Friday, March 1, 2013

How To Start Your Own Mail Order Food Company

By Keren Kipfer


Many of us have heard friends or family say that we should bottle or sell a special recipe. Whether it is a fantastic salad dressing or gourmet cookies or your own special cocktail mix, it can be fun to set up your own company and sell your products via mail order. Here are some things to consider before you open shop.

Being organized is essential when starting a new business, and it is easiest to stay organized when you start out small. For example, if you plan to sell bottled hot sauce, stick with just one or two varieties rather than a dozen or more. In addition to starting small, you need to start out with a detailed business plan that includes estimates of all of your expenses, as well as where your business will be located and the number of employees needed.

In addition to the logistics of running a food business, you also need to be highly concerned with packaging and advertising. If you are not a skilled graphic artist, it would be a good idea to hire someone to create an amazing label for your product. You also will need to create a good website with a shopping cart so that customers can easily order and pay for your product. This is expensive but a highly important part of any mail order business.

Once you have your plan in place and a mock-up of your packaging, you will need to get a business license and also possibly a loan to cover your start-up costs. You can talk to venture capitalist or investors and also approach different banks to obtain financial backing for your loan. Just make sure that you have an organized and detailed presentation for your potential investors.

All of your food items, as well as the packing boxes will need to have product ids imprinted on them. These product ids will include valuable information such as the serial or batch number for each product, as well as the packing date and perhaps an expiration date. The easiest way to imprint this data is to purchase either a continuous inkjet or perhaps a drop-on-demand printer that has been created specifically to quickly place product ids on individual items, no matter what type of product or packaging. There are many manufacturers of these printers, including Altima, Maxima and Domino.

These printers can be costly, so rather than purchase a brand new coder from directly from the manufacturer, consider finding a full-service product id company that sells new coders, refurbished coders, parts and all of the ink and supplies for the coder. These companies sell ink as well as make-up for the coders at far lower costs than you will find from the printer company. In addition, a product id company can answer questions and many also offer repair services, as well.




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