested in eating healthy today more than ever. If you understand healthy food habits, be a nutrition coach. You can have a small office in your home or visit your clients in their homes.
As a nutrition coach, you will help your clients design a food regimen to follow. Some people might already have lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, and their foods have to be designed special.
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Grow Foods and Home
If your backyard is big enough to grow a few fruits and vegetables, then you can supply the local market with fresh produce. You can make your product special, say organic fruits and vegetables to carve a niche in your local market. To do this, you only need enough space to grow vegetables and fruits, passion for growing plants, and the know-how to nurture these plants. Your customers might be your neighbors.
Conclusion
Any business you choose to start, be sure to check state regulations before launching. Again, do in-depth market research to identify a gap that needs filling. If the market is far from your neighborhood, for instance, you can start a small fresh produce farm.
