Food Business Starters...

• Focus on the product and keep it simple
• Start selling from day one to your best beta testers – friends, colleagues, neighbours et al; ask for their feedback and incorporate the relevant suggestions. Post gaining the confidence that you’ve created something which people may like, book a stall at a flea market and scale up by selling to strangers
• Data is your compass so collate email addresses of all those who try your food product; then send out a small survey and capture their feedback to improve your product
• Be completely open in this process; remember it’s your baby but you want to have a baby which everyone will want to take home, won’t you? So pump in the suggestions and once you have a new version of the food product share it with your customers and take their feedback
• Be prepared to ‘lose money to make money’: Distribute samples, attend events to learn from fellow entrepreneurs and maximize every opportunity to tell your story
• Understandably, most food entrepreneurs feel more comfortable in their kitchen rather than at the sales counter. But ultimately you’re the best person to sell it…no one knows the recipe, how good are the ingredients you put in it, etc. better than you do!
• Build a community by – collecting contact details of beta testers and buyers; and deploying social media handles to showcase your products and progress 
• Think about scale and COGs (cost of goods) at the very onset; so look at decent manufacturing capacity and offering interesting margins to list your products
• Concentrate on improving food products within already established categories