If you love cooking or baking and are considering making this passion your profession, you might find yourself questioning if you actually have what it takes to turn your food into a successful business. And while you might enjoy the food that you make or bake, if you don’t have people out there that will buy it, your dream career is likely to be very short-lived.
So to help you learn if taking this big professional leap is going to pay off for you, here are three ways to know if your famous recipe is ready for retail sale.
You’re Known For Your Signature Dish
One sign that your famous recipe is actually something that people will want to eat and buy is if you’re developed a reputation around this signature dish that you make.
However, it’s not just the fact of people knowing you for this signature dish that will be a determining factor in you being able to sell that food product. Along with this, you’re going to want to ensure that you feel confident and comfortable in making this signature dish on an extremely regular basis. If you can’t say that you feel this way, you may want to think twice about starting to sell this product at this time.
Through A Proper Taste Test
Oftentimes, it can be hard to know if people actually like what you’ve been making over the years because they might simply be trying to spare your feelings since they know you on a personal level. Because of this, what you’ll want to do to determine if your food is ready for public consumption is to conduct a proper taste test.
Ideally, you should try to get people to taste your food that are a few steps removed from you personally. This could include taking your food to a farmer’s market, craft show, or other event. Or, you could ask your friends or family members to take your samples to work with them. This way, you should be able to get much more honest and straightforward critiques on your food.
Your Cooking Has Be Solicited
When people work in sales or are within the food industry, they’re usually always on the lookout for ways to offer the next best thing that will bring in more business for them. Knowing this, if you’ve ever had your cooking solicited in the past, that’s a great sign that at least someone thinks your product is good enough to make some money off of.
If you can find a way to get your food into someone else’s retail shop, you can take advantage of their customer base along with the establishment and security of their retail store until you’re able to come up with an actual business plan of your own and go into business for yourself.
If you’ve been thinking about selling food from a recipe that has made you famous among your sphere of influence, consider using the advice mentioned above to determine if you really have a shot here.
