Today I received my Minnesota Certified Food Protection Manager certificate. I took my certification course and exam with Safe Food Training. I learned how to protect food from contamination during receiving, storing, preparing, and serving food amongst other things. I am thankful to reach another milestone :)
I shared my Food business lean canvas with NEON Food (Business Incubator Program, Catering). They gave me a lot of good information on additional concrete steps I can take to prove out my business model. The next step recommended that I take is creating a recipe cost card. A recipe cost card, like the one depicted above, breaks down the cost of the ingredients needed to make your recipe so that you can determine how much to charge customers in order to make a profit. I am currently working on creating a 1st pass of my cost card. One thing I will need to do is convert all of my measurements into weights to make scaling up and down the recipe consistent.
Here is a link to the cost card tutorial I am using in case you are interested: How to complete a cost card
It has been fun getting started, looking forward to completing this activity and moving on to the next step :)
I have been reading “Running Lean” by Ash Maurya. The book outlines lean strategies for starting a business. I leveraged a tool mentioned in the book called “Lean Canvas”, a 1 page business model brain dump, to document my Jamaican Food business idea. I have shared my lean canvas with a few friends and family and got some good feedback.
I also participated in a Thinking about Business workshop at NEON (Northside Economic Opportunity Network) in Minneapolis. To my pleasant surprise they leverage the Lean Canvas Model as an intake process for assessing business ideas. During the workshop I learned how Uber used the Lean Canvas for their business model and met other aspiring entrepreneurs :)
I plan to meet with NEON for a 1 on 1 session to get some advice on my Jamaican Food business idea. Stay tuned and I will share what I learn…
One of my childhood friends growing up was Jamaican. On Sundays they would cook a big Jamaican feast that I was invited to on occasion. This was my first introduction to a food that would become one of my favorites right next to my native Nigerian dishes my mom would make.
To my fortune, I ended up marrying my beautiful wife who happens to be…JAMAICAN! My wife’s sister is a great cook, she started a successful Jamaican restaurant in North Carolina. I learned a few of her recipes that I have been cooking on our annual Jamaican Thanksgiving for the last 4 years. Jamaican Thanksgiving is a tradition we started in our family to remember and bring us together around our culture. I also enjoy cooking myself, when I can get some time off :)
I have not been able to find a Jamaican restaurant in Minneapolis that makes the food like my wife’s sister. I also have been receiving positive feedback from friends and family on my rendition of the Jamaican recipes. Seems like there is a potential market for a business that I can test out. In upcoming blogs I will document our journey to discovering if we have a product.