My Donut Business.com

Posts Tagged ‘how to start a donut business’

As you are aware sales are the lifeblood of any business. Without sales you do not have any money to support your business for yourself. This is especially true in the donut business or any food related business for that matter. It is very important to have a good marketing plan and plan of action for how you will market your donut business.

We plan on focusing on one venue at first then branching out to other areas to market to. This way we can focus our attention on what works for the particular market we're working with. What works in one market will not necessarily work in another. We have learned that from our online ventures over the past several years. Hopefully we can secure a spot at one of the local recreation areas/mall in our area. It is an outdoor mall concept that is very popular in many of the bigger cities. I believe the outdoor mall concept is the wave of the future, as I've mentioned several weeks ago. I actually like the outdoor mall better than the enclosed mall it just seems much less depressing. I was in our local mall today and I am just surprised that is still open. A lot of the malls similar to this one are closed in medium-sized cities. I walked around and just feel depressed, there's no light coming in and looks dated it is just overall not appealing to me. I believe outdoor mall concept is dying quicker than most people believe. There is a spot open in the mall that would be interesting to put one of our doughnuts shops in, and I would not even begin to imagine how much that would cost. If we were going to do something like this it would be in the center aisle of the mall where there is the most traffic. But like I've mentioned before, I just do not believe this is a good idea. We are going to stay away from malls. The place we are talking about putting in downtown Huntington is basically a concession cart. If the rent is not too high that we may be able to pull it off.

If this does not work we are thinking about marketing to churches. We are going to get a database of churches and send a mailing telling them that we will set up shop in their church and sell our doughnuts. We can split the profits equally and still be ahead. I think there is a lot of money and selling doughnuts to churches, especially at their social events. I am very eager to market to this group of people. I think it will be very interesting, to see what happens. In the end marketing is a very important part of your business plan. Be sure you have a good marketing plan as well as a business plan before you start in your ventures.

We talked last week the importance of having a business plan for your doughnut shop business. It is also equally important to have a plan for marketing. We touched on this briefly a few months ago but would like to discuss it in more detail and in our post today.

Your overall marketing plan should cover 3 to 6 months. You need to determine how much money you're going to commit to marketing your doughnut business. You also will determine how the money will best be spent and be realistic on your goals. After this you will need to determine your target market. Where are you going to sell your donuts and to whom. Who are the people that are most likely to buy your product? Do they have families? Does it matter how much money they make? You do not want to answer every one to these questions. Everyone is not who your target market is, do not fool yourself into thinking this, it is a mistake that a lot of people make. Target different people with different marketing, most of the big companies do this. Your marketing will be different to college students that will be to stay-at-home moms.

Think about how you're going to reach these people, are you going to use a mailing list? Are you going to put an ad in the paper? Are you going to give away free samples? Putting an ad in the paper or using a mailing list could be a start in getting the word out for your donut business. Especially if you want to set up shop there and sell them at their venue, i.e. their church, school or whatever. If you decide to use a mailing list, narrow it down as much as possible. You can buy mailing list of all the churches in your town. A lot of times they will even mail the postcards or letter for you. Don't buy from the first-person that tries to sell you a mailing list, you could get burned very quickly. Pay attention to your marketing, it can mean the success or failure of your business.

The donut business is like any other business and it is important that you get to know your customers. The more information that you have about what they like and don't like the more money you will make and the less money that you will spend on trying to find out that information. One of the best ways to get know your customers, and this is assuming that you have started your donut business already, is to ask for feedback. We are also assuming that you are catering to small groups of people and doing what we are doing and selling small doughnuts. We also assuming that you do not have a large franchise donut shop. But this will work for those as well.

There's several things you should do to get customer feedback. There's so many companies to ask for feedback from the customers but do not supply an easy way for the customers to give them that feedback. The first thing you should do is make it easy for the customer to give you feedback. Supply them with a pen and paper and simply ask them what they think about your donut business. Provide a website where they can give you feedback on their experience with your company. Maybe reward them for their information. Ask them what you can do to better serve them and provide a forum for them to do that. Take advantage of all the social websites that are available & sign your company up for them.

Organize and track your feedback and let customers know that you plan on resolving complaints and actually respond to their positive and negative feedback. A sickly established a process to adjust each complaint that you receive. Train your employees on soliciting and managing feedback that you get from your customers. The donut business is like any other business and it is important to know what your customers are thinking. A satisfied customer will tell their friends and family about you which will result in much more business. Be smart about your feedback process.

We have talked before in previous posts about trying different things in your donut business. Questions come up like should I sell coffee? Should I sell milk? Should I sell coffee? Should I sell orange juice? Each one of these has its disadvantages and advantages, just like selling anything else. You need to consider the overhead that each one will give you and the profit that each one could give you as well. You may, depending on the location, be better off just sticking to selling your doughnuts alone without anything else accompanying them. But there are situations where selling drinks could be beneficial.

I think we mentioned this before, we were in San Francisco on Pier 59 I believe (I'm not sure of the exact number) And there was a small doughnut shop on the Pier. It had been there a few years before and I assume that it is still there now. They seem to do very well, even though it was a slow time of year and the traffic was down. There were not a lot of people on that here, buying anything. But the little doughnuts shop had a steady flow of traffic buying their doughnuts. I thought it was very interesting, and that we had seen the doughnut shop before it was not until a year later that we had the idea to have one of our own. But one thing that we noticed is they did not sell any beverages except coffee. They sold a mini bag of doughnuts with about Half a dozen in each bag for three dollars. My partner and I absolutely loved them. Wow, it makes me want to go back to San Francisco, the two of us. We had such a good time, it really brings back good memories.

Anyway, back to trying different things in your donut business. If you have a stand-alone store and offer multiple varieties Of doughnuts, like the big chains, then of course it will be necessary for you to have drinks. He not only will have to have coffee, but you will probably have to have orange juice sodas and other drinks people enjoy in your area. By the same token if you have a large store then you probably won't need multiple varities of donuts. This is just not our business model, we are selling small doughnuts without drinks. Perhaps in the future we can offer a bigger menu. But for us this works out very well. Try different things in your donut business will be depend on your resources, venue and your audience, it is pretty much that simple.

As you drive home from your current job do you ever wonder what it would be like if you would not have to do that anymore? You may think that you are lucky to even have a job when so many people do not have one. After all, these are bad times and having a job is a good thing and knowing you have a paycheck coming in is definitely a plus. You may even have the chance to move up in your company and make more money.

You may have often thought about starting your own business and all of the perks that come along with it. You could take advantage of the tax to deductions, Be your own boss, and all of the other things that you always hear about working from home or having your own business. It is true, when you work for yourself you do not give Uncle Sam an interest-free loan while you earn money, you pay the tax man after you have already earned it and take out your deductions. The doughnut business could afford you a lot of deductions and peace of mind knowing that doughnuts will always be in demand and people love them. But you question the timing of starting your own business. You have reason to be afraid, change is always a hard thing to do.

You have all of these things going through your head, But how could you live with yourself if your family lost their home and their life savings because of your business venture. That would be a very difficult pill to swallow, especially if you have a family. You feel trapped and go to work daily Thinking about the way life could be. It is much easier to be told what to do and how to do it than venture out on your own and try to make something of a business. You have probably heard all the horror stories of opening up a food related business. One of the good things about having a donut business, especially a small donut business, is you are selling one product and the overhead can be quite low. We will talk more about that in a bit. Stay tuned tomorrow and we will continue our discussion about starting a good business end is poor economy.