Backing into the food business. How to?

todd,
as you know i am really debt sensitive and went the trailer route as everything could be paid for in cash money. i don't know what they call it in north carolina but here in florida our traile has an MFD (mobile food dispensary) designation. the true advantage to this is i only need my commisary for grey water and potable water. other than that we are self contained and can do anything at anytime as opposed to catering which would require all food to be prepared in the commisary kitchen.
our farmers market here is only open for 4 hours on saturdaybut we have been averaging about 50 dollars and hour profit.
our 2 best profit items are creamy brisket on a bisket unit cost 68 cents,sale price 3 bucks and the egg strata unit cost 54 cents and sale price of 4 bucks. a 4 ounce pulled pork sandwich we are getting 5 bucks for with a unit cost of 52 cents but picnics have been going for about 99 cents a pound so that is what i have been using. we also sell a to go meat only pulled pork, 6 ounce serving for 7 bucks, unit is about 80 cents.
we are getting more and more feelers about suppling meat only for parties and more inquiries about catering. i think the farmers market idea was one of peggy's best ones as we constantly have our faces out in the local market.
competition has helped us as well in marketing. if i dont take our 2nd place trophy our brisket sales fall flat but if i do take it we consistantly sell around 8 pounds of it!!!! i do point out that all meat is cooked to competition standardsand that the only change that i have made is the starting time of cooking since i view 8.30 to 12.30 as box turn in times.
also the addition of vegan items is starting to create a buzz and i will be adding at least 2 more of those items. the profit is high and the fact that we are trying to please everyone by offering them has oddly enough increased our meat sales. why this is i dont know but we will continue on the same path until i do understand the driving factors.
we found out the hard way that where we are the customers dont want sides or ribs!!!!!! so we just stopped doing them.
so ya see we are backing in just like you and i want to encourage you to just keep thinking about it.
if i can be of any help just pm me and i will do my best to give you an honest answer
jack

Thank you Jack. Watching you and Peggy over the past year or so is what fueled my fire a little. I thought I got out of this business almost 10 years ago, but over the last year I've gone from the occasional catering job just to help someone out, to now having most of my weekends booked. I've got to get serious or get out I guess. I just want to be careful that I don't end up with an 80 hour a week "hobby".

I'm doing a menu development project now for a local restaurant owner and one of the things he wants to do is add more vegeterian dishes in both his restaurants(mexican and italian). With margins like you're getting, he might want to go all vegan. Seriously, I don't recall ever seeing a vegeterian focused restaurant in this area go under. Maybe it's because they don't have much competition, but they always seem to be busy, and I know from seeing info in industry mags that vegeterians represent a very desirable market as they tend to be upscale with better than average incomes. Makes a person think, dosen't it.

I think my biggest hurdle is trying to find a way to dispose of left overs. That is why the personal chef idea keeps coming back to me. Prepare items for sale on weekends, and what dosen't sell becomes a fixture in following weeks menu for home delivery. When I searched the net for personal chef info, I was very surprised to find lots of information and pricing info that looks promising from a profit stand point.

Hope you and Peggy have a great summer. Hopefully last weeks semi-storm will be the last for a while.

todd,
the personal chef thing sounds good and well worth looking into.
for me i just don't have the personality for it. peggy was watching "hell's kitchen" last night on fox and just looked over at me and said "that limey chef acts just like you do." to which i responded "what was my nickname in culinary school?"
hey at least i got her to laugh!!!!!
jack
ps. my nickname was "the sous chef from hell" but i don't think it was well earned. i was 41 while most students were 18-20. while you were sous you were graded on how well the brigade did as a whole and i just wasn't gonna let some pimple faced kid kill my grades lol

I've never been as bad as Ramsey, but I've been close on a few occasions. My best friend of twenty years is about the only person I'll let in the kitchen with me when I'm cooking, and she's been in training for 20 years. She has told me that on occasion I've given people looks, usually servers, that made her blood run cold. Is that a bad thing?

And I do think I would have had to kill Jeff from last nights show. For his own good as well as my own. If you get BBC on cable, check out Ramsey's other show, Kitchen Nightmares tonight at 9:00 and 10:00. Last week a cook served him rotten scallops and Ramsey puked on TV. You don't get entertainment like that in the US.

And my problem with vegeterian's was illustrated well last night when the girl in charge of meat said "I don't eat meat, so I don't know how to cook it". That would have put me over the edge. If I were an instructor at a culinary school and someone refused to eat something we worked on in class, they would receive an instant "F". Go back to your salad station and cry over there, you pasty skinned, anorexic looking, lettuce eating, so and so.

I don't know how most personal chefs operate. Most around here advertise that they'll shop and then come to your house and cook a weeks worth of meals in about 4 hours. I would hate to be forced to cook on strange stoves with strange equipment in strange kitchens and be expected to produce consistent product. All the while having someone there asking a thousand questions. I would rather build a menu with 14-21 entrees and about the same number of sides, then let people order a week in advance for delivery to their home. I just hope the people don't mind having BBQ or brisket twice a week.

omg todd,
don't tell me you have the icy stare too!!!!!!
man i made the mistake of letting peggy see that and it wasn't even directed at her.
cost me about 50 bucks for flowers and chocolates and i still ain't sure she believes me.
but we did celebrate our 34th wedding anniversary together today!!!!!
however i did let her know that if she again scored 18th in chicken i might be required to find another chicken cook lol
and while we are on the subject i sure would like to find judge #6 on my brisket table. 5 judges had me at the lowest at 9 to 9.5 and judge 6 had me at 7
jack

pps.
jeff dead meat for sure!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
but i think the exec chef on the blue team i really bad and dunped on andrew!!!! sure hope andy nails him lol
and welcome to the wonderful world of culinary arts pmsl
jack

Happy anniversary! I'm thinking you should keep her. But while it looks like things are going well, you might want to get Peggy to sign a non-compete agreement. That way if things ever turned, you wouldn't look up one day to see "Peggy's Smoked Meats and Vegeterian Treats" parked across from you at the farmers market. I have a feeling she would be pretty tough competition.

Todd,
The vegetarian who had never cooked meat is like Jack cooking lamb. He hates lamb. The chef who taught him, when he got it right, made him taste it. After Jack choked, swallowed, and (use your imagination).... He asked him what it tasted like to him. Jack said it tasted like rotten, smelly tennis shoes. He was told to remember that taste and reproduce it the next time he cooked it.
I'm sure he could, although he's never served anything like that to me!
That's a pretty catchy name for a business you came up with!
We're sticking together. We irritate each other just enough to keep us out of trouble with strangers! Actually, we work together pretty well.
And I can't believe that stupid guy opened a restaurant with the staff he had! That's why I don't want to have a restaurant with any more employees than the 2 of us. Maybe he got a big paycheck from the TV folks for showing how the people with not much bucks can get into deep doo.
Peggy

it may have 2 employees but one has the recipes
trouble is the one is so abrasive he (oops) needs the other to make the sales.
jack
hey peg is this week 13 or 14 for me working 7 days a week???

todd,
the chef she is referring to is chef walter achatez cec. he is a classically trained german chef and still just as tough as good soligen knife steel even though he suffered a stroke 4 years ago that affected his sight and balance. he still carries the scars from a sous chef that hit him with a skillet and when he came up thru the ranks there was no penalty in german law for mistreating an apprentice (this was pre ww2)
the story she told is true about the lamb but what she left out was how much i like to cook it. to this day i thankk chef achatez for taking a 40 year old guy under his wing even after i graduated culinary school and when i hit a problem i am not sure about i look at my old notes from his class and viola instant answer!!!
sorry if the story was a little rambling but he is without a doubt the finest mentor anyone could wish for and i feel very lucky to have been under his hard nosed no nonsense tutalge and he makes ramsey look like a limey pansey lol
jack

If you won't eat lamb, I'm guessing goat is out of the question too then? I think you're missing out on the lamb though. Smear a semi bonless leg with a compound butter of garlic, rosemary, and coarse ground mustard. Then smoke it to about medium rare then finish in hot oven to form good crust. Oh man! Good. Good. Good.

The first chef I worked under outside my family's restaurant was a freshly retired USMC drill instructor and jungle warfare instructor. He had just completed culinary school too. He wasn't a great cook as all his food tasted like Marine food no matter what he did, but he brought a sense of purpose and dedication to the job that was amazing. He had the highest level of professional standards I've ever encountered. I'm glad he never decided to hit me with anything.

I just had dinner at The "Q" Shack ( http://www.theqshack.com/ ). Nice looking place. But........I had the thought about halfway through dinner that for the cost of my meal I could have had a haircut. I thought, "Wow", I've never had a thought like that before while I was eating. Not exactly a positive review I guess. I got a three item combo with brisket, mesquite chicken and pork butt. I swear to you that I was never able to determine which item was the chicken and which was the butt. Not to say either was bad. They were just not different in any way except for some slight difference in color. Strange. Also, you've got to love it when the guy's behind the counter keep taking their hats off to scratch their head then go right back to work without washing their hands.

todd
funny part is i love goat especially jamakin curried goat. there is a really good place called "the real ting" on adams street in the heart of jacksonville. these guys are good!!! place is just a a hole in the wall but the greeter has a a tux jacket even tho the pants don't match!!!
i think it's fiunny but the the chefs we remember most were the ones that pushed us and pushed us hard!!!! they weren't nice and sure didn't care about our feelings but somehow they sensed what we were cabable of and made us produce!!!
the head of the culinary school where i went had a student who just had to learn bbq. achatez said send her to jack so we spent 2 days in the trailer just doing brisket and the other 3 meats. sure made me feel proud when i asked why did i get her. chef said cause you can continue the tradition!!!!
jack

Todd,
This would be time-consuming in the beginning, but think about it. I do great selling pulled pork and brisket in 1 lb bags at work. The people like having something they can warm up for lunch, or take home to warm up for dinner. I bag up the meat when we do the farmer's market and freeze it. Find a place with some friendly people, take in enough of your product for them to sample. Leave lots of flyers, because they get lost.
Jack is working 7 days a week now. I guess I am too, but I like what I'm doing so I haven't considered it as work. When you start, it seems overwhelming, but it gets easier as you go. Or to me, it did. The stress level definitely went down once I made it past Reynaldo, the state inspector.
I hope this helps you.
Peggy