022 · Cooking Takeout Food

Do you regularly cook for yourself and your family because you love it? Did you know that you could earn money by cooking for others too? Many people would be willing to pay you to cook for them.

• Here's the program
• How do you organize yourself?
• How do you get known?
• How do you get paid?
• What type of cuisine?
• Is there an app for that?
• conclusion

Cooking isn’t really rocket science. You just have to get into it. Personally, I was an absolute dunce in the kitchen. Then, one day I decided to start cooking, and now I must admit that I’m not doing too bad. But if you’re really good at it, you could supplement your income by preparing take-out food for people in your neighborhood.

A lot of working people have a hectic life. They’re constantly in between appointments, late for a meeting, or caught up on a very important file. In short, they are very busy, and therefore, when they get home in the evening, they don’t have the time or the desire to start cooking anything even remotely refined.

Oh sure, there’s the sushi place on the corner or the pizza place down the street, but they’re tired of eating the same thing all the time. And that’s where you come in…

How do you organize yourself?

So, of course, you’re not going to do what you would do in a typical restaurant, i.e. prepare a series of dishes and pray that you have a high enough number of orders. No, it’s much simpler than that. You work on a pre-order basis.

You post the dishes you can prepare during the week on the Internet (via a website, a blog, Facebook, or whatever), people place their orders with you by phone, SMS, or whatever, and then all you have to do is prepare the number of meals that you have been ordered each day of the week.

You could work as a team, with your partner?

How do you get known?

That’s right at the beginning nobody knows you, so how do you attract your first customers? Again, it’s pretty simple. First you create a Facebook page where you will post pictures of the good dishes you prepare regularly. Once you have a few dozen images posted, start by announcing that you are going to offer take-out in your neighborhood to test the interest. Once this is done, you can then launch a targeted advertising campaign to reach as many people as possible living near you.

Don’t worry; as you don’t want to announce it to the whole world, you should reach your targets within a few days, and therefore the budget should not exceed a few dozen dollars.

Another way to get the word out would be to print small business cards or even flyers where you show what you are offering (without forgetting to include the link to your Facebook page), and to put them in all the mailboxes in the area. You could also post some at the local grocery store and bakery.

How do you get paid?

The great thing about Facebook is that it offers all sorts of tools for entrepreneurs like you. Among them, there is a very simple and efficient payment platform that will allow your customers to pay directly when they place an order. And if you don’t like Facebook, there’s PayPal and other platforms as well.

And then you could offer loyalty cards too. For example, a free meal after 10 meals purchased. It’s up to you, but know that there are many ways to build customer loyalty.

What type of cuisine?

It will be a little more difficult to choose because each customer has culinary preferences. Some will want a rather traditional cuisine, others will like more exotic and unexpected things, and others will perhaps even have certain requirements (vegetarian cuisine, gluten-free, halal, etc.). It will be up to you to adapt yourself according to the demand. You don’t necessarily have to cook a different dish for each of your customers, but try to have a minimum of flexibility.

Is there an app for that?

Yes, there are also applications specially dedicated to connect people who like to cook at home with customers who are too lazy to cook. Eat to Eat is one of them, so you could start by installing it on your smartphone to see how it works.

The big advantage is that everything is taken care of by the app: ordering, payment, etc. So, of course, there will be a small commission in the process, but it’s pretty reasonable.

Conclusion

So here is a quick and easy idea to set up to earn a few bucks every month. And if your customers like your homemade dishes, you will see your popularity increase as fast as your income. Take good care of both your customers and your preparations, and success should not be long in coming.