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Cooking Market Research – Do You Have A Viable Business Idea?Cooking market research will help you to determine if your business idea for using your cooking talents is a viable business idea. This is done by conducting market research. What is market research and what will it do for you? Market research is a way to collect information about the market that you are seeking to enter and to gather the data that you need before developing the marketing plan portion of your business plan, and market research is designed to help you solve marketing issues. By conducting cooking business market research you can target the part of the cooking industry that you want to do business in and it can help you to determine the best geographical area for your restaurant or mobile food cart or whatever aspect of the cooking business you have chosen. Don’t know where to start with your cooking market research? Then you might consider talking to a business consultant, a business or marketing professor at a local college or university or contacting the local small business association office for assistance on getting started.
Market research should provide you with information in three areas: • Information about the industry - in conducting research about the industry this should provide information about the latest trends in the industry, looking at the statistics and growth in the industry. The research should answer the questions what areas of the industry are expanding? what areas are declining? Is the industry servicing new types of customers? What technological developments are affecting the industry and how can you use these new developments to your advantage? • Information about the consumer - information about the consumer is usually gathered through surveys, which help you to forecast sales revenues for your new business.
• Information about the competition - industry research and consumer research helps to establish who your competition is. If you are establishing a soul food restaurant, it is good to know how many other soul food restaurants if any are in the area. It helps to know if you will be bringing in new customers or just recycling customers from the other restaurants of this type in your area by pulling away customers from other restaurants of the type that you are opening. There are basically two types of research data you will gather, primary market research data and secondary market research data. Primary market research data is from the potential customer and can be done by you or by someone that you hire and is gathered by means of surveys such as questionnaires and focus groups and secondary market research data comes from reports, statistics, studies and other data which is gathered from government agencies, trade associations and your local chamber of commerce. Conducting cooking market research can be costly but it will save you money in the long run, and there are some free information sources that you can utilize such as the internet and your local library. The important thing is to do your research before you spend a lot of money on an idea that may fail; there is no need to learn from experience in this case, since learning from experience in this instance can lead to financial ruin.
Next: • Choosing a business structure • Obtaining financing for the business • Hiring employees • Establishing an online presence • Bookkeeping For some great information on starting a cooking business a great reference is: • Restaurant and More by Entrepreneur Magazine
Cooking Business Niche
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