How Much Does It Cost To Start A Specialty Food Business? (In 2024)

"The difficulty in the food business is that costs are high, margins are low, so a cheap product is the name of the game."

Stacey is the founder of Liberated Specialty Foods, a food manufacturing business specializing in additive-free baked goods and sauces, designed to help those suffering from autoimmune diseases while catering to Keto, Paleo, Atkins, and other trending diets.

"We were determined to see it through and started asking questions, while dedicating $2,000 each from our personal savings to making our first product."

Belinda Kelly and Venise Cunningham are the founders of Simple Goodness Sisters, a lifestyle beverage brand that creates farm-to-bar mixers and accessories using ingredients grown on their sustainable cocktail farm.

"At this point, I had invested a few $1000 of saving and credit cards on graphic design, website creation, incorporation of the business, and lastly, partnering with a local film student to make my Kickstarter video."

Andrew Buehler is the founder of Urban Smokehouse, a digitally native BBQ brand that started in 2022 and has been profitable since day one.

"We financed the business ourselves. Starting with about 25k€ in savings in March, we got some government aid in April (about 8k€ ) and used that to cover our cost of living, the legal costs, and pay our designer and the filmmaker... Costs were 2000€ for our filmmaker, 2000€ for the coaching by Katharina to get our business plan in shape and 900€ legal costs, as well as a few 100€ for printing beautiful flyers to put into our parcels and the cost for creating our visual identity."

Raphael and Johanna Spannocchi are the founders of janori, a local organic food business that started in 2020 and currently offers 80+ products from 14 vendors.

"In the first year and a half, we spent around $30,000 to get the business up and running. This money was spent on things like city and town permit fees, the dough sheeter, kitchen supplies, and packaging materials."

Casey White is the co-founder of Jaju Pierogi, a pierogi manufacturing business started in 2016 that makes between $80,000-$100,000 per month.

"Initially, we bootstrapped. When the design was complete we took out a loan to print the book."

Sadaf is the co-founder of Karachi Kitchen Foods, a business specializing in small-batch traditional Pakistani chutneys and spice blends, featuring handcrafted products made from locally sourced ingredients.

"The MVP took just 2 weeks to build and cost only $400. I registered the domain and it cost $12.99. It really didn't cost much."

Tique Chandler is the founder of Chandler Honey, an infused honey brand that has grown to be featured in 150+ stores in Canada in under 2 years.

"My start up costs were in the neighborhood of $20,000 which my friends gave me because they wanted me to be making the whoopie pies they loved. They wanted to buy them for their friends and that was reason enough for them to help me get Cape Whoopies started."

Marcia Wiggins is the founder of Cape Whoopies, a gourmet whoopie pie business that has scaled significantly since its inception.

"For example in our business: a commercial kitchen is a huge expense, even when you’re refitting an existing kitchen. And I was completely broke but determined to start this business. So we didn’t build one out at first. For a couple of years, I operated out of my apartment; after that, we rented kitchen space by the shift from an existing catering company that was often in the space when we were there."

Uri Attia is the founder of Portable Chef, a custom meal delivery service that caters to clients with specific dietary requirements and preferences.

"Before spending too much time on the project I wanted to test the market first, so I created a website for a food tour in Paris in a couple of hours, not the greatest website but good enough for a test, and I started advertising it on Google to see if we could sell some tickets. Within a few hours, we sold our first ticket, validating the project, we could invest more money and time into it."

Nico Jacquart is the founder of Secret Food Tours, a global food tour business with tours in more than 50 cities worldwide.