Many artisan chefs and home cooks are discovering how to make money selling food from home and the flexibility it allows their family. And, to make things easier, a simple amp for home food based businesses will allow chefs to focus on their craft while spending less time taking care of admin duties. Using technology to automate your order placement and customer payments simply makes good business sense.
Right now, there are over 15 million home-based businesses, with women being more likely to start a home-based business than men. Here we will discuss how to make money selling food from home using technology to build and grow your home food service. And, the food tech market is driving much of that business because it is through the marriage of ecommerce and automation that running a food service from your home is streamlined and efficient.
So, you may be wondering what exactly food market technology is? Well, it all has to do with the digitization of business activities dealing with running food service business. This includes operating a brick-and-mortar restaurant, a food truck, a vendor's cart, or a home chef food service delivery business.
You may be surprised to learn that the food technology industry is a market worth over $220 billion USD. This includes the technology it takes to run an online restaurant or a food delivery service. The demand for food services that don't require a dining-in experience skyrocketed. Due to the automation of the food delivery business (DoorDash and UberEats), anyone living just about anywhere can have a hot home-cooked meal picked up from their favorite artisan chef and delivered right to the customer's door.
So how do most people locate a great culinary business owner that is right in their neighborhood. Once again, it is the digitization of business advertising and geolocations that allow a customer to search the internet for 'home cooked food near me', and find your business in which to place an order.
Instead of getting lost in a digital rabbit hole and using a slew of technologies that only hamper how you operation your homemade food business, look for a simple app for home food that is easy to learn, simple to use, and has all the important features needed for menu selections, order placement, and payment processing. The easiest way to open an online or ecommerce store for selling your home cooked foods is to use a website tool or app that puts all your orders, messages, payments, and deliveries in one place.
You may wonder why you need a homemade food app to reach your customers and sell your products if you cod from home. Well, the answer is pretty simple! If you want to keep up with your competition, then you must have an online presence where your customers can find you, and you must make ordering your culinary dishes easy and simple. Because that's what people are used to in our fast-paced, mobile society.
Don't make the mistake of investing in complicated software for selling home-cooked food to the public. It's not necessary. Maybe for large corporations with millions of orders coming in from all over the entire United States, an enterprise level food ordering and delivery system is necessary. But, for a home-based business, the simpler, the better.
So, let's take a deep dive into what you should look for in a homemade food app. Of course, this is all based on you having already decided on what you will sell to the public and how you will prepare, package, deliver your homemade goods to the customer.
First you will build your online store which is an ecommerce website designed specifically for menu listings, order taking, order fulfillment and payment processing. The best apps will have an assortment of templates that can be customized to get your online food service business up and running very quickly.
This is where you will showcase your business brand with the colors, typography, graphics, and messaging that is unique to your business. You should also put up plenty of pictures of the items that customers will be ordering.
Your homemade food business is almost ready to go. Now you will input your menu selections, the price of your food selections, and maybe a listing of ingredients, calories, nutrition information, and any warnings or disclosures for persons with food allergies.
A homemade food app makes it easy to launch your online food service and your business can go live faster without a lot of paperwork hassles or website development skills.
This is the fun part. Your kitchen is up and running, and you're ready to start putting food in packaging and sending it out. With a homemade food business app, you can start taking those orders as quickly as you would like. But, make sure you've made it clear to patrons what type of payments you accept, such as credit card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay directly through your store.
Also, you should have all your logistics ready to deliver foods to customers. No matter how you decide to fulfill your customer orders, by shipping, pickup, or delivery, make sure the details are explained clearly to your customers for each method.
A homemade food app is the best method for selling home cooked food to the public because it takes advantage of digital technology, business automation, and the public's desire for on-demand food ordering and delivery services.
Sometimes it's a good idea to start simple when establishing a home cooked food business. Using an experimental menu is a good way to test out different online food selling apps. Here is a homemade food list that features some easy to make and sell products:
An excellent app for selling home cooked food is Castiron. This company has developed a food service app tailored to homecooking artisans that want to showcase their foods with fantastic images, good descriptions, and easy order fulfillment and payment.
Other players to include on this homemade food list include Yummist, DishDivvy, and Savorly which will enable home-based culinary artisans to sell their homemade food online. But, just because an app is popular, it doesn't make it the right choice for your home cooked food business. With Castiron, you can build a food service website in under an hour and start taking orders on your first day in business.
If you're a cottage cook, there are many benefits to using a home cooked food delivery app over other business models. The food delivery business is at an all-time high as people are busier than ever, and they know they can not only order a hot meal, but also have it quickly delivered.
Make sure you offer homemade food delivery service right on your website because it is so easy and inexpensive to use a third-party food delivery service like DoorDash. People even use these delivery services to search for home-cooked food delivery near me, because they know the food is prepared locally and will be delivered much faster.
Another benefit of offering delivery to your customers is that food delivery is highly desirable to two major populations - Millennials and Baby Boomers. Both these groups prefer to stay home either working, entertaining, immersed in a hobby, or simply avoiding traffic congestion. But, these populations have a tremendous spending capacity that can be easily tapped into by a good online homemade food delivery service.
It makes sense to use a homemade food delivery service that gives you the opportunity to maximize orders and profits. The online home cooked food store gives you great customer visibility and the food delivery service is a great convenience for your customers.
Take the time to get familiar with some players in the app for homemade food space. You will discover there are less expensive homemade app choices when compared to Yummit and DishDivvy. Castiron is a homemade food startup that is looking to change how culinary artisans do business.
Castiron is extremely transparent, offering the use of its app for free as you build your business. You don't worry about paying any listing or monthly fees. And, the customer pays the Stripe payment processing fee at the time of checkout.
Compare this to the Shef app which allows customers to choose a chef and a meal that they want delivered. Then Shef charges a 15% transaction fee for each order, along with the location-based delivery fee. Uber for home cooked food is another option, but you must check if delivery is available to your clientele.
The best homemade food startup app is one that is simple to use and handles the 3 major tasks of listing food items and prices, taking orders and processing payments, and corresponding with a 3rd party delivery service or customer pick up.
Being a startup company, new chefs get to grow right alongside Castiron, whose goal is to make sure your food service business is successful. And, you will be amazed at how this free app contains some amazing features such as dynamic inventory management, unlimited product listings, and Castiron accepts all credit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.
Build and launch your entire ecommerce, homemade food delivery service using just one app - Castiron.
The Cake Whisperer
My business would not be the same without my Castiron website! It is an easy setup with lots of customization and tons of support! I am so glad I set up my shop last year before the holidays — it really helped increase my sales!
The Whimsical Cookie
Castiron provides me a professional site to my customers increasing my credibility and value while giving me the tools to effectively market and manage my business in an easy, user-friendly manner.
Wesley's Treats Hallie's Sweets
Castiron has made my cottage bakery shine, and my business easy to manage. As a platform they care about my business as much as I do.
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Easy to start, created specifically for local, handmade food: Castiron’s website builder was created to help you grow. Create a website in minutes with our templates, sell where and how your customers want to buy, and look professional without being technical. Keep customers coming back with email marketing tools, customer records, and more.
Food entrepreneurs, this is your moment. Your community is more and more conscious about what they buy and where it is from. They want food made with love. With ingredients they can pronounce. And they want to support their community while doing it.
Castiron is the best fit for your food business because we're not a one-size-fits-all tool. Selling local food is different from pre-packaged warehouse products. Whether you sell cooking classes, need local pick up, utilize pre-sales to plan inventory, or need a fully custom order form — we got you.
No code required. Add pages, sell your products, build order forms, and show off your beautiful work. We'll handle the tech so you can focus on growing your food business.
Never track down a payment or oversell products again. Real-time inventory tracking and secure payment processing make life easier for you and your customers, and our order form builder makes managing custom requests a breeze.
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