How do I start a local fast food business?
How do I start a local food business in this article, I'm going to give you the 10
things you need to know in order to start a local food business, no matter what
state city county or area that you rein these 10 things are the list's the go-to list
if you want to start a local food business, we're going to dive into those 10 right
now all right
so welcome back and as I mentioned in the introduction I'm going to run
through the 10 most important things if you're looking to create a local food
business either in your home, in your community or in a commercial area it doesn't
matter where these 10 things in the list, and I'm going to break them down for
you one by one now.
Number 10:
if you want to create a localized food business in your area
wherever you may be you need to have if you want to make it legitimate an e-in
this is an employer identification number, this is actually issued to you by theirs
no matter what form of food business you actually end up choosing to
do if it's a packaged food product if it's a food truck if it's even a restaurant or
cafe you need to have an in now how do I get an e In Damian well you can
simply go to the IRS website, and you apply for if it, kind of like a social security
number for your uh your business your actual food business, so it's going to give
their the ability to track your taxes, you can give that to your
Accountant, so when you file your taxes every year annually and all the
amazing profits that you're going to make from your business those taxes that
you pay on you're going to do that and use your in which your business will
have a dedicated number for that next up to
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Number 10:
Is actually going to be the second part of number 10. It's going to
be an LLC or an s corporate c corp now I highly recommend what I've said in a
lot of my articles when we talk about a variety of different food businesses you
want to make sure that you are an LLC, the reason why I say that i
personally have experience filing our business when you first started as an LLC
and I highly recommend you do that because it's a simpler, easier way for you to
file your business taxes maintain the business throughout the year it's not as
complicated it doesn't get as complicated as an s or a c corp now my wife and I
to be honest with you after about 10 years, 11 years into it about a
a year ago we transitioned to an s corp for tax purposes than for us that's
actually much more beneficial now because our business has grown and there are
a handful of other reasons as far as tax purposes go that more benefit us and
more benefit our business than it did before when it's an LLC, but if you're just
starting your local food business I highly recommend the simple forming of an LLC.
Number nine:
now you need to get a business bank account now I know you
probably have a personal bank account, may be a checking and savings that's
great, but you need to have an account set up specifically for your business, and
you want to do that for many purposes, mainly you want to establish
your business as a legitimate business and having a bank account which you
can have checks if you have to cut checks to business accounts or invoices or
whatever it may be, you can draw upon those funds from your specific business
account, not necessarily from your own LLC from
your own personal account you want to make sure that is a business LLC
account, so make sure you set up a business account there are a lot of benefits
to that and down the road of course as you get business credit business lines of
credit you want to distinctly have a separate account specifically set up for your
business.
Number eight:
understand this if you start an e-commerce food business, if you
start a food truck if you have a restaurant, you need to market your business
marketing is not rocket science it doesn't have to be difficult, simply put
marketing is getting the eyes of your customers on your product or service
figuring out first who those customers are where they may be online and just
targeting your marketing purposes directly to that group of people that is a
simple form of a simple explanation of doing it is, doesn't have to be difficult to be
honest with you, the majority of the traffic that we get through
our six eCommerce businesses are absolutely free I use social media I have
been doing it for 12 years plus I have a degree in marketing which kind of helps
out a little, bit but to be honest with you the implications and the way that we
actually implement most of what we do online is free, I do some paid
traffic through Facebook, but I don't do a lot of it I actually use the right hashtags
I post consistently, and I simply just create content and links to our product, and
it's worked out great for us, same thing goes for food trucks the same thing goes
for a restaurant if you're a brick and mortar or a food truck, and you're not
necessarily on e-commerce, you can still use social media the exact same way you
want to market your food business even if you're a local food business, it doesn't
matter give yourself an opportunity to learn some of these basics and as a
matter of fact, down below in the description section there's a link to a book that
is absolutely amazing, this gentleman brings it out every single year, and it's 500
social media tips and tricks, and it's literally a book that's probably just a
couple hundred pages it's not very thick, but it literally gives you over 500 tips
on how to implement them on social media, and they're extremely simple ways
to do this if you allow yourself a bit of time to learn how it works and sees
what works best for your food business, you need to market your food business
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Number seven:
so I was mentioning before about social media, so you need to
have a social media presence now marketing can be outside social media if
you were to actually have a really optimized website you can just tap into the
traffic that you would get from that or if you have an
eCommerce business or if you're selling through Amazon eBay Etsy or even
bonanza or other websites, you can get what's known as organic traffic and
that's traffic that's not really even related to social media at all, it's simply
having the product or your service or product on those platforms and because
you have it in front of millions of people, they want to go to your website
and they're naturally and organically just gonna go you don't have to pay for it
but social media presence everywhere from LinkedIn Pinterest Twitter um
Facebook, and everybody else in between, I highly recommend you be on all of
Then but what has worked well for us is focus on two and the reason why I say
two is one is not really going to be enough if you try to master three four or all of
the social media platforms you're gonna burn yourself out and to be honest
with you, certain products and certain food businesses actually do better on
certain platforms that are going to be up to you to do a bit of research and
find out what works best for us, it happens to be Facebook and Twitter so over
the past 12 years, I've kind of refined what we've done on those platforms and
those two bring us the most traffic even though I am present on LinkedIn uh
we get nearly 400 000 people to visit our Pinterest page every single month
with 11 000 plus followers and growing, but all of those links and all of those
pages all help us to get people back over to our website.
Number six:
you need to have an online presence now not to duplicate what I'm
talking about social media or even marketing, but a lot of food truck operators a
lot of restaurants a lot of brick and mortar a lot of non-online businesses don't
realize the importance of having an online presence
and that could be even a simple blog if you're a food truck operator, maybe you
just want to blog about your daily adventures in the food truck industry if you
have a restaurant or cafe have a single one two or three-page website you don't
have to be so involved in it, but you need to have an online presence the reason
being is that even if you're on yelp or some of these review websites
the reason being is that people will go to the web, in the internet automatically
they're going to go online, and they're going to look and try to find out more
information about your brick and mortar your food truck your packaged food
product whatever it may be because it all kind of trickles down into being online
so the more information that you have or content about
your food product your food business whatever it maybe is actually going to be
a benefit for you, so make sure that you're actually online somehow even a
simple blog that you can literally create for free through blogger uh WordPress
or you can go-daddy, uh Weebly Shopify they all have blogs it's very simple to
start one, but have some type of online presence
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Number five:
now of course you need to have insurance now this is kind of a no-
grainer but believe it or not some people who start businesses from home a
local food business from home, specifically under the cottage food laws really
don't even have insurance coverage on their business and
that is a huge risk, the laws don't necessarily cover you at all if somebody were
to get sick, or they have a problem with your food, and they have hospital bills
they lose their work or something to that effect they can sue you, and they will
sue you personally, and you can lose your house, and you can lose your car, and
you can even move the shirt off your back hypothetically of course but yes
you could definitely do that, but you want to make sure that you have insurance
you have a food truck you need insurance obviously if you have a restaurant or a
cafe coffee shop or cafe you're going to need to have insurance if you're doing it
from home, if you're creating a packaged food product that you're going to sell
online, maybe you're not actually having people
come into any brick and mortar, but you have a package of food product you've got
to have insurance, be sure to do that, and normally it costs really between five
to about six hundred dollars starting on the low end if you're creating packaged
food products if you have restaurants, obviously the insurance is gonna be
Considerably different because you've got a lot of factors to come into the play list
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Number four:
make sure you know what permits licenses and certificates you
need to have every local food business no matter what type has a variety of
different types of permits and licenses in order for you to operate, obviously a
brick and mortar business is going to be different than a
home-based business but every single one of those different industries in food
trucks packaged food products if it's a dessert company, whatever it is they're
going to have a variety of permits and licenses, so know the type of permits and
licenses, you need and make sure you get them really quick tip keep in mind that
every single permanent license normally is an annually issued permanent
license meaning you need to reoccur it and re reinstate it every
single-year one year at a time so if you elapse that, and you don't do it, and you
get caught without having it you can get into a lot of trouble I know this from
experience because when we first started we had a slew of different permits
and licenses and every single year I had to go online to register it keeps it up to
date now.
Number three:
depending on the type of food business you're gonna have
obviously the budgets will vary dramatically, what I've always recommended to
you are to work within the budget you have currently if you don't have the money
that you need right at this moment, give yourself some time and don't be in a
rush give yourself a few months or even a couple of years to accumulate
the money that you really truly think you need without getting a loan or tapping
into your existing credit cards or home equity or 401k, I speak of this only from
experience because I did that when I started my Italian bakery, and it was a lot of
learning lessons, to be honest, so would I do that again probably not what I've
always recommended to my clients when I do my consulting or to you guys
here on YouTube, make sure that you just stay within your budget
you can grow your business gradually invest little by little or if you have a
family member a friend who wants to go into partnerships with you, and they
believe enough in your product or your business, to let them fund it for you but
always keep in mind that if you do that, you have a plan to pay it back and
maybe even potentially back in some interest, but stay within your budget
give yourself time do not rush into your business, it's not going to happen
overnight, even if you had a million dollars tomorrow it's not going to
necessarily manifest itself and create this big business within a matter of a few
days so give yourself time and invest as you can so.
Number two:
you need to pick the type of food business, so you want to create a
local food business, and you're probably thinking well Damon I have so many
interests s I think that's really cool to start a food truck man my dream with my
wife is to open up a restaurant, but I really love to create barbecue sauce maybe I
should create a package group, keep in mind there is literally an infinite
amount of food business models out there uh you can resell coffee, you can start
a candy business you can sell tea online you can start an e-commerce food
business selling pre-packaged foods you could resell existing foods you don't
even have to make them you could buy them in bulk have a warehouse and
simply just resell them now you're probably thinking yourself, well isn't
Walmart targets Amazon, they've already got the market down I can't compete
with them nonsense do yourself a favor and stop thinking that way there is an
enormous amount of opportunity online, and I've mentioned this one before, but I
actually have one product that sells insanely well, and it's chocolate covered
pretzels, there are probably 10 000 or more people online
that sell chocolate pretzels, but we do probably nearly 100 grand a year just
selling pretzel rods that we make in our facility now I didn't invent pretzel rods I
just make them, but I can tell you the one thing that separates me from other
sellers and the reason why I do so well is I market my product I promote it I
build content online about it, I am posting on social media reading blog posts
And it all brings everybody right back to where my scores are, that's the
difference between someone who'll be prosperous and sell, and who's gonna
make money and people who will not make money, so figure out what it is that
you want to do and if you have a brick and mortar, and you're in a local area
town fantastic you just got to keep it on yelp keep it on local services offer door
dash or door delivery systems make sure that you're out there, and you know
who the people are who you're gonna um gear your marketing advertising to
and market to those people okay lastly
Number one:
have passion for what you do, I don't care if you're selling barbecue
sauce if you open up a taco food truck, you want to create a coffee shop just like
Starbucks or brick and mortar, all of those things can succeed if you are
passionate about what you do, I started out 12 years ago
and I was super excited because one of the biggest things that ever happened
to us was our first few sales on eBay, yes believe it or not we started on eBay
we were selling cookies and I got like about 20 orders
in a matter of a month and I thought that was the most amazing exhilarating
thing, and I was just hooked to it because I saw the potential and the opportunity
to expand and explore new places and new things, so we went to Etsy and then
Amazon, and then it all went from there from bonanza and everyone else so all
of these shops actually ended up happening just because I got super
excited about overselling some cookies on eBay, so you are passionate about
what you do if you want to sell ketchup and mustard, and you've got your own
variation then so be it because there's a lot of people who use ketchup and
mustered out there and the internet is gigantic, so I have passion for what you do
that is number one
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