Displaying items by tag: business - Book to Cook - Book to Cook http://www.booktocook.com.au Thu, 28 Mar 2024 16:42:56 +0000 Joomla! - Open Source Content Management en-gb Top 10 tips for starting a food business http://www.booktocook.com.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=16:top-10-tips-for-starting-a-food-business&Itemid=173 http://www.booktocook.com.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=16:top-10-tips-for-starting-a-food-business&Itemid=173 Top 10 tips for starting a food business


We have put together a top 10 checklist of things to do when starting a food business to help you succeed.




1.Nail your product and processes

Know your product well and be able to make it consistently. Work on refining the most efficient process in terms of ingredients you purchase (in bulk etc.) and production of the product to save you time and money.

2.Research your market

Find out what already exists in that area. Look at the successful and unsuccessful businesses and attempt to identify why they did well or what they didn’t do so well that determined their success. Find out who your target market is and what they are looking for.

3.Register your business

Register for an ABN and Business name. It is important to make sure you are handling the legal side properly so you do not run into trouble down the track. Find the government link here.

4.Create a brand image.

Pay someone to do your branding. Do not buy a $5 logo off a website, work with a graphic design firm or freelancer who will help you achieve the look you really want. This is the face of your brand, it needs to look good. It is essentially the difference between wearing a dapper suit or a pair of trackies and singlet when you meet your customers - you need to look your best. We work with Walker. for our own and our customers branding.

5.Get online

It doesn’t have to be a twelve page website with an in-depth history, gallery and extensive information about your business, just get a basic webpage designed that has some information about your business and information on how to contact you.

6.Have a social media presence

Particularly for food businesses, social media like instagram and twitter can be a fast way to spread the word about your businesses. Make sure to do some research or look at our post on "3 Essentials to Kickstart your Business on Social Media" on how best to approach this.

7.Network and use who you know

Get on Linked In and network with those who you already know to make connections and help build and grow your business. You can also network by attending food related events, and getting involved in the community.

8.Work out costings as exact as possible

Work out your costings taking everything into account. Ingredients, packaging, labour, kitchen hire, transport, market stall, marketing. It all adds up, from here, you can work out how much you will charge your customers as well as situating your price well within the market. It’s an important balance to get right but crucial to making sure you succeed. The best price is when you as the seller sees more value in the customers money than the product, and the customer sees more value in the product than the money they are handing over.

9.Set up your finance or get an accountant

Use a program such as MYOB or Xero to manage your finances. It is important that you keep an eye on your books to track your spending so you have a better idea of what you need to do to improve and what seems to be working. An accountant can be great, and if your budget allows for it, I would definitely recommend it, but don’t hand it all over to them. Make sure you keep an eye on what is going on.

10.Get licensed

Register through the council for your Food Licence. You will need to be registered to a premises or commercially licensed kitchen. If you are using a kitchen hire company such as ourselves, we will often have a contact within the council or a reference number that allows you to get your licence approved faster. By completing these steps, you will be well on your way to your first production of your product and getting out to the world.
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info@booktocook.com.au (Super User) Blog Wed, 18 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000
4 Habits Of Persistence Every Entrepreneur Should Have http://www.booktocook.com.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=14:4-habits-of-persistence-every-entrepreneur-should-have&Itemid=173 http://www.booktocook.com.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=14:4-habits-of-persistence-every-entrepreneur-should-have&Itemid=173 4 Habits Of Persistence Every Entrepreneur Should Have


Startup companies can seem fun. Working for yourself, in your own time, getting paid what you make, doing what you love - but it’s not always as it seems. Don’t get me wrong, working in my own startup has been great, and if you have your own passion you wish to follow or are following, I encourage you whole heartedly and say go for it - but with anything good, there often challenges that we will face. It is how we deal with these that will ultimately determine our success. Based on what I have read and learned, I have constructed a list of 4 habits I believe are essential for an entrepreneur to have during the start up process.


Stay true to your dream, don’t dilute it.
A chef I used to work with told me this during a busy service whilst telling her my plans for the future. She told me how people will say “You need to do this”, “You need to do that”, and if you listen to them you will dilute your true goal and dream of heading where you want to go. Only you fully understand your vision because it’s in your head. It’s like someone trying to drive your car from the passengers seat while you are in the drivers seat. Only you have full vision and control of what is really going on, anything they might do or suggest may lead to disaster.



Consistency.
This ties in with staying true to your dream. Once you have written your business plan, be consistent. If your initial customer base isn’t as big as you first hoped or response to your product is not to the extent of what you imagined, that is OK! Humans take time to try and adjust to new things. It might take a while to catch on, perhaps longer than you had hoped, but be consistent. Stick to your guns and keep doing what you believe in, by changing how you do things every few weeks, you will confuse your customer and not convey a message of strength through your brand.



Try, try, try again.
As with consistency, you must continue to persist with what it is you are doing. Persistence is the key to success. If it was fast and easy, everyone would be doing it and making it. As William Edward Hickson so brilliantly stated, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. Don’t give up, often the toughest times come just before a major breakthrough. It is that persistence and thirst for your goals that will ultimately bring you success.



Fail wisely - learn from your mistakes
Failure can be one of the most valuable learning experiences in business, if you use it correctly. Of course no one sets out to fail, but it has been proven over and over again that failing is the best way for humans to learn something the right way. Naturally we have a fear of failing, and fear is one of the biggest motivators. If you are running to come first in a 100m sprint, or running from a savage dog snapping at your heels, I can guarantee which one will have you running faster and harder. This is why failure can be helpful, it drives us to be better, more than the motivation of reaching for our goals. So by failing once, we can assess how and where we went wrong, and out of fear, we make sure we don’t do it again.

As I mentioned before, I encourage you whole heartedly to start something, take on that idea you have been toying with. Just make sure you equip yourself with the knowledge and tools to set yourself up for success.
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info@booktocook.com.au (Super User) Blog Thu, 19 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000
5 steps to “turn on” productivity every single morning http://www.booktocook.com.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=9:5-steps-to-turn-on-productivity-every-single-morning&Itemid=173 http://www.booktocook.com.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=9:5-steps-to-turn-on-productivity-every-single-morning&Itemid=173 5 steps to “turn on” productivity every single morning
Being productive in our world today isn’t as easy as it used to be. So when it comes to starting a business, or getting daily tasks done, we need an action plan to combat this. We have put together a five step plan that if followed will see huge improvements in how productive you are each day.

1. Sleep Well



This is an obvious one, yes - but it is essential none the less. In order for our brains to function properly and be able to stay focused, we have to use will power. If we are tired or not well rested this can prove difficult and we may be setting ourselves up to fail. To ensure we get enough sleep, there are a few simple things we can do.

- Make sure to turn that technology off 1 hour before bed and don’t take it to bed with you.
- A charging station can be a good idea that forces us to keep our devices away from our bed.
- Use an app like Sleep Cycle or something similar that will wake you in the right part of your REM sleep cycle.
- Don’t eat after 8pm at night. Trust me, you will feel more rested in the morning as your body is not trying to digest food throughout the night.


2. Get up early



This goes hand in hand with getting good sleep. Making sure you get to bed at a reasonable time and getting good quality sleep will help with this. The routine of a set bed time can help with ensuring you get the right amount of sleep. Waking up early however, has many benefits of its own. Think about it this way, you are part of an elite club who wakes up early before the noise of our world begins. There are less distractions and you feel good about yourself. It puts your mind in a positive mood and you have the whole day to accomplish all the tasks that you need to.

If you’re like me and still find this difficult, our friends at Skinny Kitchen wrote a fantastic article "Becoming a Morning Person” that is amazingly helpful and insightful.
3. Have breakfast + Stimulant



A car cannot run without fuel, nor can we as humans function without our fuel - food. If you are a regular non-breakfast eater like I used to be, then it can be hard. You may not “feel hungry” or have the time. Well make time. If you follow step two then you will have plenty of time to make yourself a nutritious breakfast that can fuel your body for a productive day. If you think about how hungry you get through the day and how you rely of food as a source of energy, then you may begin to realise (like I did) the importance of fuelling your body after 8 - 10 hours of fasting. For an extra added boost - try some sort of stimulant. Coffee has actually been proven to increase focus in the short term and aid against memory loss in the long term. If managed correctly, it can actually be a natural enhancer for increasing our focus. With that said, sugar or syrups in coffee will cause a spike and then dive in our energy levels. If you need that extra sweetness, try a natural sweetener and gradually ween yourself off. Try and stick to a single shot each morning and you may actually see the benefits. If part of a daily routine, a morning cup of coffee can be used as a trigger to tell your subconscious, “right, now I am ready to focus.” And for around $4.00 a day, your productivity as a result may well be worth it.
4. Create a distraction free workspace.



This is imperative to ensuring you beat that world of distractions that is knocking at your doorstep. As you can see with my workspace, I keep it clean. I only bring with it what is specific to the individual task that I am partaking in. Before I start a project I will ensure I have all the tools I need including water (vital). This way I can keep my workspace free of all other distractions that are unnecessary to the task. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple from Disney, he brought a tin of white paint into his office and began to paint all of the red walls white. His colleagues asked him why he was doing this and he responded by saying that he did not want anything to stand in the way of his creativity. Do whatever is necessary to rid your workspace of anything that may distract you.
5. Do not check notifications or email (the most important of them all).



This is by far the most vital step in our plan to “turn on” productivity. We live in a world of dramatic distraction where people and technology are constantly breaking our concentration. Studies show that once we break our concentration it takes up to 25 minutes to get back to the same level of focus that we were previously at. So even just pausing briefly to check your inbox every 15 minutes can add hours to your work. It disrupts your work pattern and workflow, an email can wait. If people expect us to be on our emails and phone every minute of every day, then that is their problem if we aren’t. If we start at 8 or 9, we should go a whole 2 - 3 hours without checking any of these notifications. Even checking them first up puts them in the back of our mind and our subconscious ponders them whilst we are trying to focus on the task at hand. Do not engage with online communication full stop until you are 2 - 3 hours into your work day. People will learn your habits and eventually know not to contact you before then or at least expect a response anyway. Remember that you are in control and you inbox does not dictate when you should check it. While you are at it, do your most difficult tasks at the start of your day. You are freshest and full of energy then. As the day goes on and the distractions start to flow in, you can focus on the smaller tasks that require much less energy and still get things done.

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Blog Wed, 21 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000