15 Best Profit-Making Food Business Ideas To Start In [2024]
Investing in a food business can be a great idea. The food industry is one of the largest markets in the world, and it continues to grow. The United States alone spent approximately $2.1 trillion on food in 2021 which makes it quite clear that the food industry has a lot of potentials.
If you're looking for an easy way to start a business and make money, starting a business in the food industry or a food-related business can be a great idea. There are multiple options in the food business like opening a restaurant or a grocery store or offering cooking classes or starting your own food blog or opening a food truck might be some of the top choices for you.
We put together a list of the best food business ideas you can start today.
In this list of ideas, you can find:
- Home-based food business ideas
- Low-investment online food business ideas
- Unique food business opportunities
Here is a list of the top Profit-making Food Business you can start:
1. Start a coffee shop
Starting a coffee shop is an exciting and rewarding venture. It's a business that can be started with relatively little capital, and there are many ways to make it profitable. Coffee shops feature a low-cost stock but are profitable businesses.
If you plan to open a coffee shop, you may purchase a franchise, buy an existing business, or start from scratch. Whichever the decision, ensure a strategic location and renovate the space to create an inviting atmosphere. Develop a fantastic offering and begin marketing the business even before you open.
How much you can make: $3,000 — $15,000/month
How much does it cost to start: $5,000 (?)
How long does it take to build: 180 days (?)
New Zealand-based Fernweh is a subscription service that offers subscribers a new coffee roaster featured in the country each month, delivering coffee, tasting notes, and a story about the producer in a unique package for around $40 a month.
2. Start a food truck
Food trucks are a highly profitable business that offers customers a variety of meal options out of a mobile truck. This basically operates inside a large vehicle equipped with kitchen and food products. Starting a food truck is a dream for many people, but it's more challenging than it looks. To make it work, you need the ideal location and menu.
To start a food truck business in a particular city, it is mandatory to check what kind of food trucks are already operating, identify a gap, and bring in some new experiences. Then, with the right plan and the right approach, you can be on your way to starting your own food truck empire.
How much you can make: $30,000 — $1,500,000/month
How long does it take to build: 60 days (?)
Time commitment per week: Min. 5 hours/week
Food Fleet grew over 160% in just one year and managed over 20 million in sales for its clients, securing multiple contracts with the likes of Sodexo, Levy Restaurants and more, due to its understanding of catering client needs and its advanced turnkey and design services.
3. Open an ice cream parlour
Ice cream is something that people of all ages equally enjoy globally, making it a profitable business to venture into.
This frozen dessert industry has registered massive growth in recent years, a trend that shows the industry’s potential.
If you are looking to start your ice cream business, follow these steps:
- Decide whether to make your ice cream or to source from established ice cream brands
- Write an effective business plan for the ice cream shop detailing the goals, strategies, and plans
- Fund your business idea
- Choose a spacious shop in an area with plenty of foot traffic
- Offer different ice cream flavors
Opening an ice cream parlor is not easy work. However, if you do it right, it is rewarding and can be a lot of fun.
How much you can make: $16,000 — $400,000/month
How long does it take to build: 730 days (?)
The Good Scoop, a California-based artisanal ice cream shop, started with a small Italian countertop ice cream maker and now has a production facility, wholesaling to various venues, offering frequent scooper programs, and using Instagram as their primary advertising platform.
4. Start a fast food restaurant
If you're an entrepreneur who loves to cook and you have the capital or the personal funds, you could start a fast-food restaurant. The term fast food refers to food prepared quickly and served at your table in a short span of time. If you are looking for a small business opportunity and want to start a business within a limited budget, then starting a fast food restaurant is the right decision. Fast food restaurants are affordable, cost-effective, and easy to start.
There are many steps that you need to take in order to start a fast-food restaurant.
First, you will have to decide on the type of food that you want to sell. For example, if you decide that your business will be selling hamburgers, then you will have to find a location where it is legal for you to open your restaurant.
Next, you need to find out if there are any laws governing the type of food that you want to sell at your restaurant. You may also want to check with your local health department about any regulations that apply specifically to fast-food restaurants and choose the right name for your business.
5. Start a food delivery business
In today’s busy lifestyles and schedules, cooking is no longer a priority to many. People like to order-in food from their nearest restaurants or food joints and enjoy a meal in the comfort of their homes.
The food delivery business is like a courier service through which restaurants deliver food to their customers.
You can offer retail food delivery services to restaurants within your locality if you have a truck. Customers order through a restaurant or grocer’s website, and the owners contact you to deliver.
How much you can make: $14,000 — $1,800,000/month
How much does it cost to start: $3,500 (?)
How long does it take to build: 90 days (?)
Food Fleet grew over 160% in just one year and managed over 20 million in sales for its clients, securing multiple contracts with the likes of Sodexo, Levy Restaurants and more, due to its understanding of catering client needs and its advanced turnkey and design services.
6. Open a multi-cuisine restaurant
Multi-cuisine restaurants have become hugely popular in the culinary world over the past decade. Cuisines from countries like Japan, India, China, Italy, Thailand, Mexico, and Vietnam have gained immense popularity with foodies. Opening a multi-cuisine restaurant is a wonderful opportunity for any individual who wants to start their own business in the food industry.
You’ll need some initial capital to buy or rent a space, renovate it as per your restaurant’s theme, get all the equipment, hire staff, and do marketing.
The next step is to make sure that your website reflects the diversity of your offerings. If you're offering traditional Indian food alongside tacos and burgers, it's important that your website reflects that diversity.
Use Facebook ads to target people who live within a mile radius of the restaurant. This will help you get the word out about your new restaurant to those who are most likely to visit it regularly.
7. Start a cooking class
Online cooking classes can be a great side hustle for seasoned chefs or cooking enthusiasts looking for a way to earn some extra cash. You can create content and teach your audience how to prepare meals.
Consider creating members-only content to earn more from your cooking class side hustle. Alternatively, you can sell recipes for a small fee as well. To grow your reach, consider offering some free content on your social media pages as a way to build curiosity among potential audiences. You can charge your audiences a subscription fee so they can have exclusive access to your content.
To start cooking classes , choose a niche and follow your passion. Create a website and maintain an active social media presence. Apart from online cooking classes or live sessions you can also offer exclusive offline weekend classes to give your audience a hands-on personal experience.
How much you can make: $100,000/month
Time commitment per week: Min. 5 hours/week
Hipcooks is a 7-location cooking school business that has grown organically to reach $100k/month in revenue, and attracts and retains customers through their communal approach, vibrant online presence, and updated Google and Yelp business pages.
8. Start a bakery
Everyone loves baked goods, be it sweet items like cakes, muffins, and cookies or savory baked food like pizzas, buns, bread, and puff pastry. Baking takes a lot of effort and patience, which is why many people buy baked items from stores or restaurants instead of baking them at home.
Starting a bakery can be a rewarding business opportunity if you have a passion for baking. If you plan to start a bakery, consider that happy customers often become repeat customers. Therefore, always focus on quality and work on customer satisfaction.
To start a bakery , pick an ideal format. Some options include:
- Counter-style bakery
- A hybrid bakery with a cafe,
- Food truck with a bakery
- Home bakery.
Write a suitable business plan and choose the correct location.
How much you can make: $2,500 — $25,000/month
How much does it cost to start: $1,250 (?)
How long does it take to build: 75 days (?)
French chef and founder of online bakery Pastreez, Anthony Rosemond, shares keys to success including validating ideas with the market, focusing on SEO and organic growth, building customer relationships through email and SMS, never offering discounts but offering freebies, and diversifying the business with new products and content on social media.
9. Become a food blogger
Becoming a food blogger is a rewarding, fun, and exciting career choice. If you want to become a food blogger, you should start by making sure that you have the right equipment. You will need a reliable computer and a good camera, as well as software to edit your photos. It is also important to have a website so that people can find your blog.
You may want to start by writing about things that interest you. For example, if you love a certain cuisine, then write about how much it means to you and what kind of recipes are your favorite.
Next, think about how often you would like to post on your blog (once a week or once every two weeks) and start planning out what kinds of posts you are going to make each time. The more content you have available for people who visit your page, the better!
Finally, get involved with social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter so people can follow along with what is going on in your life as well as see new posts from time to time!
Food blogging can be started as a side gig apart from your daily job. You can visit restaurants, cafes, or pubs on the weekend to try out different delicacies, click pictures, and write about them on your blog.
How much you can make: $1,000 — $20,000/month
How much does it cost to start: $4,250 (?)
How long does it take to build: 75 days (?)
DIY Lifestyle blog owner, Theresa, turned her passion for crafting and writing into a side income source, attracting hundreds of thousands of global visitors, with her blog generating $400-$500 a month and her online Etsy store bringing in an additional $200-$300 a month, showcasing her unique, all-natural, one-of-a-kind polymer clay earrings, home decor, and huts inspired by Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, reading and home decorating.
10. Start a catering service
Catering has a ton of money-making potential. If you're interested in starting your own business, you may want to consider opening a catering company. There are a lot of reasons why you might want to go with this. You can choose who you work with and where your services will be offered. You don't have to worry about finding customers, as they will come to you.
You'll require some initial capital to purchase some equipment—namely, pots and pans for cooking, as well as plates, cups, and utensils for serving food. You may also want to invest in a small refrigerator or cooler for storing perishables.
For your catering business, you’ll also need to hire staff who will perform multiple operations for you such as cooking, serving, cleaning, etc.
In the beginning, you’ll need some contacts like your friends or family at whose family or corporate events you can serve. If you manage to offer quality services your clients will refer you to their acquaintances and your business can grow on word-of-mouth advertising. Also, you can consider investing in social media marketing to reach your local audience at a low cost & in a short time.
How much you can make: $250,000/month
Learn how Spork Bytes, a catering delivery service, addressed the problem of monotonous office lunches by partnering with local restaurants, resulting in annual revenues of $2 million in 2018 and an anticipated growth rate of 50% in 2019.
11. Start a cloud kitchen business
What is a cloud kitchen business? A cloud kitchen business is a type of mobile catering business. It's a growing trend where chefs prepare food in their own kitchens, then deliver it to events and venues via bike or car.
Starting a cloud kitchen is a great way to get your foot in the door of a business and make some extra cash. Cloud kitchens are popular because they allow you to participate in a wide range of meals, from small lunches to large dinners, without having to invest in expensive equipment or supplies.
Follow these steps to get started:
Identify the type of food you want to serve—you might want to focus on one type of cuisine or try something new each day.
Research local restaurants that offer similar meals so that you can get an idea of what people like and what works well in your area.
Find a reliable space where you can prepare food safely and efficiently—this will be where most of your equipment will go!
Talk with potential customers about what they're looking for in terms of price and quality; this will help guide how much profit margin should be included in each meal's cost (and how much money you'll need).
12. Become a personal chef
If you’re looking for a career that allows you to work within your own schedule, look no further. Becoming a personal chef means setting your own hours, planning your own schedule, and taking on as much or as little work as you want.
Not everyone has the time to prepare meals for themselves. If you love cooking, you can start a personal chef business in your area and earn a good income from the side gig. The side hustle can fit into your schedule easily, and you can offer delivery and pick-up or curbside options to ensure more people are buying your services.
Personal chefs can work at various locations, including their client’s homes or restaurant kitchens. They may have regular clients who call on them to prepare meals for them weekly, or they may get called in to prepare meals for special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays.
How much you can make: $5,000/month
How much does it cost to start: $50 (?)
How long does it take to build: 360 days (?)
Time commitment per week: Min. 15 hours/week
Chef David Buchanan generates over $6,000 per month through his website Chefs-Resources.com, which provides professional chefs with free and paid access to detailed culinary information and kitchen management resources such as Excel sheets, resulting in gross revenue of $46,000 to date and a subscriber growth rate of over 1300% from 2015 to September 2021.
13. Start a hot sauce business
Hot sauce is one of the most popular condiments in the world, and it's easy to see why: it's versatile, delicious, and can add some serious flavor to almost anything you put it on—and not just for people who like spicy foods! Hot sauce can be used to create complex flavors that are perfect for anyone looking for a little extra pep in their step.
So, if you love hot sauce and you also love money, it turns out, you can start and run a hot sauce business! You can make it yourself or you can buy it in stores and resell it to earn some good profit.
If you are planning to make the hot sauce yourself you’ll need some initial capital to purchase ingredients and equipment for making the hot sauce, as well as packaging materials such as bottles and labels.
The average hot sauce lover will try and consume about 2-3 unique hot sauces in a week, which means there's a lot of money to be made in this industry!
How much you can make: $2,250 — $200,000/month
How long does it take to build: 190 days (?)
Trini Pepper Sauce co-founder and co-owner, Mustafa Mannan, shares how he successfully imported and manufactured his family's unique pepper sauce recipe and launched it through a Kickstarter campaign, now selling an average of $3,000/month in revenue.
14. Start a grocery store
A grocery store sells a wide variety of food products, fresh or packaged, and other household & personal care items. The grocery store industry is the largest retail channel that makes $682 billion in the United States.
To start a basic grocery store, you can expect to spend a minimum of $50,000. Ideally, the bigger expense would be the rent, equipment, labor cost, cash registers/POS systems, and software. Some of these are recurring monthly fees. However, the location, size of the store, competitors, and local customers will significantly impact the business. A new grocer should sell more items for a lower price to make a more significant profit.
A new grocer can also save costs by buying the items from local distributors. The distributor is the middleman between the manufacturer and the grocery store selling it. Once the store cost and location are decided, the next step is to obtain a seller license. In most states, a grocer's license is required to run a grocery store.
Thus an average grocery store has a profit margin of 3% to 5%. The profit rates depend on the store's location, size, and popularity. On average, a small to medium grocery store can make a profit of up to $300,000 annually if all the profit factors are considered.
Another way to make your business more profitable is to diversify your store and add amenities like a coffee shop or stocking up the front of the store with magazines, batteries, etc., as these items can cross a margin of up to 70%. As a rule of thumb, offering lower prices on higher purchases will ultimately win more customers and increase profitability.
15. Start an organic food store
Organic food stores stock fresh or processed food produced through organic farming methods. Healthy food restaurants and health-conscious individuals are some target customers regarding healthy organic food.
If you plan to start an organic food store, focus on providing the customers freshest, organically grown produce. Starting an organic food store is a great way to make money while helping the environment. Organic food stores are becoming increasingly popular, especially with people who want to eat healthily but don't have time to cook. If you're looking for a business idea that will allow you to make money and help people simultaneously, starting an organic food store could be the perfect fit for you!
Organic food stores are so popular because they offer fresh produce that has not been treated with chemicals or pesticides, which means they're much safer than the produce found at your local grocery store.
How much you can make: $4,000 — $62,000/month
How long does it take to build: 1 days (?)
Denver-based founder Andrea Slinde built her own organic food start-up, Golden Root, which sells trendy Turmeric Latte Mix online and now in 50 coffee shops nationwide, with an average monthly revenue of $4K, a long term objective of expanding into traditional grocery sales, and uses Shopify, Recharge, Mailchimp, Shipstation, and QuickBooks to manage e-commerce and finances.
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
