5 Home Based Food Business Ideas with Low Investment

Whether you are a stay at home parent, a student or a professional who is not happy with his 9 to 5 job, starting a home based business with low investment is your chance to change your life. 

There are tens of profitable home based business ideas that can be started with low investment, but many of these low cost business ideas require tech-related skills. 

This article will discuss the 5 low investment home based food business ideas that do not involve tech related skills and can be started right from your kitchen. You, however, must be a food lover and keen to learn new skills and develop expertise to become your own boss.

1- Homemade Frozen Food

Frozen food is a great advantage for busy professionals as well as families in the big cities. However, many health conscious people avoid buying commercially produced frozen food that is rich in preservatives. 

If you are an expert at preparing foods that can be frozen and used later, i.e. peeling/cutting fresh fruits and vegetables, making meatballs, nuggets, burger fillers, kebabs, etc. turning your expertise into a business is the best idea.

Approach busy people (bachelors, working women, new moms, seniors) in your network and offer them a trial, i.e. one time offer (which might not be making you any profits, but to convert them into customers and also analyzing the business opportunity. If your trial goes well, create a business plan, get necessary licenses and start selling your skill. You can offer one time purchases as well as bimonthly and monthly subscriptions whereby you receive an upfront payment (beginning of the month) and you deliver frozen foods as per subscription.

2- Fresh Snacks

If you can make yummy snacks quickly, selling them can be a profitable business. If you live in a busy commercial hub, you have an advantage to save delivery costs, but even if you live in suburbs, you can manage cost effective business setup and low overhead costs with strategic planning. 

Here are a few possible scenarios to save setup and overhead costs.

  • Start as a home based business using your home kitchen or upgrade it into a commercial kitchen (check with your local authorities for the requirements). 
  • You can also rent a commercial kitchen if you cannot use your home kitchen due to zoning laws.
  • Consider starting a food truck which can save most of the rental and utility costs.
  • Partner up with services like Zomato to save on marketing and delivery costs.
  • Approach the working class and offer subscription based healthy budget meals.
  • Partner up with a local supermarket or a coffee shop to save on marketing expenses and increase outreach without extra effort.

3- Custom Cakes & Cup Cakes

The pandemic and working from home has brought many pro bakers to the spotlight. So if you are someone who loves baking, there’s a great opportunity in the niche. Despite so many bakers on Instagram, people still prefer getting a professionally done cake for their special events.

Celebrations will never stop, and so the niche is evergreen, however, knowing the trade well is the key to success.

You may want to start selling your custom cakes and cupcakes to friends and family and acquaintances at first. This will allow you to analyze the business opportunity and once you feel you are ready to make it a solid income stream, you should proceed with registering it as a proper business and start selling to a broader audience.

On a later stage you may want to include more services and set up a home based bakery that sells to the supermarket or cafes in the town along with fulfilling custom cake orders.

4- Online Cooking Instructor

Cooking skills are not easy to acquire; one needs to invest a lot of time and effort in learning the trade. By chance, if you are a much appreciated chef for your creations, but none of the above sounds like an interesting business idea to you, being an instructor might catch your attention.

With a lot of platforms offering online classes, it is easy to set up your course and start teaching from the comfort of your home. You may also want to offer weekend cooking classes in your home kitchen for the local learners. 

You can also explore opportunities with some local skill development institutions, schools (for summer & winter camps) or rehabilitation centers to broaden the scope of your business.

5- Food Blogger

The above 4 business ideas require expertise and skills to prepare food, however, if you do not have such an expertise as yet, but you are a food lover, you are still in the game for starting your own low cost food business through food blogging.

Yes, you do need great photography skills to get started and there are several platforms where your food blogging business can grow faster, i.e. Instagram, Pinterest, Zomato or WordPress etc. Share your most loved foods, food decoration ideas, the recipes that you are a pro at, cooking hacks, or anything that your followers would love to respond to.

Focus on developing an audience as a top priority, and as your blog becomes popular, the income will follow. 

Blogging profits entirely depend on the amount and quality of your audience, i.e. the more engaged followers and visitors you have, the better advertisers will pay to get featured on your blog.

Summing up Home Based Food Business Ideas with Low Investment

Food business is one of the recession proof business ideas for small towns as well as for big cities; people will always need food no matter where the economy is going. So investing time and effort in building a food business can last longer for sure. If you have an expertise in cooking or baking, you can start a small scale home based business with little capital. 

The above five are just a few of the low cost food business ideas that can be started quickly, but if you are a true food lover you can come up with many more using your creativity, i.e. fresh juices and ice cream kiosk, mobile cafe, home cooked food delivery to offices, private chef (sho cooks weekly or bi weekly meals at client’s place), and many more.

Whatever the home based food business idea you plan to pursue, make sure to couple check and follow the local laws and regulations related to food businesses.

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