Are you wondering about which business to get into? Then, consider starting a health-food business, which stays profitable regardless of the state of the economy. The reason for this resilience is twofold: first, people cannot go without food, and second, people today consider food a source of good health, not just of sustenance. As a result, healthy food is now the most profitable niche in the food industry. And here’s how to get started.
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Plant an Organic Roof Garden
What happens if you want to grow organic produce, yet you live in an urban area away from farms? Well, you can always plant a garden on the roof of an urban building, be it a skyscraper or only a few stories high. But be prepared to carry the soil and planting boxes to the roof. However, once your garden grows, it will provide a refuge from the hustle and bustle of city life, besides giving you a regular harvest.
Start a Greenhouse Farming Business
If you own a farm, put it to good use and make money by growing organic foods. Although you can grow your plants outdoors, build your own greenhouse and grow them there instead. This way, you increase your yield and reduce costs on pesticides. For more output, build a framework around your greenhouses and slide a tarpaulin over them twice a day for two months. Known as light deprivation greenhouses, these structures allow you to grow plants offseason.
Open a Healthy Food Roadside Stand
After you harvest your organic produce, you must find a market for it. However, before transporting it to a local grocery store or farmers’ market, try building a roadside stand next to your farm. Your neighbors may just be an untapped market. In addition, having your own stand cuts off any intermediaries, allowing you to distribute your products and set your own price.
Can Your Organic Produce
A roadside stand may be a good idea, but fresh produce has little value and a short shelf life, which limits its price. To increase your profits, consider canning your produce, especially if you grow fruits. But first, create jams or other marketable products, then package them, and finally sell them at the stand, online or to local stores.
Open an Organic Juice Bar
Instead of making jams or salsas, you can also squeeze or blend the fruits into fresh natural juices and sell them. For low juice volumes and a limited range of flavors, use a roadside bar. If you make large volumes and can create many assorted juice flavors, consider opening a juice bar. However, location matters, so try to position the bar close to establishments that are frequented by health-conscious consumers, such as gyms for instance. Alternatively, you could set up shop near a shopping mall.
Open a Health-Food Restaurant
If you have more capital, you can forego the juice bar and open a fully-fledged organic restaurant. But to succeed, make sure that your menu includes a wide range of tasty meals, that you choose a suitable location and that you comply with local restaurant regulations. However, organic food restaurants are a growing niche market, meaning that the market is unlikely to be saturated with competitors.
Start an Office Catering Service
You can also open your restaurant in a commercial building where you’ll provide catering services during lunch breaks. If you didn’t know, most commercial buildings don’t run their in-house canteens or even vending machines. Instead, they hire them out to interested parties. So, if you get an office catering service contract that includes both the canteen and machines, you double your profits.
Become a Healthy Food Truck Vendor
If you cannot open a restaurant or an office canteen for whatever reason, but you still want to sell healthy food, you can always become a food truck vendor. As one, you can start your business with a small investment at a low risk, but in your case, you’ll carve a niche for yourself by selling healthy foods to office workers, wedding parties and festival goers among others.
Start a Healthy Food Delivery Service
If even truck vending proves an impossibility, then cook at home and from there, deliver your organic meals to your customers’ doorsteps. Only make sure your food is still fresh by the time it gets to its destination. Also, use oven-safe and microwave-safe packaging for your customers’ convenience.
As more people become concerned about their health, the health-food industry will only grow. This makes it the perfect sector for health-conscious people who want to test the waters of the ever-growing food business.
