Making MoneyDO you earn money selling on ebay, working as a consultant, selling products such as Avon or Tupperware, or maybe you work with companies such as Melaleuca or Quickstar. You can share advice and tips here as well as ask questions. This is NOT a classified board, don't just post an ad and leave. You may carry your business link in your signature file.
I had a great idea the other night as I was making supper. Why not do this as a business. Find one or two families and make supper for them 3 to 5 nights a week. Either supply the entire meal or just entree.
Has anyone heard of this...........any ideas, suggestions, advice. This is way early in the planning stages in my mind. I just know I love to cook and haven't had any major complaints. Usually everything I take to church potluck gets gone and people want the recipe. Anyway...............just wanted to know what everyone thought.
Thanks for your help.
My Mom thought of that same idea a couple of years ago!! Taht is so funny! I think it is a great idea... Wish we lived closer and I would do it with you... I think in my area it would be HUGE!! People around me are always eating out! I mean we are talking 2 hour wait on a Tuesday night!!
So would they pick up or would you deliver? I would love to do this as well....I love to cook and I have a home based business selling kitchen tools BUT I DO still ahve a full time job. I would to quit my full time job (especially with the little one on the way!)
Let us know how it works out and maybe I wil start one while I am out on maternity leave!
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Until we "meat" again, break an "egg"
I know people that make baked goods to sell and I would recommend you think long and hard and look into all the state requirements before jumping into something like this. First, your kitchen must be state licensed to cook and sell things you make at home. They look for cleanliness, anything that could drop into food, chipping paint, loose ceiling, etc. Pets in the home is a big no, no even if they are not in the kitchen area. You must also contact an insurance agent to carry special coverage just in case someone would get sick and sue. You certainly don't want to lose your home because someone gets sick. Even if you could prove it wasn't from the food, the legal expenses alone would do you in. Sounds like a good idea, just cover all your bases.
Good luck,
Miss
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Melissa Shambaugh
Miss Toni Gifts
Scrapbooking and Scouting
www.misstonigifts.net
I knew someone who did this a few years back. She would have her menu ready (a meal for each night) and the patrons would choose what nights they wanted the meal. I think they would let her know by Sunday afternoon what they wanted for the week. I think they picked it up at her house. Good luck with this! I'd say it can be done!
We have had a place here in Wausau and a couple, maybe more now, independent people who have offered this service for a few years. They have a menu of meals to choose from, you call, place the order and it is delivered or you can pick up.. Another one prepares the meal in your home and it is ready for you when you arrive home.
I personally haven't used it. But it must be successful enterprise since they are still in business and are expanding. You would have to follow all the rules and regulations of commercial service and check with the health department. Usually you have to have a seperate kitchen area if you have pets....etc. They can give you guidlines if you are interested in starting something like this and will do an inspection of your kitchen. You would be smart also talking to a SBA attorney regarding liability. Usually a LLC will help protect you and your home from lawsuit.
Good luck if you undertake this endeavor!
Sounds like a good idea to me! I've tossed around the same idea a few times myself. A woman in our town, which is about 45 min. from a large city, has grown her business to the point she recently leased moved into a small storefront area. She has her weekly 'standards' for each day M-F & I believe you can also call in special orders. They are mostly casseroles (ex: M - King Ranch Casserole, T - Lasagna, W- Pork Chop/Rice Casserole, etc.) and they vary slightly from week to week. I think that she asks that people call in by 1:00 to pick up beginning approx. 4:30 or so. Not really any carved-in-stone "rules" & she tries to accomodate. She also bakes cakes/pies/cookies & has recently expanded, adding a small area for sandwiches/salads/soups during lunch.
She has the perfect location - across from a small college campus and on a busy highway with many traveling into/home from the city daily.
BTW....this lady also has a couple of teenage daughters who work there & I think she also hires another couple of teen girls now & again to help out. From what I've seen, they're all a bunch of real go-getters & she appears to have no problem getting/keeping really good help.
From what I once read in a local newspaper article featuring her, she got started for the same reasons you've mentioned - everyone kept requesting her dishes at local functions & she really enjoys cooking for large crowds. I believe she first started from her home, then went to a church kitchen for awhile, then finally had to have a full-blown commercial site. IMO, her baking isn't really all that much but she keeps selling, so SOMEbody enjoys it!
There are quite a few Culinary School graduates that are private chefs, that is, come to your home to cook, and there are those chefs that prepare foods to bring to your home, already cooked......... but again, the board of Health, and other agencies have to certify your kitchen, and it gets inspected just like any restaurant. Food temps are very important to prevent food poisoning... It's a great idea on the surface, but you better have some professional training courses. You need to be insured as well. It's not the same as 'bring a plate to a neighbor'.
Take a look at how a professional service does this:
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"A hundred years from now, it will not matter the sort of house I lived in, what my bank account was, or the car I drove....but the world may be different because I was important in the life of the animals and the creatures on this earth."
My friend and I almost started something similar to this a few years ago, but we both had pets at the time. We wouldn't ahve been able to get a health dept license.... We have talked about going at it again, since our respective animals have moved on.....
Near us, we have "Park and Ride" lots.. where commuters park their cars in the morning and ride the busses into Manhatan or Westchester. Then at night they ride the busses back to the lots and pick up their cars.
We wanted to purchace a "coffee truck"..to sell coffee and pastries in the AM... and that's when we'd also take dinner orders... Then we'd prep the dinners and package them during the day, and have them ready in the evening for the commuters to pick up along with their cars...
It seemed like the perfect plan... Not too much overhead, mostly the van. They can be very expensive. But other than that I have always thought it would be the perfect business plan for me.
This is similiar to something I am wanting to do. I would like to go to someones house and prepare their meals there. Maybe a 5 or 10 meal minimum for a set price. By cooking at their house, I could get around the State Health Code. I would just need a food handlers permit, which costs 15.00 and takes 2 hours to get. My kitchen as it is now would not pass certification, even tho it is neat and clean.
I would prepare meals to be frozen and reheated later. For a few of my friends, I already do the home preparation. Every two weeks I do a super batch of Lasagna and garlic bread, Chicken Enchiladas and mexican seasoned beans, beef burritos and mexican rice, Pot Roast with all the trimmings, and Spaghetti sauce. I have 4 friends who always get all, The day before cooking day, they bring me their containers. The next day everyone gets a hot pot roast dish and cooled ready to freeze or refrigerate dishes of the other items. They give me 20.00 per meal which more than covers the cost to me, plus I get a free meal of each too.
This probably really isn't legal, but it started out with only 1 friend and she was very ill and I didn't charge her. When she was better she offered to pay me to cook, so I took her up on it. She mentioned it to another mutual friend and it just took off from there. I love to cook and everyone says it is good.
Hi all!
Just wanted to chime in on this conversation. I've come across several personal chefs online while doing research for OAMC (Once a Month Cooking) who have a similar set-up. The chef comes to the house and uses the family's utensils, herbs and spices, food, etc. to create a meal for that night and 5 or 6 others that are frozen for later in the week. You still need the food handler's permit to do this, but it cuts down on the health inspection of your own home kitchen.
If anyone ever watched the Food Network on TV, you may have seen Paula Deen and her home cooking show. She's a real southern gal who started selling sandwiches and such to business people at their offices and has created her own empire out of it! She's practically a legend in Savannah, GA and her restaurant "The Lady and Sons" was featured as the Food Editor of USA Today's Best Meal of 1999. She has two or three cookbooks and now her show on Food TV. And, all this started b/c she went from office building to office building taking orders for lunch that she'd deliver later on. She was known as the Bag Lady then b/c of the bagged lunches.
So, dream big, everyone!
~Danielle
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