Starting a home-based food business can be an excellent way to integrate your work life and your home life. It allows you to tie your work to your daily routines and scale your enterprise to a size that's compatible with your personal values and objectives. But running a home-based food business can be tricky. It can be difficult to separate your work life and your home life when they both take place in the same space. Before making plans and investing money in your endeavor,
make sure the health department in your area allows you to prepare and sell food from your home.
Speak to an accountant about specific tax considerations relevant to owning and operating a home-based food business. Structure your company in a way that enables you to reap the greatest possible tax benefit from the business use of your home.
Design a product line adapted to your skills and interests. If you will not be building a separate kitchen in your home, tailor your offerings to comply with approved uses for an existing home kitchen. If you will be building a separate commercial kitchen in your home, think carefully about the equipment and space you will need to produce your particular product line, and build a kitchen big enough to produce a volume sufficient to meet your financial needs.
Begin marketing your products. If you will be running a wholesale business, create prototypes and bring them to stores and distributors for buyers to sample. Many buyers want to see copies of your health-department and business licenses, especially if they know you are running a home-based food business. Have copies of these documents handy. If you will be selling directly to customers through a mail-order catalog or the Internet, prepare attractive, informative marketing materials.
Contact your local health department and inquire about the regulations for having a commercial kitchen in your home. Most states have restrictions. These may require you to build a separate kitchen for your commercial operation, or they may allow you to operate out of your existing kitchen only if you prepare a limited selection of foods, such as jams, pickles, or baked goods that don't have fillings made from fresh ingredients. Contact zoning agencies as well to make sure your plans are compliant with local guidelines. Fill out applications for all city, state and federal agencies that oversee business activities in your area.
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