Food is an essential commodity of life, every human being eats food, and even animals, plants eat their own versions of food.
Starting a food business can be very profitable because everyone is your target market and it does not matter where you decide to sell, you are guaranteed to always have customers.
Do you have a passion for cooking and love making a variety of dishes for fun? Well, how about using that skill to make money.
In case you are short of ideas on the type of businesses you can consider in the food industry, we will outline some popular options.
CATERING SERVICES
Catering is usually done in large scale to be sold at well known spots or events like seminars, social occasions, political rallies, birthday parties, office meetings and so on/
You can do indoor or outdoor catering, whereby you sell to schools, in residential neighbourhoods, to churches and even work place environments where there is a lot of foot traffic.
Catering requires cooking, packaging, delivering or transporting the meals to locations and serving meals in line with customers specific orders.
BAKERY
There are two major types of bakeries that exist. They are retail bakery and wholesale bakery. Retail bakeries have more sub categories like traditional, pastry shops, bakery cafe, home bakery, bakery trucks and specialty bakeries.
The wholesale bakery, unlike its retail counterpart, deals in making large supplies of baked foods, and this includes companies that mass produce bread.
Such businesses mostly have large factories as they cater to a larger customer base and sell directly to retailers who in turn sell to the final consumers.
To start a bakery business you have to decide which of the two main categories you can do, but it is important to note that for wholesale you will need huge capital. However, with retail you can start from your kitchen. With the growth of the business comes expansion and then you can rent a space.
RESTAURANT
Owning a restaurant is a profitable business which rakes in thousands of naira daily once one follows the right steps, from planning stage to commencement of operations.
You should have a shop to cater to customers who do not have the time to cook and want to eat as soon as possible or you can operate an online restaurant where people order and you deliver to their locations.
The meal options a restaurant can offer, but are not limited to, include local dishes, intercontinental dishes, family-style cafeterias, take-aways, etc.
FOOD KIOSK
A food kiosk unlike its counterparts can be operated with a low budget. This entails having a mobile or temporary booth/stand at strategic location, It can be outside schools, hotels, or at bus stops. Most food choices being sold in such establishments are what people readily buy in Nigeria when they are on break from work or school, eg, rice, noodles and egg, beans, garri (eba) and soup. Other options include akara, fried yam and plantain, bread and egg, suya.
FOOD TRUCK
What this means for the small business owner is that rather than doing it from a shop or a store, you would have to buy or hire a van to sell different types of cooked or baked food. This is a restaurant on wheels so you have the choice of always moving to a better locations. Often times a food truck is situated at a bus top, busy neighbourhood, or market places.
GROCERY STORE
This needs to be an actual walk-in store which is presentable and has a variety of food items people can use to cook for themselves at home or that they can eat on the go.
You can stock the shop with bread, vegetables, beverages, canned food and drinks, biscuits, flour, local raw materials for preparing food stuff and in certain cases, burgers, hotdog, sandwich can be found in grocery stores.
The business of cooking food, delivering and selling food is one that would never go out of style until the end of time, as man is able to survive only because food exists.
With a strong love for cooking, your capital, good location, shop, kiosk or stand, you are good to go.
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