— Maria Anguiano

You know, if you've got, uh, some sort of, uh, an idea for a food product, um, you know, let's say it is, um, a potential retail product, and maybe it's a baked good, maybe it's a jarred or boxed item, then, uh, uh, try your hand at the local farmer's market, you know, for a season. Uh, rent a booth, um, or maybe, you know, well, yeah, I'd say do it for the season. Some, some longer experiment is probably gonna be, uh, better in terms of understanding, um, the bigger process here. And then, um, market your item and, um, you know, see what kind of a response you get. You get to talk to people directly, uh, at that point. Okay? Um, and, um, you know, uh, it's a stepping stone, you know, to making a profit. You know, hopefully you can make a profit right away, but it doesn't always work that way. All right? You know, another way is you gotta find an audience. I'm just thinking about ways to find an audience, you know, know, maybe you've got a, a place of worship where you have access to people or maybe some sort of a other club, a social club, athletic club where you have access to people, um, where you can, um, give out samples, uh, of what it is that you're making, uh, requesting feedback, um, before you move on to, uh, sales again. And the ne the next step could be that farmer's market idea that I just talked about. Okay? Now, uh, if it's a, if it's a jarred item, okay, then, you know, start, uh, you're talking to, uh, retailers, you like grocery stores, uh, and, and to see if you can get your product into their store and, and ask 'em about what that process is. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's, it's more challenging depending on the company, uh, and their requirements. Okay? And sometimes the requirements are on a volume scale, you know, can you support, um, x amount of volume on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis? And, um, so you need to be prepared to respond to questions like that in terms of, um, the scale that you're thinking about. Okay? Um, and, uh, let's see, yeah, if you can then, uh, move on to talking to, uh, food processing companies in your area, uh, folks that might, uh, you know, sell their own branded jarred salsa, uh, for example, and I'm suggesting this because, uh, it's, uh, fairly common, uh, for a place like that to have some downtime during the week where they will rent out their bottling line, uh, or their processing line to folks like you, um, who have a small business. Um, but it's, it's at a scale, uh, that's larger than doing it at home. Let's say you outgrew your garage operation and you need some professional equipment, um, you might be able to piggyback on an existing company's equipment and rent it out for several hours one day a week, or twice a month, for example. Okay? So these are all possibilities. Um, you know, another way, another thing to consider is to attend one of these specialty food shows. And, um, you know, there are some, uh, there's a specialty food show, uh, in, uh, New York. I think there's one in San Francisco. Um, um, uh, as well, uh, these are big ones, uh, where you can get your product in front of, uh, potential buyers, uh, from retail chains, from restaurants and, and so on and so forth. And so these are some ideas on, uh, exposure, okay? That's gonna be, uh, the, the big challenge when you sell a product.