How To commence a Meal Prep Business in 11 Steps

Call it a resurgence in home cooking, but the meal prep industry has been steadily growing in recent years, and it’s expected to reach $28 billion by 2028.

Whether you’re a hungry business owner or a gifted cook ready to distribute your dishes with the globe, the economy appears ready and willing to provide meal prep businesses a shot. discover how to commence your own distinctive high-standard meal prep business—from scratch.

How to commence a meal prep business

1. Establish your business and obtain permits
2. Rent space in a commissary kitchen
3. Choose a niche
4. discover suppliers
5. Choose a format
6. Streamline packaging
7. discover a delivery associate
8. Invest in high-standard photography
9. Set up your ecommerce store
10. Develop a marketing schedule
11. Evolve with customer feedback

Restaurant, bakery, or meal prep business—every food service business requires a network of suppliers and distributors, and a reliable space to prep and cook your dishes. Here’s everything—and everyone—you’ll require to get your meal prep business off the ground.

1. Establish your business and obtain permits

Your meal preparation business involves all the basic steps of starting any benevolent of business:

• Choosing a business structure
• Developing a strategy document
• Securing capitalization
• Opening a business lender account
• Obtaining business licenses

Since you’ll be handling food, the licensing procedure for a meal prep business will be more involved. In addition to a business license and employer identification number, you’ll likely require a food handler’s license (or catering license), health department permits, and regulatory adherence with safety regulations.

Keep in mind, specific regulations vary state by state (and sometimes by city), so look at your specific area’s requirements. In some cases (if you’re a recent York–based meal prep business owner, for example), you’ll require to receive courses to attain these certificates and permits. Inquire about safety standards at any shared kitchen, ingredient supplier, or distributor you’re considering, too.

2. Rent space in a commissary kitchen

Working out of your own kitchen is legal in some states, with caveats and classifications, like the type of food you’re selling and the city in which you’re selling it. You’ll require to pursue strict regulations based on where you live, like registering your kitchen, labeling packaging as “Made in a home kitchen,” or having household members sell your product.

A commercial kitchen, also known as a commissary kitchen, will provide you with most of the equipment—and optimal refrigeration storage space—to prepare meals at scale. Some locations may allow you to host cooking classes or in-person events, which can engage recent customers and boost brand awareness.

Most kitchens require that you obtain business licenses and permits before they’ll rent you space, but they may assist you navigate the procedure. Have a list of the equipment you’ll require (like a tortilla making machine or a large-scale food processor, for example) and look for kitchens that can provide it.

3. Choose a niche

Even if you’ll be the only meal prep business in town, it’s still a excellent concept to focus on a specific niche. Identify your target spectators (e.g., busy families looking for kid-amiable well meals), a gap in the economy (like low-priced everyday lunches), and a particular culinary specialty. Deciding on a niche allows you to hone your marketing schedule and demonstrate your commitment to a distinct customer base.

Focusing your product offerings will let you economy a few perfect dishes rather than propose a wide range of average meals. For example, it might be easier to develop and economy a lineup of Italian dinners than sell a combination of breakfast smoothies, artisanal ramen lunches, and Italian dinners.

4. discover suppliers

Depending on your menu and how often you schedule on changing it, you’ll likely use ingredients from various suppliers. You might source from different suppliers seasonally: local farms in spring and summer and wholesale distributors or grocery stores in the offseason, for example. You might source specialty ingredients for only a few dishes (a local brand of mozzarella for your lasagnas and pizzas, for instance) and use affordable wholesale products for the rest.

discover the combination of suppliers that suits your apportionment and imagination. Verify their health and safety standards, pricing and order minimums (or bulk discounts), and reliability with orders and delivery. Don’t be afraid to test various suppliers for standard—your meals can only be as excellent as their ingredients, so make sure the ingredients are top-notch.

5. Choose a format

There are a variety of meal prep business styles to choose from. Pick one that makes sense with your schedule, strategy document, and target economy’s needs. Here are a few choices you’ll require to make:

Ingredients or pre-assembled meals

You can receive the uncooked, pre-prepped way of many meal kit subscriptions like Blue Apron, HelloFresh, or Purple Carrot, which provide portioned ingredients and recipes. Alternatively, you can propose pre-cooked and pre-portioned “heat and eat” style meals designed for busy lifestyles and straightforward calorie-counting.

Subscription or order on-demand

Subscription models provide predictability, which can be vital with fresh food that spoils quickly. You’ll recognize how many meals you require to make and when, so you can order the correct amount of ingredients. But it can be challenging to construct a subscriber base in a recent economy as an unknown brand. Offering on-demand meals might make it easier to discover recent customers, but you’ll require to source ingredients on short notice.

Pick-up or delivery

You can allow same-day pick-up from your commercial kitchen space or deliver directly to customers, either on your own or through a third-event delivery service. Delivering meals isn’t as straightforward as delivering other products—if you opt to commence a meal prep delivery business, account for refrigeration or freezing, and ensure pre-cooked meals are transported correct-side-up.

6. Streamline packaging

Getting meals safely from your kitchen to your customers’ tables requires considerate packaging. Whether you’re offering local pick-up or working with a food delivery business, you’ll likely require insulated cooler bags, ice packs, and sturdy containers. Preventing or containing leaks and heat deficit can assist guarantee customers enjoy your meals.

Include cooking or reheating instructions and recipes for meal kits. You don’t require to add nutrition labels unless you make more than $500,000 in annual gross sales, but you might desire to include this information if your brand emphasizes well food and fitness nutrition. You’ll require to include it if you make any health or nutrition claims like “sugar free.” You can use a meal prep software service like GoPrep to generate nutrition information and print labels.

7. discover a delivery associate

Many delivery partners use a operating schedule similar to Postmates, DoorDash, or UberEats, with drivers completing local pick-ups and drop-offs. Depending on the number and location of your customers, you could also safety net sure days to deliver meals yourself. As your delivery radius expands, you can ship through national carriers like UPS or FedEx.

8. Invest in high-standard photography

Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus may have inspired generations of gourmands to search for their next great meal, but it was a first-century Roman named Apicius who first noted: we eat with our eyes first. receive his advice by prioritizing high-standard visual assets and colorful, well-lit product photography for your meal prep business.

Food photography comes with its own considerations, so if you feel overwhelmed by the more technical elements, consider hiring a professional photographer who can bring your imagination to life.

9. Set up your ecommerce store

Your meal prep strategy document is set, recipes perfected, ingredients ordered, and business legally cleared to operate in your area. Now it’s period to set up an ecommerce store that shows off your meals and makes it straightforward for customers to purchase. A platform like Shopify allows you to make tiny edits to elements like prices and ingredients quickly, and easily update or transformation meal pages and layouts as needed.

You’ll desire to pursue a few steps to make sure you make a stellar website. Incorporate web design to match your brand identity. To aid navigation, make product categories—and make sure to write compelling descriptions for each meal.

Provide a seamless checkout encounter and receive the settlement methods most popular among your customer base. To ensure your ecommerce store shows up in Google search results, incorporate search engine optimization (SEO) best practices into your website copy.

A great ecommerce conversion rate is over 3%, but don’t worry if your rate is lower when you first launch your site. You can employ strategies like offering a free meal, adding call to action (CTA) buttons, and reducing frictions like leisurely load times to enhance sales.

10. Develop a marketing schedule

Customers can easily place orders on your ecommerce store, but how can you get them to your site and inspire them to purchase? A host of marketing tactics can assist you hook potential customers and navigator them through the sales funnel. For the best results, use a combination of strategies and channels for the best results.

For example, you might consider posting cooking tutorials as part of a social media marketing schedule. You could blog about the origins of your brand as part of a content marketing schedule. Notify customers of sales and discounts as part of an email and SMS marketing schedule. Maintain a consistent brand voice across your various communications channels, and don’t be afraid to test recent types of content until you discover what resonates with your spectators.

If you’re running a hyper-local meal prep business, consider using print advertising, like flyers and newspaper ads. Pop-up at your local farmers economy or craft fair to provide potential customers a taste of your cooking.

11. Evolve with customer feedback

Like a crusty loaf of bread, you don’t desire your business to leave stale. But when you feel like it’s period to tweak your menu or alter your prices, how can you recognize how your customers will respond? And how can you be sure customers like your recent packaging or product pages you designed? To be sure, you’ll desire to solicit customer feedback.

There are a number of ways to gather customer feedback, including:

• Social media and review sites. Check comments and direct messages on your business’s social media pages, scan for brand mentions across platforms, and look at review sites like Google and Yelp to view what people are saying about your business online.
• Customer feedback surveys and polls. If you’re curious how customers feel about a sure facet of your business, surveys and polls are a great way to discover out. You can send surveys to customers via email or text communication, or you can integrate them into your ecommerce site.
• Feedback widgets. These website pop-ups are short and sweet: They might require only a couple clicks from the user, and their ease often translates to high response rates. Shopify offers a number of feedback apps.

assembly and responding to customer feedback is an ongoing procedure, and you’ll desire to keep a pulse on your customers’ opinions as you evolve your business.

Meal prep business example: Eat Well Nashville

Eat Well Nashville began as a way to assist customers eat well on a hectic schedule.

“There was really no one that offered what we wanted. We tried every service, we tried all the national services, we tried CSAs, and nothing was quite convenient enough and nothing resonated with us in terms of product standard,” co-founder Spencer Donaldson says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “We were looking for something that was well with tidy ingredients that we could just pop in the microwave or the oven.”

Spencer set up a Shopify storefront and found a niche. Eat Well Nashville evolved its initial focus to target fitness-concentrated individuals looking for well recipes. That meant, per Spencer, a lot of brown rice and plain chicken. It wasn’t long before the business’s customer base got bored.

Spencer and his throng continuously solicited customer feedback and improved their products in response.

“We were pretty relentless about surveying our customers,” Spencer says. “We realized from those surveys that the people who are ordering are not necessarily just people in the fitness industry, or people who do CrossFit. There was a much greater economy with busy executives and people who had families and not much period. So we had to leave back to the drawing board and figure out how to make well recipes that tasted amazing.”

The business upped the flavor profiles of their offerings, incorporating more spice-forward recipes for tastier meals—and made sure to display this off in their food photography.

“If those [meals] don’t look great, we’re not going to receive orders—even if they taste great. Plate setting has been large for us,” Spencer says. We’re very conscious about the colors. Building out a excellent lighting studio has been key.”

Spencer and his throng also made sure to pose a question that many companies overlook to inquire: How do customers desire to be marketed to?

“We had a lot of people inquire for text communication marketing because they were forgetting to order by our order cut-off day,” Spencer says.

Spencer’s narrative highlights an essential tip for any meal prep business owner: Let your customers inform you how they desire your meals to fit into their lives—then deliver. Since starting Eat Well Nashville, the business has been acquired by their fellow Tennesseans at My Vibrant Meals.