Starting a food business

When it comes to setting up a business, the advice frequently given to graduates is to focus on an area they are interested in. It’s sensible advice - after all, if you’re going to be surrounded by this subject on a daily basis then a natural interest means you’re far less likely to get bored.

This probably also goes a long way to explaining why there are so many food and drink businesses around, after all who doesn’t enjoy a good meal or a drink or two? However, partially as a result of this the competition within the food and drink start-up sector is fierce leading to the worrying statistic that 90% of restaurants go bankrupt within the first year. So how can you make it into the 10% who survive? 

 

Getting started

One graduate who has managed to buck this trend is Marcel Risque who graduated from the University of Brighton’s MBA programme. He has subsequently opened Delinostrum a Spanish specialist deli which supplies gourmets in the UK with access to the best of Spanish produce.

‘I lived in the UK for about five years and I always wanted to start my own business and throughout my time in the UK I noticed that the Spanish produce on offer was poor and I realised that this was an opportunity,’ explains Marcel.

In just a few short years the business has gone from strength to strength and has even been named as The Best Gourmet Food Website by The Independent, beating Fortnum and Mason among others to the title.

Although Delinostrum offers its produce - a mix of delicious items from the world famous Iberico ham to incredibly flavoursome jams and condiments - over the web, Marcel says that not having physical premises doesn’t mean that you don’t have as many problems.

‘It’s odd, many people think that you can create a website and you will be flooded with customers from all around the world and that it’s a lot easier. However, building the website is often very hard and, of course, you have to build a business around the website and that is the difficult part because you have to get yourself known, to give good service and to deliver the products satisfactorily. These are the things that in the end make it quite a demanding task.’

Challenges

Aside from the difficulties of e-commerce, working in the food and drink industry has its own challenges unique in the world of business start-ups.

‘People have very high expectations when it comes to food. We get a lot of feedback and comments from our customers - 99% are happy and they say it was very nice but from time to time they say the ham was better last year or so on. They tend to be very demanding. You get a lot of feedback in terms of service and the quality of the product. I think people are more demanding than with a standard business.’

Legal issues

Aside from the occasionally difficult customer there are several steps that you will need to consider when opening a food and drink business. First of all if you are intending to serve food and drink to customers on the premises then there are a series of legal obligations. These include making sure that you have all of the relevant licenses, such as a license to sell alcohol or serve food - which even applies if you’re selling from a van.

You will also need to register with Environmental Health to make sure that you are complying with all of the relevant health and safety legislation. For many people this means that at the very least they will have to take some qualifications in food preparation hygiene to make sure that they’re not poisoning any of the customers, which is never good for business. 

Advice

When it comes to advice Marcel says that there are two main things to consider.

‘Firstly I would say that for any business you have to adapt your business strategy all the time, continuously. The business plan that we had when we started is completely different to how it is now. Once you start you see that things are not what you expected, so you change your direction and you get opportunities from some areas, whereas others might not be as successful as you thought. You have to be very aware of what your customers are asking for and drive your business towards that direction.

‘I think when it comes to food businesses my advice would be to do a lot of research about your competitors. There are so many restaurants, cafes and delis opening all the time that you have to know what makes you different and extraordinary for people to come to you.’

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