So in this podcast, I'm super excited to bring you guys some information about one of the fastest growing types of food businesses due to 2020 and everything everybody went through last year. This year, a lot of people are not going back to their jobs. They are actually starting small-scale food businesses.
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From home, believe it or not. And a lot of states are not necessarily...
They are loosening up the laws, but they are also evolving these laws and changing them to make it more feasible and easier for people to actually start small food businesses from home. And they're even increasing the amount of money that you can make. For instance, Florida just increased it to 0,000 in food businesses that you can
Listen to "How can I start a food business with low investment_ Food Business Ideas With Low Investment" on Spreaker.Actually, I sell from home. So this video is going to be all about how to make money selling food from home. Let me give you 10 specific things that
You need to do this in order to find out for sure if you can, and then what you can make and everything that you kind of need to do in the first starting phases of doing this. Now, these are in a specific order. So I would definitely go through them and check them out in the order I'm giving you. Of course you can. You can go through them and if it works better for you to kind of mix them up a little bit, but these 10 things are probably what I would say. The most important thing is being a food entrepreneur for the past 12 years. I know a little bit about food and selling it online, and even starting from home and then starting from scratch. So I've had quite a bit of experience doing this, and these are the 10 things that I particularly would tell you if we were actually doing a consulting call through my consulting business. If you needed help, I would say, look at this, this, this, and this.
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So number one, let's get right to it. No, your state law specifically, every state has cottage food laws on the books, except I believe it's New Jersey. New Jersey is the only state that I know of. If you know of a state that I don't, let me know in the comments, but New Jersey doesn't have any specific laws allowing you to do this. So in every other state, you have a great opportunity to start from home, but it's specific to the state as to how much you can make and how you can make the process to get the product approved. And then, obviously, where you can sell it once you have the product. Okay? So there's a variation going on in each state. Damian, how do I find that out? Go to Google and type in "cottage food laws" and then your state's name. Now you want to look for the first up to 1, 2, 3, 4, the first results up to the first four, because somewhere in there, there's going to be a government website.
"Selling Food From Home Ohio"
You're going to look at for.gov or if it's, you know, Florida, it's dot Florida or something to that effect, where it's an actual state website that has this specific information. There are a lot of people who have information out there, even people on YouTube here that talk about making food at home. A lot of that information is actually incorrect. So you need to make sure you go to the state specifically now. Number two, incorporate and get food business insurance. Now, by the way, really quickly, this is our podcast, which I'll upload to YouTube as well. So if you see the big microphone on YouTube, you'll see the front of me. This is for our podcasts down below. I forgot to tell you in the description section, there are links to all of our podcasts. You can listen to us on the go, or if you happen to be at work or something, and you want to catch up on some information. We had over 250, how many episodes do we have? 250, 250 episodes, or so we've got over 60,000, 50, or 60,000 downloads.
Listen to "How can I start a food business with no money is a LIE Truth behind videos claiming this" on Spreaker.
"Selling Food From Home Texas"
We just got it up and running. So we're really excited about that success. So, going back to that podcast from before I was number two, incorporate and get food business insurance.states do not require you to be incorporated, but here's the risk: even though you're under the cottage food law as a business, and you're kind of operating as a business because you need to claim all that on your taxes as well. At the end of the year, if there is something that comes about, somebody getting sick, or if you happen to have a broken piece of glass from a spatula or a plate or something at home, and somebody has to go to the emergency room or go to the hospital, and they turn around and sue you, you have the potential to lose everything that you have on a personal level, because your business is not separated from your personal life.
"Selling Food From Home Illinois"
Listen to "How much Does it Cost to Sell Food at Farmers Market_ Is Selling at a Farmers market Profitable" on Spreaker.
That is something that can happen. A lot of states do not require you to be incorporated or create an LLC with limited liability. Corporations allow you to have a business and create that bit of protection. And then having food business insurance is also something you should get in order to protect your business. So take this as a business, do not take it as a hobby. I've mentioned this in the numerous videos that I've done about food business, types of food business from home and such. Please do yourself a favor and listen to my advice. Try to get yourself whatever it is that you need. Legally, an LLC and insurance are required to make sure that you protect yourself. Take this: consider it as a business, not as a hobby. Okay, Number three, work on one to four items. Well, Damien, I've got like a dozen items. I would love to make all of them.
Can You Make Food at Home and Sell It
Don't do that because, in order for you to create a profitable food business from scratch at home, you don't want to overextend yourself. You don't want to get out with a dozen items. I mean, you may have a dozen. That's great. Start off with one to about four, maybe one to five. Okay, See how they work in the marketplace. Take them to a farmer's market, sell them locally, go to certain events, whatever it is that you can do in your state. Do that. And then if one or two of those doesn't work out, then you've got 12. Good. You can try the other two. You can kind of mix and match, seeing what works and what doesn't. Because every food product will not necessarily sell well within the community that you're in. Right? Because you want to make sure that if you've got a great list of items, you keep it.
How do I Start Selling Food From Home
That's great. If you brainstorm, you come up with a hundred fantastic ideas, but don't start with more than about one to five. Okay? Because the next couple of things are going to come into play. Number one, and number two, is the packaging. So that brings us to number four. Number four on our list is creating packaging. So if you have a multitude of items and you've got a multitude of different labels and you've got all these things going on, when you start packaging the product and you have a variation on everything, that's going to be a little bit overwhelming. You need to have a wonder for it, try it out, create your logo, get your packaging, get a brand, which brings us to number five. Make sure you work on your packaging and create a logo. And if you can't do that yourself, go to Fiverr.
How Do I Advertise My Home Made Food
Fiverr.com is actually a website. We can get a freelancer to create a logo for you. And again, if you want to check the description in the description section, there's a link down there. They'll make a logo for you. You tell them, "Hey, I've got baked goods." My name is Susie, and I've got Susie's baked goods. I do cookies. They'll have a designer to design it for you. You can get it for anywhere from 2030 to maybe 55, a very low investment. All of these types of businesses from home are fantastic. And what's going on right now is that a lot of people don't have extra money to start this grandiose business, which is why starting one from home is so amazing. Start small; get your logo, get an idea of branding, and create the packaging that you want to put it in. Now, everything is different. It could be a bag.
What Food Can I Sell to Make Money
It could be a plastic jar, could be a container for spices. I mean, it could be a multitude of ways. You can package spices. Whatever the product is, make sure you think about the type of packaging. Okay? That brings us to number five, which is about logos and branding.And then, number six, go to a website called festivals.com. This is a website that has tons of them. I mean, literally millions of people in all of the states have all kinds of festivals at different farmer's markets and different events on festivals.com. And then you type in, I believe, your state and then your zip code. That's going to give you a list of all kinds of events that you can go to in your state to sell at. Farmers' markets are just one example. Many states allow you to go to a multitude of different types of events. So don't just limit yourself to the farmer's markets.
How Can I Start a Food Business With No Money
Make sure you check out all of the other ones that are available in your area. Okay? Number seven, and this is really, really important for income and tax purposes, Keep all of your receipts: receipts from items that you are buying to make your product; keep receipts from all of your ingredients or packaging; your labels; your ink for your printer. It doesn't matter. And by the way, if you're starting from home, there's an enormous, I did another video on my channel here. You can check it out. It's about tax advantages and tax benefits. Starting a food business from home There is a ton of tons. Trust me, you have a really great thing. Bring it to your accountant. I'm not an accountant. I'm not going to give you tax advice, but I am going to tell you to take this video, write down the list, bring it to your coach and say, "Hey, look, I'm starting a business in 2020 or 2021.""
And I'm going to be doing this food business from home. So here are a handful of things that I want to deduct from my taxes. Okay, And they'll go, "Oh, they'll let you know." And if you've got a good accountant, they're going to dig deeper and they're going to be able to find you a lot of benefits to it. Okay? So keep all of your receipts. Make sure you do it because the difference between all of your expenses and all of your sales will obviously be your profit.That's what you're going to get taxed on because that's your actual income. So keep all of your receipts. Number eight, open a business account. Don't do this under a personal account, do it under a business account. Why? because it makes the bookkeeping much easier. Plus, the fact that you're running a business means you should separate your business from personal expenses because your accountant can make it super easy to understand where the money's going. You can track expenses, track your income, and track your sales. Okay?
If you've got a portable card, you're
Actually swiping at one of your events, and you've got to connect to your Android phone, or your Apple phone, or whatever it is.And you're taking payments right there at the event with a debit card or credit card that can go directly into your business account. Okay? So that opens up the opportunity to take
Other types of payment other than
Cash. Okay, And of course never, since I don't take checks. When I started out a long time ago, I never did, but don't take checks. So, open a business, man.
It was number eight. Network, network, network, network, network, network, network, network, network, network
You go. So you're in a certain city and you go shopping. Hey, mentioned to people, let them know, go to restaurants and cafes, and say,"Hey, can I leave a brochure or some information about my food business?" Drop off leaflets, drop off business cards. Anything that you can do everywhere you go to start creating that awareness of your product and like, "Hey, you know what? I'm going to be at this event. Can I put this up on the wall of your restaurant? You have a cafe or a coffee shop. Can I put this up here? This is a way to network and get people aware of who you are and what you're selling. Okay, Number nine, number 10. This is also crucial. crucial. Create a website, no matter if you're allowed to sell on your website or not. That's not the point. You want to make a website while you're starting from home. Down the road, your business will grow.
That's your idea. That's your objective. Obviously, when you get into your commercial kitchen or you get into an area about a year, maybe two years, or whatever, maybe it could be a few months, you have already made a website. You can transition that into an e-commerce business. And you've already got the website. You've already got social media. You've already got that presence online. That's going to allow you the opportunity to start selling on your website. Okay? So then you could just transition to e-commerce and not just work out of your home. So create a website. If you don't know how to do it, you can actually go to fiber. Also, They can create people or websites for a couple hundred bucks. They can make a really basic, simple one for you to get started. You can do it on Shopify. You can do a Wix or Weebly GoDaddy, but e-commerce will be the transition that you'll make.
When you get from your house into a much bigger pool of people, where you've got millions of people on Amazon, it's not Walmart.com, Etsy, or eBay, wherever it might be. So that is a great way to have a reason to have a website. And then you can transition from that. Okay? So these are 10 things that will help you figure out how to make money selling food from home. And I highly recommend that you definitely take a look at this. And if you've got questions about the process, don't be hesitant to ask. We make a lot of our video content around you guys and your questions. So if you're a subscriber, ask me. If you're not subscribing, make sure you subscribe and then get some questions and comments down below. We'll get to that answer as soon as possible. I so appreciate you guys listening to our podcast, and I hope you guys enjoy this on YouTube. I'll see you in our next video.