Are you planning for success? 3 tips for your food business plan.
All food businesses need a clear business plan that supports viable growth at a pace you can manage - as a solo owner or with a 30 person team.
Your clear business plan, also means you will be ready for opportunities to grow your business.
You can plan for success by using our 3 tips to preparing a useful two page food business plan.
1) Develop strategic goals for your business
Have 3-4 main strategic goals of what you want to achieve, then have 1 clear objective to achieve that goal and about 2-3 strategies at the most on what you will do to achieve each objective. This will become a carefully considered 2 page business plan you can keep referring to as you implement your strategies to check on how you are progressing in achieving your goals.
Are you confused already? A goal can be ‘broaden my customer base’; or ‘find larger production premises within the next year’. When developing your goal, match it directly to your business needs and make sure it is realistic and does not rely on things/people beyond your control. (Still confused? Stop reading! Instead, get in touch so we can assist you to develop a business plan that takes into account your personal goals, your food product & your target customer)
2) Set realistic objectives to achieve your goals
Once you have your goals, develop realistic objectives to match. So for the goal ‘broaden my customer base’, the objective could be a focus on promoting products to one new customer type that are easy to scale up to supply as demand increases.
3) Identify your practical strategies to implement your business plan
When you have a clear goal and objective, you can develop practical strategies which explain what you/your staff will be doing to achieve the goal.
So for ‘broaden my customer base’, that means there will have to be marketing and promotion clearly targeted at the customer base you want to reach – delivered through a medium that they currently use.
You will need a way to check if they are responding, that goes beyond an overall sales increase that could be achieved by unrelated factors. And of course, you need a strategy to convert them into becoming repeat customers. Sounds like a lot to achieve, but remember to think about how you like to be approached / treated as a customer and reflect on that in your own business practices.
For more motivation to get planning, consider Snackwize who launched in 2016 with a very clear point of difference and business model. In early 2019 they received funding from a tech company to expand their business model. These results don’t happen by chance, Snackwize clearly had a plan for how they launched their business and how they are growing it.
