Food Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots (2nd Edition)

So it is Damien I'm back to do a handful of your subscriber questions. It's super early here in our facility. We're getting ready to open up. Um, our fourth quarter has been inundated with a lot of orders. So you might see me blinking a lot because I have had quite a few long nights. So let's dive into your subscriber questions. I've got a handful that range from cakes to pies and even how to get some packaging done. So let's dive right into it. And if you're new to marketing photo line definitely hit that big subscribe button. I think it's on this side subscribe button. It's a little early in the morning. So hit that button and definitely check out. We've had over 900 videos. Uh, we, our YouTube premier food entrepreneur channel, giving you tips and tricks and all kinds of experiences from our 12 plus years of being online, selling our food.

And we bring you all kinds of fantastic resources. also@marketingfoodonline.com. We have a website there is set up to that has dozens and dozens of other free resources to help you get started. So let's dive into these questions. If you see me looking down and we'll look at my laptop really quick and get these questions up and going. So the first one's from Candace, Oh, this was in regards to our question on how to ship a cake. Okay. And we get a lot of feedback and questions about how to ship a cake from that video. So I've got a couple of different questions here. I'm going to dive into and let you guys know how it will work. So their question was awesome. Video. Would you do this method for a cheesecake? As a matter of fact, we do. We don't do the cheesecakes anymore just because we've focused on a handful of other items that worked out much more work better for us.

So on our, on our store, we did actually do a cheesecake. We had several varieties, we had a lemon, a cheesecake, and then a couple of other flavors. Now, when it comes to shipping, do you use that same method as the cake? Yes, but there is a key thing you need to do, and that is freezing, literally freezing the cheesecake completely solid and only shipping it the day that you actually get ready for the pickup. I would say within an hour or two of shipping, it, make sure that you pack it with ice packs. You don't need dry ice necessarily for this particular one, because if you ship it solid, frozen, and you have ice packs around the perimeter of the cheesecake, um, it will arrive perfectly fine. We use two day, two day priority for it. You can use express mail, which is even better.

Express mail is a one day service. If you're looking to ship the cheesecake. But the one thing you want to do is make sure that it is rock solid. Okay. We have a deep freeze of course, here in our facility. So we deep freeze it and it actually is like a rock. Uh, by the time it arrives, it's actually still kind of frozen actually. Um, so shipping it with the ice packs around the perimeter of it completely solid, but using the same technique as far as shrink wrapping it to the board. Um, what I would recommend you do is actually after you make it shrink, wrap it and get it secured to the board cake board that we have in the video, and then freeze that don't freeze the cake and take it out and try to shrink wrap and heat seal it. Why? Because the heating gun will actually warm up the cake and that kind of defeats the purpose of having it frozen solid.

So having it secured in whatever that container may be, if you choose not to do it the way we did it, whatever it may be that you're doing, make sure that it's frozen solid, then shipped immediately the day that you actually pack it. Okay. So next question is from Kelly. Uh, thank you, Kelly, for the question. This was in regards to actually how to ship a pie. Um, so hello, thank you for the video. What size USBs box is that? That's actually a great question. The reason why it's a great question. When it comes to food products, you can use a variety of ways of shipping it. Okay. Specifically about this one in particular video about the pie, the, the actual box that we use is a mailing box. It's a USP is mailing box. That's not flat rate. It is priority service, but it's not a flat rate box, depending on the size of your pie.

You can go with either a medium, large flat rate or a mailing box. That size that I had was 12 by 12 by eight, it's actually the Oh seven. If you go to the post office website, usp.com and you're looking to ship a pie and use that box that I use, it's actually the Oh seven it's number Oh seven. And that is actually the one that's going to give us the ability to pack it with a lot of packing, because you don't want the cake or the pie to have a lot of movement inside the box. Can you use flat rate? Of course you can, but it's just depending on the size, there's a lot of different boxes. There's over, by the way, there's over 40 different packages that you can actually get from the post office to ship anything. And from everything from pad and envelopes to small boxes, to gigantic oversized, there's a variety of boxes.

A lot of people aren't aware of that, but there's different types. There's flat rate, which is a specific amount up to 70 pounds. There's also regional rate and there's even mailing boxes, which are just regular old boxes that you can ship. So whatever one works for you, depending on the size of your pie, because again, not everybody actually makes that that video was about the nine inch pie. Not everybody makes dynamic pie. So if it's a larger one or a smaller one, just find out which one works for you. The one I used in there was the Oh seven. So next up, now this is a, this was a question I really wanted to get to with this particular subscriber, because the question is kind of a sense of urgency and I want to try and help you out as much as I can. So this is from nacho.

Um, and I'm sorry if I pronounce it, that food for newb and may pronounce that, right? Sorry. Um, it has been 11 months now and there's still no co-packer to make my low-carb bread here in British Columbia. Also the amendment of minimum order for printed bread bags is 500,000 bags per order. Times that times five variations of bread. And you literally know where to the store, all that, all those bags. So I can't approach stores because I can not obtain a finished product. You know, as far as printed bags, boxes, et cetera, I'm just about ready to give up. Okay. I've got some great advice for you. Nacho. Number one, you're going to run into hurdles like this, and I have run into them for the past 12 years. Believe it or not. I still run into them until today. So every day is going to be a learning as an entrepreneur, do not stop or don't give up at all.

Okay. I'm going to give you some variations and some alternatives. Now, when you're starting any food business, it's not just about this. Even about bread or packaging, loaves of bread or anything, any type of food business that you start. You're always going to have a more, a higher amount of expenses at front. Why? Because your bags, your boxes, or whatever it may be that you're looking to print to create. You don't, you can't leverage the volume of business that you have. If you were doing, for instance, a hundred thousand loaves a day, you can obviously get things much cheaper because you're going to be buying them in bulk. So keep in mind that it's going to be more expensive upfront, but here is the quick tip. Don't always set your mind on a specific type of packaging. When you first start, if this is a hurdle for you, which it seems obviously that it is that's a lot of bags, to be honest with you.

If that's a hurdle, try to figure out a different way of packaging, just to at least get the ball rolling. So you can get into stores and get your business up and running and create cash flow. You can always change down the road. Nothing's in stone. When you're an entrepreneur, when you're a small business owner, you can always change evolve. You can manipulate your packaging. You can get different types of packaging. So here's what I would say to you. Create your loaf, create your loaf of bread, that you have use a shrink wrap machine to heat, seal the bread. And then they actually have boxes that you can get. And this may be a smaller approach to what you're doing. So at least you're not having to buy 10,000, a hundred thousand bags. So get yourself a box, a Baker's box that you can put that low fin and simply put your label on the box.

And that way you can get yourself into stores at least to get started. Now you're probably thinking, well, how do I do that? Well, there's several websites online. There's quite a few websites online where you can get baking boxes, get the dimension of your loaf, the dimension of your bread specifically, and you want to get a box. That obviously fits that size. Get those boxes, put them together. Heat, seal heat, shrink wrap the actual bread, because most of the breads that we actually buy here in the state, and you're here, here in, um, in Atlanta that actually have plastic wrap around the actual bag itself and then their bag. So each loaf of bread actually has a heat sealed, shrink wrap around it. And then it's put into a bakery bag. If you can't get those bakery bags at a lower amount to get purchased upfront, then what you should do is shrink wrap the bread, put it into the Baker's box and seal up the box.

Just put a simple label over the tab and you're done because the bread is sealed inside. So you're obviously for safety and security reasons it's sealed the box itself is going to cover it. And that's going to be the packaging of the bread. The bread will be sealed inside. So this way, instead of going with something that's custom printed or something, you know what you may have to start off by just utilizing labels or print up some labels into a smaller amount, because you can get those Baker's boxes for, you know, a couple of hundred and in a case pack for, you know, 200 bucks or a couple of dollars a piece. So whatever it may be, as far as that's concerned, get yourself a different type of packaging down the road as your business grows, or you begin to get some momentum going down and having this custom made or reaching these minimums, it's going to be much easier for you. So always try to think outside the box and get creative with your don't feel as if you have to have that specific time, keep that on the back burner. Don't let that be something that you're not going to do down the road, but always try to manipulate and figure out what kind of packaging really works well, if you're running into

This hurdle. Okay. So

I hope that gives you some direction and maybe an alternative way of packaging. W well, the reason why I say that is here. We've had numerous types of products that we've tried to sell, and I've had to change packaging more than a dozen times. And if that's the case, well then so be it, uh, if you have to go from a container to a bag or a bag, or have a bag to a container, whatever works for you, it to get the ball rolling, but don't give up on doing it. So next up, next question that we've got, actually, this is also another great question for anyone starting a food business. And this has come from Mark P Mark. Thank you so much for the question. And this is a great thing, and I apologize. I should have probably covered this in more detail. This was at about a video that how to start a spice and herb business.

So he asked quote-unquote what is start small? So what is small? What does that consider $10 a hundred, 1,005 thousand. This is going to be the best thing I can tell you from my own experience, whatever is in your budget to start where you are and make incremental decisions and small decisions that lead up to bigger ones, start with what you have. If it happens to be a thousand dollars, will then invest a thousand dollars in your food business. If it happens to be only a couple of hundred dollars, then at least get the ball rolling with permits and licensing. What you're trying to do is really, honestly, it's a psychological thing. You want to get some momentum going and know that every step that you're taking as small as they may be is that you're getting closer and closer to getting your business either up and running, getting your packaged food product up and running, selling a food item, online, whatever your goal is, whatever resources you have put into it.

Now, obviously you have other financial responsibilities like we all do, but I can tell you from my experience, I dumped my 401k out to open up my Italian bakery. Was that the smartest thing to do, to be honest with you and high in hindsight, probably not, but I learned a lot from that. So I know now for a fact, now 12 years into this, I used what I had at the time and I've made the decision I made. It's not a good or bad decision. It was just a decision. So if you've got a certain amount of money that you can invest in your business, even if it's a small spice business, everything starts small. If you can invest 500 bucks, put 500 bucks into it, create the bag, get the label, get the logo done, find a source, get somebody who can, who can supply you with the ingredients, start making it locally and selling it locally.

You know, whatever it is that you have available tap into those existing resources. Okay? So that is a great question. I should probably put that in the video, but if you've got a hundred dollars or even, you know, five or 600 to start, or 5,000, that's even better than start 5,000, there's no set amount of money to start any business. But when it comes to starting food businesses, you don't necessarily need 10, 20, even 30,000. If you've got a thousand dollars or a couple hundred that you can put into it, start off small, make those incremental little steps. There's no specific set amount for starting any business at all. Trust me when I started the business on e-commerce, it was much different because I had some experiences, obviously from our retail bakery. So I was able to transition to that onto e-commerce. So wherever you are at your specific point in your life, if you've got the resources, use them, you know, if you don't, well then wait, wait, wait, wait a year.

Or a couple of months, or a few months down the road. If you can save up some money, whatever works best for you, that's going to be the amount that really works. Okay. So the next up we have another couple of questions. All right. So the next question, the final one I got from the video really quick, we'll wrap this up, uh, is Milan Molina, um, Galvez. And I apologize if I say that incorrectly, uh, great video. I have a question though. I was under the impression that homemade pumpkin pies need to be refrigerated. Do you not put ice packs in your packaging? Yes. As a matter of fact, that was in regards to a pie video that it, or how to ship pies. I know this time of the year, a lot of people are looking to figure out how to ship their family and friends pies that they make.

Okay. Yes. You can put a couple of ice packs in there. A lot of shelf, stable pies that you'll find actually in grocery stores, uh, do have additional preservatives for that purpose. Um, but if you make a pie and ship it two day priority and you've literally made it on a Monday, shipped it and it arrives on a Wednesday, you can definitely add a couple of ice packs in just for the transit time. Obviously, if you're shipping a pie during summer or spring or hotter season, it, you have to put ice packs. And of course, um, but can you, yes. Where do you put them? I would not put them on top of the pie, put them around the perimeter of the pie. So if you're shipping pies, if it happens to be pumpkin or Apple, whatever it may be, you want to make sure that they have a couple ice packs, put it on the sides of the ice pack and then put your paper on the top.

You're packing paper or bubble wrap or whatever it may be. Don't put it on the top. Reason being is that as the box goes through a transit, it's going to be flipped upside down and all, and those ice packs will smash down on top of the pie. And that would basically create like a milkshake of a pie by the time it gets to its destination, which you probably don't want. So put the ice packs or any type of cooling agent around the pie and then build off from there with your packing paper. Okay. So I appreciate you guys sending these questions. If you have questions, of course, please let me know. And below I try to make as many of these as I possibly can. Um, and I'll get some more videos up very, very soon. And I'll see you guys on the next video. Thanks. Thanks for watching marketing food online. And if you are looking to create your own food truck, start a home-based food business under the cottage food law franchise, a food operation start a packaged food business, private label, your own food product, sell on Amazon. Get your own online store or sell food online. Remember to subscribe and check out these videos for more resources, take care.

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