Home cooked takeaway business - good idea??

[Chocolateyclaire76]

I love cooking and have been told my food tastes pretty good so I’ve been thinking about scaling it up. I live in a village and like the idea of launching a small scale takeaway business - it would be 1 dish on a Friday and 1 on a Saturday with a cap on 15 orders. First come, first served.

Good idea or waste of time?!!

Nice idea
But more info needed

What type of food?

Someone does this here locally - I’ll see if I can find their info for you to look at

Mainly Sunday dinners from what I remember and quite popular!

I lived in a village where an Indian couple did this on a Friday night. It was a big hit, there were no takeaways locally.

You'd need to register as a food business with your local authority etc etc

Have you got the time to set yourself up as a registered food business with EHO?
Sounds lovely. Round here you’d get people asking to remove certain ingredients or add in some etc which I’m guessing defeats the object of what you want to do - ie cook it in bulk and box it up? There are quite a few small ones round here that offer basically meals delivered to your door step weekly/ every other day which are good.
Quality of food is good

Nice idea. Guess it would need to be food that transports well.

it would be focused on world food, as i’ve travelled a lot. So Mexican, Thai, Indian inspired dishes.

Would I have to register even if I did a trial run, to see if the interest was there?

Thanks for everyone’s feedback - much appreciated!

You’d need to have food hygiene certificates and insurance at the very least.

I would love someone to set up a homemade and healthy takeaway option near me. Sometimes I can't be bothered cooking but takeaways are always unhealthy a healthy option would be wonderful. Good luck x

Somebody in our town does authentic Pakistani food, it’s very popular.

There’s a business in the next village that does this type of thing, but their USP is that they servd it all in a Yorkshire pudding. They are always closing for a few hours/days/weeks. If you are only going to open occasionally you need to make sure you stick to those hours, or you will loose momentum. You’ll need to promote that weeks cusine in advance, so your customers know what to expect. Maybe take advanced bookings/payments?

I wish I was your neighbour in your neighbourhood. Outside catering might also be worth considering even if you were to make a curry or stew to feed 8-10 or something I would also be up for that if I lived near you. Not sure what you need to do or have in place to get started but I know you can sometimes get various start up type grants. Good for you OP.

A local lady makes Thai food but sells it in the village shop. It is lovely and very successful. Good luck.

Yes you would have to register. Local council v helpful. Ring them and get some advice.

I’d recommend investing in some market research, you need to get evidence that you could break even and how much are people willing to pay. My local Chamber of Commerce and Business Link offer free courses about setting up a new business, very worthwhile doing one in my experience.

Thank you everyone - lots of good advice and positive feedback!