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Plant Powered Kitchen, Arizona

Soniayekkalar

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Have you considered a home delivery and/or frozen food meal service to supplement the restaurant?

Running any startup is tough. Running a restaurant startup is 100x harder. When we were kicking around different business options, I specifically ruled out restaurants after working at many over several years. There's just so many moving parts to manage that are out of your control. Suppliers, staffing, kitchen equipment, customer service.

Preparing frozen meals with an online order website delivered to local homes is entirely different. There's no dinner rush. You can dedicate 1-3 days each week solely to preparing food and 1-2 days for deliveries. You can use seasonal foods that are much cheaper from week to week. You can offer a meal subscription service for monthly recurring revenue.

Frozen meals can be inventoried to balance out demand. There's almost no waste. Online ordering makes the payment system trivial. Depending on local laws, you can work out of a home kitchen or rent a commercial shared kitchen only when needed for meal prep. The freezers can be warehoused anywhere. You can promote meals on the website and with email to estimate demand before cooking a single one. Or maybe cook a single one for good photos.

The frozen meal business model is so much easier than opening a physical restaurant or even a ghost kitchen. I realize you lose the camaraderie and joie vivre of serving customers in a working restaurant, but it's a great way to become profitable quickly without losing your mind. A restaurant can easily be opened down the ro
Have you considered a frozen food meal delivery service instead of the restaurant?

Running any startup is tough. Running a restaurant startup is 100x harder. When we were kicking around different business options, I specifically ruled out restaurants after working at many over several years. There's just so many moving parts to manage that are out of your control. Suppliers, staffing, kitchen equipment, customer service.

Preparing frozen meals with an online order website delivered to local homes is entirely different. There's no dinner rush. You can dedicate 1-3 days each week solely to preparing food and 1-2 days for deliveries. You can use seasonal foods that are much cheaper from week to week. You can offer a meal subscription service for monthly recurring revenue.

Frozen meals can be inventoried to balance out demand. There's almost no waste. Online ordering makes the payment system trivial. Depending on local laws, you can work out of a home kitchen or rent a commercial shared kitchen only when needed for meal prep. The freezers can be warehoused anywhere. You can promote meals on the website and with email to estimate demand before cooking a single one. Or maybe cook a single one for good photos.

The frozen meal business model is so much easier than opening a physical restaurant or even a ghost kitchen. I realize you lose the camaraderie and joie vivre of serving customers in a working restaurant, but it's a great way to become profitable quickly without losing your mind. A restaurant can easily be opened down the road. Aside from the obvious marketing angles of vegan/vegetarian/healthy/eco-friendly/Millenial, don't forget the less obvious one of meals specifically designed for people with particular food allergies.

This isn't a hypothetical idea, BTW. I researched this with several local companies who took exactly this route as we've been moving around the country over the past fifteen months. Farmers markets, restaurant space, popup kitchens, Uber Eats, Whole Foods distribution have built-in problems that are simply not worth solving. The only difference for me was considering organic dog food frozen meals, but everything else is exactly the same.
Totally agree! I looked at selling frozen pizza nationwide because there is absolutely no good frozen out. However, I had a hard time to find packaging/nutrition labeling contractors to meet the health standards. I never thought I can sell it myself instead of working with Whole Foods. Thanks for your suggestion. I will take a look at local rules.
 
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Two Dog

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Totally agree! I looked at selling frozen pizza nationwide because there is absolutely no good frozen out. However, I had a hard time to find packaging/nutrition labeling contractors to meet the health standards. I never thought I can sell it myself instead of working with Whole Foods. Thanks for your suggestion. I will take a look at local rules.
Happy to help! Just post or DM with any questions or ideas.

My wife was vegan for about ten years before we got married. She even launched a vegan dog biscuit company before we had kids. Now she and our two daughters are all veg. It's just me and the dogs eating everything else nowadays.

Home food prep is often governed by "Cottage Food Law". You'll find something similar to this for every state:

I doubt frozen foods would be exempted, but you'll find most of the government staff people actually want to help people trying to start a food production business. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out the licensing and inspection requirements. As an aside, this is an easy idea to test online by taking pre-orders through the website before spending a penny on anything else. You could easily launch with 50 - 100 customers before preparing a single meal. That's a *huge* plus for getting started.
 

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