Starting a food business - any advice?

[Takeanotherlittlepizzamyheart]

Hi all!

I’m thinking of starting a side business offering homemade pizza a couple of times a week, using a commercial kitchen I know in a big city. Still early days but thinking of collating with a local drinks business that doesn’t offer food to encourage customers to stay longer.

Planning a small menu of tasty, high-quality pizzas with a twist (like nduja and hot honey, truffled mushrooms, some kind of savoury cheesy lemony creation) plus some simple sides.

I know the market’s busy, but I want to keep it affordable and focus on good food. I’ll try delivery too but want to test it out first.

Does this sound like a good idea? Would love to hear any tips or thoughts!

Thanks!

It happens in plenty of pubs I've been. Yard Sale Pizza has some deal with a bunch of pubs in south/east London where they put menus on the tables and are effectively the pub's caterers, presumably giving them a cut of the profit for the captive market. I've seen other pubs have similar arrangements with Thai caterers. No reason it wouldn't work with pubs that don't do their own catering.

Please don't forget the vegetarians! It is so crap when meat eaters have 5 or 6 fancy options, and veggies get a choice of margherita or one with some standard vegetables on.

Some great points, thanks

@FurForksSake completely agree - I have a few ideas re the spin I’m going to put on it. It wouldn’t be “just” a pizza (more or like a hybrid savoury thing) and it would be at decent prices too

re cooking several orders at once, I would probably get 2 pizza ovens to start so I could cook 2 at once (90 secs each) and then pop in the next two. I think I could do a table of four but yes more than that initially would be tricky.

The points about a saturated market, completely understood. Is this a fool’s errand? As I say, I’d be doing a slightly different offering - normal pizzas and sort of decadent folded ones… With a mix of standard and creative flavours

I think you need to spend a good amount of time doing market research and investigating food trends.

Same. Keep some traditional ones. Meat feast pepperoni mushrooms lovely.
fish and pea base walnuts and blue cheese cream - not for me.

I think if you have two ovens you will need a second member of staff. Otherwise you won’t get orders out quick enough. I’d consider offering large pizza slices too. Especially in the early days.

Deliveroo/Uber Eats take about 30% of the order I think; one way around this is to add that onto the price you are charging for pick-ups. Quite normal practice and means you still get the full price you would have. The customer also pays a further delivery fee. I’m always amazed at what people will pay to avoid having to pick food up themselves (we run a cafe and use Deliveroo and Uber Eats).

My mate does food pop ups at pubs and breweries in the north.
he does street food and normally works Thursday till Sunday or sell out!
he’s been doing it for 3 years now and loves it.
every so often he does a residential at places and does a set menu.

Former chef and have helped a couple of small cafes start up:

• great margins on pizza, do one thing well.
• fitting a kitchen is super pricey and fraught with stupid problems, try find a pub with an unused kitchen.
• get your level 3 hygiene training, take it seriously and train your people well. Keep your records. Your eho is there to help, not to shut you down. Use their expertise.
• I presume you know this but kitchen work is BONE CRUNCHINGLY EXHAUSTING, dehydrating and sore. But super fun :)
• don't expect it to make you a fortune or be forever. Just enjoy if it's your passion.
• good luck!!

I have a friend who used to run a small B&B and do meals. He has said food increase costs have gone up so much that hes just rentiing it out as a house - stopping the B&B, as the food cost took too much profit. Make sure you do your costings carefully.

The market is already over saturated.

75% of food businesses cease trading within the first year.

You will need to have standard pizzas as well because to few people are going to go for the fancy ones. They will once or twice, but it’s not the kind of food people will come back to time and time again - they’ll do it as a treat once maybe.

The one which is horrendous re takeaways is the lack of food hygiene.

I’m immune suppressed following a transplant, and one of the things we are told is that when ordering takeaway you should only order from one with a 5 star rating. I would say that only around 5-10% of takeaways round here (I’m just outside of London) have a 5 star rating and most of those are the chains, almost none of the independents do.

And while you’re obviously not just looking to cater for the immune suppressed, and most people don’t actually check, the fact that people like me do then means that we warn all our friends and family not to buy from those places because their food hygiene is sub standard if it’s below a five. I’m especially shocked at the 2’s and 3’s I’ve come across, from restaurants I would previously have rated and now wouldn’t order from even if I wasn’t immune suppressed.

So a 5 star FSA rating is IMO crucial to aim for.

Have you factored in the rent for the commercial kitchen? Your share of gas and electricity (much higher than domestic charges), insurance, packaging (or the cost of washing up), waste disposal (yes a commercial kitchen has to pay to have the bins emptied)? (We used to own restaurants- it's expensive!)

Get EHO to view your home kitchen set up if you want to start at home. A friend with a successful cake business had to put in an additional hand washing sink but the cleanliness and style (minimalist no moulding to catch dirt) of her kitchen was approved.

Unless you are serving pizza in a restaurant style setting most people expect delivery not going to collect their order. Worth considering very carefully.

Research the local market thoroughly at every time of the year. People might be happy to collect their pizza in June or July but not November through to May!

best wishes to you but your menu mirrors the ones they serve in the bar on my high street including miso mushrooms. It’s a trendy place. Do offer at least a couple of more ordinary options on your menu in case there’s unadventurous people my parents in the bar!

Just a few questions/issues that spring to mind, OP:

• You'll need public liability insurance. Don't rely on the pub covering you if you give someone food poisoning
• If you're using a vehicle to transport stuff, you'll need to get business insurance cover for your car
• Like a PP said, get your Hygiene Certificate, Level 3 as a minimum
• Like another PP said, you'll need to get your home kitchen certified for commercial use
• You said that pizza "doesn't use fresh ingredients", but it does - a lot. Where are you going to store the toppings for 100 pizzas every week?
• Have you ever worked in a commercial kitchen?
• Have you ever made a pizza in a pizza oven?
• Are you going to start a ltd co or be a sole trader?
• How are you going to get paid - via the pub? If so, the pub will have to charge VAT. So that will increase your prices and cut your profit
• If you are taking payment direct from customers, then you will need a payment/card system.
• If someone wants to tip you, you will need to share it with the other staff on that night. Sharing the tronc is the law now.
• Have you factored in wastage. In order to speed up the cooking process you will need to preprepare the toppings. And they can only be kept for three days. So if nobody wants the miso mushroom one weekend, you'll have to throw it all away. Or live on it for a week.

Oh and don't forget allergies, and your allergen matrix.

You can't provide gluten-free pizzas, as there will be cross contamination.

Ditto vegan pizzas. In London, or anywhere really, you will be asked for both of those. But you won't be able to provide them. Unless you take pre-orders and prepare them at the beginning of service, so no cross-contamination.

Allergen checklist for food businesses | Food Standards Agency

Taken from the FSA site:

Allergen checklist for managers

• Have you made clear to the team, who has overall responsibility for allergen management?
• Is a responsible member of staff available on each shift to manage requests from customers with allergies?
• If you use a sign requesting customers ask about allergens, is this displayed prominently in a place where customers make their food choices? We have an allergy and intolerance sign which you can display.
• Are staff clear on how to avoid allergen cross-contamination?
• Do kitchen staff know how to record allergens when recipes are changed and who to report this to?
• Are there procedures in place when ingredients are delivered, to verify that you have received the items you have ordered?
• If there are any changes to the ingredients in your regular order (for example substitutions), do you have a procedure in place to approve, record and report this?
• Are there clear procedures and dedicated personnel in place for updating written allergen information in the event of changes to recipes or ingredients?
• Are there clear instructions in place for the cleaning of premises, equipment and work tools?

Just thinking this through a bit more:

• Who is going to take the orders from the customers? It can't be you, because you'll be cooking. So you are depending on the bar staff.

• Does the pub have suitable plates/boards to serve the pizzas on? Cutlery?

• People will want salt and pepper, and maybe other stuff like mayo or sriracha

• You'll need to buy carboard boxes for the deliveries.

I really don't think you can do this on your own.

Also, don't forget, you will need to register with your council as a food business.

Food business registration - GOV.UK

The problem with an "unused kitchen" is - is it hygienic? Who is cleaning it? In order to be used, even an unused kitchen has to meet hygienic levels. Who is filling out the kitchen forms? Because without the paperwork, you're not going to get a rating.

Maybe sourdough pizza bases?

Yes! Nobody in OP's region has every though of that!

Also, re pre-cooking and freezing the pizza bases - where are you going to keep them? 100 pizza bases take up a lot of freezer space.

And if you are cooking them from frozen - will there be a freezer where you're cooking? How will you transport them from your freezer to the venue's freezer? That should be done in a temperature controlled environment.

And if you are thawing them first - you're going to get wastage if you don't sell them all.

I have fairly briefly worked in the food industry (BnB and a pop
up style home restaurant). I know full well how hard it is to make money from food, as much as it is personally rewarding. When you read threads like this and all the hoops food businesses have to (quite rightly) go through, it makes for a really interesting counterpoint to other recent threads moaning about how “expensive” it is to eat out, and what poor value for money many places offer. If only those posters knew!

Indeed.

Also, OP, you mention a sort of folded pizza, like a calzone? If you are using precooked ingredients/toppings in them, you are going to need to heat them to 75 degrees. You'll need a kitchen probe to check that.