An outline of how we plan to do business
This is our basic outline on how we are going to sell our first bottle of Uncle Stephen’s Bar-B-Q sauce. I have had many ideas running through my head for a while, but this will be the first time actually putting it on paper. To give some perspective, we’ve had a desire to start this business many years ago, but every time Vanessa and I decided to pursue it, we always seem to get distracted. This blog is the furthest we’ve taken the business, and I plan to follow through until either success or failure.
First off, Vanessa and I have agreed upon the following in order to begin business:
- I will not leave my full time job. I must also maintain the same level of performance. This is imperative since we live off of my income, and don’t have enough savings to take a hiatus from my 9-5.
- It has to be feasible for Vanessa to handle the day to day operations of the business, seeing how we can not afford employees.
- The sauce can not be made in our kitchen. In my opinion this is a perfect recipe for failure. We need to do this in a commercial kitchen that has more quality control and equipment.
- We need to be able to run the business from our home. In our situation it doesn’t make sense to spend money on renting an office when we can be just as effective from a home office.
And now my thoughts on how we will run the business (in no particular order):
- Because I build and create web sites for a living, I will first launch an online store to sell our products.
- We will use a professional co-packer to manufacture and bottle the sauce. We will store our sauces and run the day to day operations from our home.
- To start we will be giving out samples of our sauce to local markets, competitions and community events etc. I believe my sauce will become successful when it is sampled. My sauce will be # 7,479,783,982 of available Bar-B-Q sauces in today’s market, which means I can’t rely on “chance” to sell a bottle. I have to prove myself through samples and rely on word of mouth.
- People have to be willing to pay more than $2 for my sauce. This will only happen if my sauce is GREAT. As of right now I don’t know how much it will cost to make a bottle, but I know that I will not be competitive with the $1.99 bottles of Kraft B-B-Q sauce.
So what do you think? I need suggestions on additional ways to draw attention to the sauce. This blog will hopefully be one way. Please leave any feedback you might have in the comments section.
Category: Business Decisions, Important | Tags: businessPlan, outline 6 comments »
March 12th, 2009 at 12:08 PM
Can you send out samples to people (as you had said that you were planning to do) and also do a survey from within your neighborhood, giving out samples door to door and asking for feedback? You could ask what price they would be willing to pay for a bottle and just general comments that would be useful to you in marketing the sauce. Do you think that this would be helpful? I think so…
March 12th, 2009 at 7:23 PM
Thanks for the feedback. I still plan on doing a sample run and giving it out free, more to come about that in a future post. I don’t think doing neighborhood sample will suffice, I am not sure my neighbors will be honest with me. Also, they do not represent a diverse demographics, which is what I want feedback from.
April 24th, 2009 at 2:10 PM
Have you considered customer segments and who (people and entities) might have the highest demand for your product?
April 27th, 2009 at 7:13 PM
Good thinking, Michael. I have put some thought into segmentation. What’s really exciting about the sauce is it can be used in a variety of food applications. It goes really well with sandwiches, pizza, pasta, meatloaf and a variety of other everyday food items. This opens up a lot of opportunity from a segmentation and marketing perspective. We can market it to the hard core bar-b-q warriors that cook whole pigs and their wives who make spaghetti with meatballs.
I’ll definitely do more posts on this in the future and incoorporate any feedback you have.
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