How to Turn Your Foodie Hobby into a Booming Business

This past year, food has become an integral part of most people’s lives. Well, when you’re stuck at home without much to do, you’re probably going to use the time wisely and eat loads, right? And, if you fancy yourself as a bit of a whiz in the kitchen, the likelihood is that you enjoyed joining the many thousands around the world participating in foodie trends on social media!

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But what if you were already a bit of a foodie connoisseur – a dabbler in dining – prior to the pandemic, and instead used the time to peddle your wares to comfort those around you or earn yourself some extra bucks? Well, the time for you to take your talent and turn it into a business you enjoy is now!

Here’s how to get started…    

Choose Your Niche

Whether you like to mix it up in the kitchen and try your hand at a variety of cuisines and techniques, improving home-cooked classics, or enjoy challenging yourself with fresh recipes, it’s important to pick your niche.

Enjoy making mouth-watering, authentic street food that sets tastebuds a-tingling? Then choose EITHER a handful of recipes that you know inside-out and enjoy making (variety is key here), OR a particular cuisine i.e. Vietnamese, Mexican, Latin-American, or Korean, and then choose a handful of street-food options from this cuisine.

This will help you to manage your time correctly, perfect some key recipes, and recognize your marketing demographic.

Build a Blog and Social Media

If you haven’t already done this (great job if you have!), it’s time for you to build an audience with a food blog. This will give potential customers a real insight into your process, your personality, and your love of food – and it can also help you to gain opportunities from local foodie places, who may ask you to test out their products in your recipes or visit their food business in return for an honest review – seriously, opportunities here abound. Link it to your social media pages for an even bigger audience spread.

It’s also a great way to build up your portfolio and get to know your audience on a more intimate level. There are plenty of DIY website design sites for you to choose from, including WordPress and Wix.

Friends and Family

Once you’ve got these first couple of steps down, start building and testing your recipes out on family and friends – they can be like your guinea pigs and help you to refine or rewrite your recipes with their honest reviews (and they’re more likely to do this with your yummy food as payment rather than expecting financial reimbursement).

Branding

Designing and marketing your brand is a key aspect once you get going. Canva, Logo Maker, and Polish are all apps that you can download via Google Play or Apple’s App Store to help you design a logo that’s unique to you. This logo and business name – choose something snappy to grab people’s attention but that also signal what your food is all about – can then be applied to your blog and social media pages for cohesiveness, making the marketing stage a bit further down the line a lot easier.

Funding and Finances

The next thing to consider, before you start, is how you plan on funding your business because, remember, you’ll need to purchase all the right ingredients and equipment on a regular basis, pay for marketing to make your business boom, and, if you see resounding success, may even need funding to move into a brick-and-mortar store or a bigger kitchen. Don’t forget, you also need to pay yourself a wage! AdvancePoint Capital’s business loans are a great place to start in this regard.

The most important thin got remember, however, is to HAVE FUN, and you can guarantee that this will be reflected in your food offerings. Good luck!