As you enjoy the mouth-watering flavor of your grandmother’s cheesecake or the tang of your dad’s famous barbecue sauce, you wonder how you can bring those family recipes to the rest of the world. Can you build a business around a family recipe?
Absolutely. But you’ll need to do a lot of prep work first:
1. Get feedback. Try out the recipe on family and friends, at a church bazaar or the like.
2. Research the costs of producing your recipe on a large scale.
3. Find a co-packer. A company that can produce and package your product, check The National Association for the Specialty Food Trade’s web site. “The beautiful thing about co-packers is they know all the insider information,” says Eve Lemon, founder of Nature’s Popcorn. “My co-packer knew companies that would produce labels at much smaller minimums.”
4. Test new products on a small scale. Set up a kiosk at a shopping mall food court to see if people like your product, its packaging and its price.
5. Calculate costs. The raw ingredients should cost only 25 percent of your final price, and another 25 percent should consist of marketing and distribution costs as well as profit, since you’ll probably sell wholesale at about 50 percent of retail.
Check out SpecialtyFoodResource.com for more specialty food marketing information and education.
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