Tips for Starting a Food Business From Home

Do you dream about owning your own food business? You don't need to set up an entire company or hire several team members. The best way to begin is from your kitchen. A home business has several advantages. For example, you can prepare, package, and sell food items from the comfort of your home. You also work for yourself and set your business hours.

However, there are some things to consider before you begin. First, you have to decide what food products you want to sell. You then have to focus on food packaging and food safety. And finally, you have to promote your brand to help run a successful business. Here’s more information on the best practices for starting a food business from home.

Consider all of your options.

Will you cook the food items from scratch, or source them? You don’t have to be a kitchen expert to start a food business from home. If you love food, have a knack for business, and don’t want to use your kitchen, consider food curation. You can partner with local chefs or home-cooks who can make artisanal food products.

If you do plan to cook your food items, source ingredients wisely. Instead of visiting local grocery stores, go to the source. Partnering with a supplier or a local farmer are some of the best ways to do this. If you don’t have the brand name for this yet, visit wholesale stores.

Make sure it’s legal.

Did you know that states have different laws when it comes to home or small-scale food businesses? In some parts of the United States, local artisan food laws help small businesses flourish. However, check that what you plan to sell is legally allowed in your location. There are different laws regarding home-based and commercial kitchens as well. You can get around some of these laws with a co-op commercial kitchen space.

Once you’ve made sure you can sell your food items, don’t forget to register your business. Check the FDA regulations around home-based businesses, food safety, and food packaging laws. Get all your licenses and permits before you begin, so there’s no legal trouble in your future.

Save on the little things.

Do you have a favorite store for your cupcake boxes? Do you want to put handmade, personalized labels on each container? Most of your ingredient and packaging decisions will depend on demand. 

However, saving on packaging and delivery will help you focus on quality ingredients. However, you will have to package food items in a material that is free of any adverse health effects. Remember that saving doesn’t mean buying poor packaging, as this can compromise the food safety of your products.

While cute packaging can help sell your food products, it can also bankrupt you. So, make wise food packaging decisions. Branding is also important — your food packaging should appeal to customers. 

After all, how you present your food matters almost as much as the food items. To buy in bulk, search for companies that supply food contact materials to fast food restaurants. If you’re starting small, search for independent companies. Buy everything from grease-resistant food packaging to food contact materials from one place.

Focus on your business plan.

So, you’re a good cook, and everyone loves your food. And, you enjoy cooking for a crowd. While that’s important, it’s not enough for a successful food business. Goal setting is the best way to ensure success. A solid business plan and ambitious goals will help keep your business afloat — even if it is out of your kitchen.

Also, you should conduct market research before you begin. Will the food products you like to cook sell well? How much can you price the food items? How long before you break even? Some food spaces are over-saturated and will be hard to break into as a newcomer. Unless you are rich or have proper funding, it’s best to tap into a specific niche. Think of how you will promote the business. Can you do all the cooking yourself? If you have a small kitchen, consider how much it will cost to rent out a commercial kitchen space.

Continue to focus on your company strategy even after you set up your business. Track your key results and have team members (if any) take part in future goal setting. If you need help, invest in OKRs. 

An OKR system will allow you to work with a sales team to set ambitious goals and focus on measurable results. You can track your progress, and find different ways to improve profit margins. Invest in business planning tools now so that you can plan for success rather than simply hoping for it.

Sell your brand.

You will sell more food products if more people know about and are inspired by your brand. Focus on everything from your logo to your name. And make sure you spread the word. Don’t just depend on referrals and word of mouth. 

The internet plays an important role in home-business marketing. List your food products online and offer giveaways and discounts. Set up a website, social media pages, and reach out to local publications.

You don’t need a PR team to promote your business. Local newspapers and magazines often profile home business owners. Contact them to help spread the word. Connect with customers online, post regularly, and comment on reviews. An excellent online presence will translate well into sales for your food products.

How to Keep Your Customers and Employees Happy and Safe Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic

COVID-19 has made many business operations much more complicated. As such, maintaining a proper customer experience can be difficult, to say the least. From adhering to new CDC recommendations to revamping your customer service to handle an influx of calls, juggling everything often feels overwhelming.

Thankfully, there are several ways to cater to your customers without compromising their safety or the well-being of any of your employees. All it takes is a bit of careful planning and some extra supplies.

Consider supplying face masks.

Like many United States entrepreneurs, you're likely encouraging your customers to wear face masks when they're in your store. A mask is a great tool to prevent the spread of germs and help flatten the curve. However, not all customers have access to a cloth face mask or cloth face cover. To encourage traffic to meet your business needs while also staying safe, you could consider providing complimentary face masks to those who are without. If it's one of your business's hard-and-fast rules, you can place a mask bin at the front of the shop and even leave another for customers to dispose of any single-use personal protective equipment (PPE).

As far as your employees go, consider providing them with custom face masks as part of their uniform. Your custom cloth mask can even have business branding on it to maintain increased visibility. You won't want your custom face masks to be as restrictive as a surgical mask, but they shouldn't be a one-time use mask either. If you have a washing machine on-site or nearby, you can also offer to wash the custom face masks on a daily basis. Happier employees often translate to better customer interactions. And above all, you want to make sure your employees feel safe.

Rethink your call center.

If you're not operating an omni channel call center, you're probably struggling to keep up with the heightened customer demands. If you want to increase customer loyalty, having omnichannel customer support can provide critical assistance. Whether you have a mobile app that collects customer data and can send text messages or phone calls or you use an omnichannel contact center solution that relies on artificial intelligence, live chat, and self-service options, having a contact center in place is critical. Your contact center can even extend to your social media channels.

Basically, the more digital channels you use, the better. An omnichannel approach allows your customers to contact you on their channel of choice. It's a simple way to boost customer satisfaction and increase points of contact.

Discuss workforce optimization.

Part of the customer journey is how all the pieces of your business mesh together. Customer journey management isn't as simple of a concept as it may sound, though. Leveraging an omnichannel approach is one part of a much larger puzzle. Workforce optimization can help you operate with limited staffing, reduced hours, or unpredictable weekly schedules. By optimizing and streamlining some of your key business processes, you're able to cater to customer demands much more quickly and effectively.

In the face of COVID-19, this may mean bundling inventory shipments to account for delays in your supply chain. Instead of multiple deliveries a week, you may want to select a single delivery day to attempt to get as much stock in as possible in one fell swoop. As far as employee management goes, you can consider training employees to be able to handle different functions throughout your business. A more well-rounded employee can accomplish more during each shift than a skeleton crew comprised of several individuals at different times.

Though the coronavirus pandemic persists, it doesn't have to dampen your customer service efforts and sales processes. You simply need to be flexible to pivot accordingly to ensure you're following safety standards, maintaining relationships, and pursuing continued growth.

5 Business Ideas for the Natural-Born Salesperson

If you are a natural-born salesperson, you have a particular set of skills that help you succeed in almost everything. For you, navigating the grand space of your many interests is key in the process of finding your entrepreneurial liberation. This list, while not exhaustive, is designed to get your wheels turning about what you'd like to make of yourself with the skills that you have. Let's talk about five business ideas that pair well with the natural-born salesperson

Become a business owner.

Use your skills as a salesperson to start your own business. The supplements industry is booming right now; according to research, the global dietary supplement market size was approximately 123.23 billion in 2019, and this number is only going up as people from across the globe become more educated and interested in their health and well-being. 

Leverage the growing demand by starting your own supplements business and use a dependable, high-quality supplements manufacturer to create, develop, and package the best supplements for you to sell either online or in a brick-and-mortar shop.

Superior Supplements Manufacturing is a private label manufacturer, creating and developing the highest quality supplements (including CBD, pet supplements, and vitamins that target anxiety relief, weight loss, immune support, and more) in the form of capsules, gummies, powders, and others. 

Superior Supplements Manufacturing also offers label design, which saves you time and money by not having to hire a designer. Especially if you're a new business owner, you'll appreciate the turnkey experience that Superior Supplements Manufacturing offers.

Try out promoting or influencing.

Night club promotions is an exciting and fast-paced career where you can throw parties for your friends and get paid! Similarly, influencers are self-starters that serve as ambassadors for themselves and other brands. For starters, you should have a strong following on social media. 

Then, if you have a knack for promoting, see if a nightclub or brand will pay you to help boost their attendance or notoriety. As an influencer, it's probable that your activity online is being scouted by company marketers. They would love to partner with you to sell their products and brand name. 

Generally, promoters begin in this business by first promoting regular nights at established night clubs, then by working an agreement with an owner to have an exclusive night. Some successful influencers eventually receive the backing to start their own venues.

Think about antique dealing.

If you are a salesperson with a low-maintenance mindset, you can start this business in your garage with minimal inventory! Start part-time and build this business while tending to detail. Stick to buying items that you are confident that you can flip quickly for a good mark-up. Also, avoid getting stuck with slow-moving inventory. To experience success, develop stand-alone expertise in a specialty, and build a loyal customer base.

Startup your own bartending service.

Start by researching private bartending courses at the local community college or adult learning center, get a safety certificate if your state requires it, and then you’re ready to go into business. 

Normally the client will provide the alcohol and the glasses, but you might need to bring a few mixing tools or even a service cart if you want to impress. Demand for this service will run strongest on the weekends, making it a great part-time gig! Initially, you can check out liquidation sites to build up your inventory and industry connections.

Become a freelance writer.

In these modern times of social distancing and shutdowns, remote work opportunities are a godsend. Freelancing presents an opportunity for you to sell your skills and yourself. Today, there are still some freelance writing opportunities at traditional publications, but the big opportunity is online in content marketing. 

Business and consumer-centric websites are equally rushing to post more content related to their business space, draw traffic from search engines, and position themselves in the minds of likely customers. Some companies will require that you have expertise in their industry to write for them, but others will consider paying you to write articles, as long as they are well researched and well-written.

Be a sales trainer.

While there are all kinds of training that corporations will pay for, we are focusing on sales training because the demand is so extensive. It is a significant role, even for small businesses. If you don’t have great contacts at larger companies, it would be wise for you to target smaller firms, such as those with sales forces of five to 25 people. 

Small enough so that everyone isn’t trying to compete for their business, but large enough that they are likely to be willing to pay for your service.

These 5 Tips Could Increase Your Lifespan

Staying healthy requires an ongoing effort. You need to have a plan and stick to it if you want to change your life for the better, but knowing where to start planning in the first place can be difficult if you haven't already had the opportunity to both learn and practice a healthy lifestyle. If you feel like you need to live a healthier life but don't know how, here are five things to consider.

Food

One of the main ways to improve your health is to make sure that you are consuming a diet that is healthy for you. Adding more vegetables to your meals can lead to big improvement by itself, and you don't need to resign yourself to a meal that tastes bad if you find them unpalatable. 

Replacing salt with other spices can go a long way in making your food more interesting, and some spices like cinnamon even boast an impressive number of antioxidants.

Fitness

Whether you are getting enough exercise or not is another important factor to think about. Many people try to fit more exercise into their schedules with varying degrees of success, and many fitness-related New Year's Resolutions end up being abandoned by mid-January. 

While this might highlight the difficulty most people face when trying to be more active, the benefits both for your health and your wallet are substantial. If you end up needing to search for life insurance with iSelect, you have a decent chance of being considered for a lower premium as a result of your healthier lifestyle presenting a lower risk of becoming a liability.

Hydration

Water composes a large portion of our bodies, so staying hydrated is essential as well. While you don't need to go as far as to constantly be drinking water, it turns out that it is likely that not enough people are getting enough to drink. 

Making sure you drink enough water can help you stay energetic and attentive in addition to other basic health benefits, like the replacement of the water you lose through sweating. So don't be afraid to keep lots of water in your car if you are going to be out all day.

Avoiding Stress

Stress, while necessary in some circumstances, is not healthy to keep around if you can get rid of it. Being stressed all of the time can cause quite a few health problems in the long term, like heart damage, a less effective immune response, and weight gain. Being stressed on occasion is normal, but if you find yourself stressed out too often, then you should take a moment to relieve stress by taking a few deep breaths or somehow finding humor in your situation. 

Vacations might not be out of the question, either, as staying focused on something you enjoy can be another way to relieve stress—be it through painting, bodyboarding lessons, or even a particular aspect of your job that keeps you focused.

Sleep

You should also do your best to get enough sleep. Sleep is often underestimated, and trying to avoid it too often can cause memory problems and make you more emotional overall. Make sure that you get to bed and wake up at a consistent time every day after sleeping for eight to ten hours.

While there are peripheral benefits to staying healthy, like lower costs when you compare life insurance, you should mainly try to focus on what is important to you. This article is no substitute for a professional medical opinion, but people generally tend to live longer if they try to stay optimistic or generally remain in high spirits. There is, indeed, a value in comfort, and this should be a factor when you decide to improve your life.

5 Ways to Manage Your Finances During A Divorce

Photo by Freddie Collins on Unsplash

Divorce is not only a devastating experience for families, but it can be a costly one as well. The average cost of divorce in the U.S. ranges from $15,000 to $20,000, and the majority goes to divorce lawyers’ fees. 

Apart from legal fees, there are also alimony payments, the division of assets, and possible taxes, and costs can go even higher. For your peace of mind and to get your life back on track, it’s important to find ways to manage your finances and pay the bills during a divorce.

Common financial issues of divorce

There are several financial issues that need to be resolved during a divorce. First is the division of property, and both you and your ex will have to come to an agreement over who gets which items. Another is the division of debt. 

Often, this issue is one of the most difficult things to resolve as couples can find it hard to determine who is responsible for certain debts incurred during the marriage. You’ll also need to agree on tax issues such as who gets to claim Head of Household status or who gets tax exemption for dependents once you’re divorced. 



Divorce itself can be emotionally stressful, but it’s imperative to take concrete steps to resolve these financial issues during this trying time. Here are 5 ways to manage your finances during a divorce.

Consult with a reputable divorce attorney

Consulting with an experienced divorce attorney can provide you with the financial guidance that you need during this challenging time. 

Even if you are in good terms with your soon-to-be ex, you will need a lawyer to help you avoid making typical financial mistakes during a divorce. Moreover, your lawyer can help you in case a financial dispute arises.

Create a new budget

You will need to figure out how much income you should make for you to live on your own. To do this, list down your expenses, utility bills, credit card bills, investments, tax records, family life insurance policies, and the like. 

Determine which items you and your ex can pay off during your divorce and pay your debts. You should also make sure that your ex pays the bills that he or she promises to pay.

Open your own personal credit card

During the divorce, Katherine Grier, PC advises that you close any joint accounts to avoid financial disputes and problems from coming up. This way, you and your ex can work on paying only the debts that you incurred during your marriage. After you close your joint accounts, you should open your own personal credit card or other lines of credit.

Monitor your credit score

During your divorce, it’s likely that your credit scores will drop as you close accounts and make other changes in your finances. Check if any mistakes were made by a creditor which contributed to your lower credit score or if there’s any debt on certain accounts that were incurred without your knowledge.

Be prepared to make a lifestyle change

Now that your income will be drastically different, it’s important to be prepared for a lifestyle change during your divorce. Keep in mind that divorce will bring in new expenses and you will no longer be sharing household overhead costs with another person. It’s also important to talk to your children about the lifestyle changes that may take place during this time.

Divorce is tough enough without having to worry about your finances, but it’s one of the major hurdles that you have to get through to get your life back on track. Remember to consult your lawyer, keep track of debts and expenses, and be ready to make a few lifestyle adjustments to manage your finances well during your divorce.

Why You Should Consider Moving to a Small Town for Retirement

. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Traditional retirement has changed greatly in recent years, as many couples and individuals can no longer afford to keep up with their lifestyles while completely retired. As a result, these people are not fully retiring, but are rather going through with semi-retirement. 

This, however, is not necessary if you can make a few lifestyle adjustments leading up to your big day. One of the most effective adjustments that you can make is moving to a smaller city, as you will find that the difference in the cost of living could make full retirement more palatable. 

Selling Your Home

You might plan to sell the family home before retirement anyway, but if you are buying a condominium in the same city, you might not end up too far ahead. When staying in the city, your condominium could end up costing almost as much as your home, so you will not have much left over.

Some retirees choose to rent a place, but this constantly eats away at your retirement funds and does not provide a return on the investment. If you can sell your house in the large city and move to the suburbs or a smaller town in the same area, you could save hundreds of thousands of dollars. This money can then be put towards your retirement goals, which leaves you in much better financial shape. 

Cost of Living

In addition to the money that you make on the sale of your house, you will find that other expenses are far less in smaller cities. Since you will not have to drive as far to reach destinations, you will spend less on fuel. Things like restaurants and entertainment will be cheaper, unless you move to an exclusive suburb that has an inflated market. 

Quiet Lifestyle

Perhaps the main reason to relocate to a small town is the lifestyle that it affords. You will not have to worry about traffic and crime during your retirement, but can instead spend your time relaxing and enjoying the region.

You can go golfing multiple times per week without worrying about the course being overly crowded and can walk into your favorite restaurant, sometimes without even needing a reservation. The slower pace of life is much easier on you as you age, as you can avoid the big city problems that have plagued you during your working years. 

Checklist before Moving

Before you choose to move to a smaller center, you should consider a few things. First, make sure that you are close enough to visit your children and grandchildren before you go. Nothing is worse than moving on to greener pastures, only to find out that you miss your family and do not get to spend enough time with them.

Secondly, you should ensure that you have the right personality type to make friends in a new environment. You will be starting from scratch in your new town and you will not know anyone. If you struggle to make new friends or are introverted, you could struggle and become lonely very quickly.

Thirdly, you should look at the activities in your new city to see if they interest you. If you do not like fishing or swimming, moving to a beachfront community might not be your best option.

Overall, you have countless choices when selecting a retirement destination, so choose one that not only allows you to reach your financial goals, but your personal goals as well.