quote:Originally posted by Papa Deuce:
I honestly don't think I will mind working so hard as it is a passion of mine. I'm also tired of working for people who seemed to make their life's purpose to make their employees miserable.
Passion is a definite plus; it was mine as well. Passion for a goal will get you out of bed when your muscles are growling at you and your eyes rebel at the thought of opening. Passion will help you put up with the compost that needs to be shoveled out of the way just to make a tiny bit of progress. Eventually you will want to get to a point where you are acting as the owner of your business, and not as just another employee of your business. That is where I'm at today.... trying to figure out if I am yet the owner of my own business.
quote:One last question, if I may... since my place would be similar to yours, is it financially viable? I don't need to make much money as my wife is the primary breadwinner in my home.
I had much the same situation. When I retired from the health district my wife, an R.N., acted as the primary bread-winner and insurance source for quite a while. It was a blessing. Having a money reserve was a necessity. Not expecting to make much of a salary for the first year became the reality.
I would never tell anyone that they can expect to pull a salary from a business in the first year. When it happens it is great. Most foodservice businesses fail due to under-capitalization... and that includes the failure to have enough money set aside in a bank account to live off of during lean times. Lean times are to be expected; sometimes it's seasonal, sometimes it's because a new restaurant has opened up sucking away the customer base for a while; sometimes it's just because... there seems to be no rhyme or reason. That is the reason for a healthy reserve account. And that is the reason to do what Joseph did in the Old Testament...store away the surplus for the time of famine.
Let me post something that I posted in a different food forum a bit ago:
Matt, a target market of 100,000 is NOT a small market. There are bigger markets than yours, but yours is by no means small. My target market is 42,000. You are on the right track at this time by focusing on becoming educated and technically competent in your future craft and learning the art of vending food. But success in the retail food service trades is only partially dependent on that factor.
Within ANY target market the food vendor has competition from EVERYONE who sells food. Your market is everyone who eats food. Your mission as a small business owner is to get as many people as possible to eat your food instead of anyone else's food...including the food that people might prepare for themselves. Are you up to that challenge?, because MARKETING IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU WILL DO IN ORDER TO SUCCEED.
Marketing is NOT just advertising. Marketing is everything you do to increase your customer base by taking business away from your competition. Marketing is convincing the customer base that they want and need what you sell. Marketing CAN include media advertising, but media advertising is just one tool, and probably the least important tool in the long-term. How you look and how your cart looks, how good your food is, your location, door-knob hangers, supporting fund-raisers, going to businesses to give samples, putting flyers on cars in parking lots, towing your brightly decorated cart through neighborhoods, sending out PSA's to the media, joining the Chamber of Commerce and rubbing elbows with business leaders, handing out business cards with a coupon on the back which gives a percentage off of the cost of the first purchase...... the list of things you can do to market your business is nearly endless.
Word of mouth is one type of marketing, but it can be inefficient. It can take YEARS for good word of mouth to overcome the inertia of being new, unknown, and having no reputation. This is a case of "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, etc, etc". Well, if you have a great product and very few in your market know about it, what are your chances of success? Can you succeed in a market of 100,000? Abso-honking-hairy-lutely. And you can also fail in a market of 100,000. But a failure would not be because of the size of your market, it would be because of the size of your marketing.