Food Business

TELLIT01

This will give an indication of the hoops you have to jump through to set up your own food business. https://www.food.gov.uk/business-industry/startingup

Manxman_in_exile

I think the replies on here are good - but I think you should be posting on the Small Biz board

p00hsticks

suki1964 wrote: »

You can't just rock up to a football stadium and start selling, you have to apply for a licence from the council, and they aren't easy to come by. They only allow a certain amount of vendors and the regulars will have had their licences approved and issued well in advance

And from my experience, football clubs tend to have exclusive contracts with large catering companies for the catering concessions on their land inside and outside the stadium - so you'd probably have to find a pitch some way away from the ground and try to capture business on the way to or from the match.

PasturesNew

A football stadium has, say, one game.... you rock up and everybody's already been fed, so they go in ... when they come out it's a crowd, they're discussing the game and heading for a pub/the car.... any queue deeper than six deep and nobody wants to be fed THAT much when they can stop off at their local chippy or similar or go home.

So you might get 20 customers....

You need to at least do some "staking out" at a variety of events and businesses to see what's going well, what people are prepared to queue for, how fast they're serving customers, what's the turnover, how long did they spend prepping/arriving/setting up/getting it down/getting it home and unpacking and doing the paperwork.

Biggest/best/continuous queues I've seen are at burger vans at car boots
They're ALWAYS long/patient and continuous queues.... except my local one because everybody's local so few are buying (probably a small handful and it's all for charity).

I've seen what seems to be "a business on a bike", so no "vehicle" as such - but when you look at it you realise he still needs other premises for prep/storage etc ... he's tugging a small trailer containing a pizza oven and gas bottle. But that's not the only thing he does in that line, so it's more of a gimmick to get noticed so he can build his "proper business" of a brick-based food outlet.

http://thepizzabike.co.uk/the-bike/

There's also a lot of cost with styling/branding and time spent on social media for promotion.

Even in those photos, if you look closely, you can see how it's much bigger than one bike load already, as it needed to be....

He's now: a bike, a private event bike, a shop, delivers by deliveroo.... and growing.

Also: Don't forget the Food !!!!!. Within the food/van industry there's historically been trouble with bigger operators "sending the boys round" to put you out of business. You might think flogging burgers/hotdogs outside an event is great.... but the "bigger boys" might not like you "taking their business from them" and will be in to have a word. So ask around your local area to discover if this is an issue where you are. Google anything from hot dog vans being trashed to ice cream men having fights.... pick your market/area/product carefully so you don't tread on toes.

Robin9

Fireflyaway wrote: »

I'm thinking of events such as air shows, horse shows etc. I'm guessing you probably have to pay a lot to pitch up at those locations though. !

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These pitches are very expensive - thats why your hotdogs or whatever have to cost a fortune. Dont forget it rains in this country and you could come home with nothing.

[Deleted User]

Some issues that have also not been mentioned include:

- Where will you park the van? You may not be able to park outside your home so what will you do to keep fridges powered-up?
- Competition is fierce. A friend ran a van for years and had the permissions needed to park at home (see above). This did not stop a competitor keep complaining to the council about his van.
- Where will you store stock un-prepped and prepped and what will you do with any food waste?
- As Pastures New says, be prepared to be hassled and maybe even threatened.

Ames

I've always thought a sweet cart in the middle of studentville on a Friday and Saturday night would do well. Especially if they deliver too.

Serendipitious

I'd start by getting some experience, so it would be worth asking at various catering vans if they have any vacancies for temporary/casual workers, then you can get an idea of what it's really like and see if this is what you really want to do. It'll help build your customer skills too.

Provided you can smile and look helpful and happy to take the customer's order, assemble the orders correctly and provide the right change, that's about it on someone else's van, apart from the prepping, cleaning up and keeping everything hygienic. In a busy high turnover situation there isn't much chance for a chat with customers, although over time you will get to know who your regulars are.