I'd do a lot of research in the market before starting a food business at home. Rules and regulations are pretty intense and if you're selling stuff for people to consume it usually has to be prepared in an approved and inspected kitchen, which is very difficult for home chefs. It's not impossible but prepare for a _ton_ of roadblocks. Most folks end up renting time in commercial kitchens that take care of crossing all the t's and dotting the i's so they are properly inspected and certified for commercial food prep, but you'll pay a premium for their service.
And the next major hurdle is actually selling product to stores. Good luck getting into real grocery stores, if you don't have a relationship with them or some kind of major in they won't even give you the time of day. You'd have to start small and super local, like an indie grocer that is willing to take a chance (and almost certainly have you take on 100%+ of the risk and pay to take back any unsold product).
I've listened to some folks on cooking podcasts that tried successfully (and unsuccessfully) to get into selling their own sauces, condiments, etc. and it is a hell of a difficult journey. They all spent easily six figures of their own cash to get it all bootstrapped and off the ground too. I don't think a single one ended up being happy in the end or felt like it was worth the trouble.
We've spent about $50k getting going, but we are on a farm so have options others don't. Our equipment was $10k, the rest went into refrigerated containers we turned into a kitchen grade dehydration space, prep room, coolroom and storage.
I'm fortunate to have a sister in the food retailing business who was our first customer. We started dehydrating lime slices to use up the excess limes from our yard and control fruit fly, and found we couldn't keep up with demand. From there it's gone really well.
> rest went into refrigerated containers we turned into a kitchen grade dehydration space, prep room, coolroom and storage.
I need to do something like this (I'm in Fiji). Do you happen to have any pics or videos showing your dehydrator and prep room? I assume you used Reefer containers.
BTW what does dehydrating limes have to do with fruit fly control?
I'm also in Australia. When there is a fruit fly outbreak, it is taken very seriously. There are restrictions on what fruit can be taken to schools, across suburb zones. There are teams of people that doorknock and put up traps on trees or get permission to go into your backyard and inspect dropped fruit, cutting it to look for fruit fly, etc. They wear hazmat-type garb and it all looks a bit dramatic for the suburbs.
Even without an outbreak, there are restrictions on buying fruit and taking it into a particular agricultural zone. Heavy fines for bringing fruit over the state border (my mother copped a $300 fine for forgetting she had mandarins in the car boot on a roadtrip).
I'm currently on holiday and don't have good photos on hand, but email me via leigh@stillard.com and I'll send you some when I get home.
Fallen fruit can be a reservoir for fruit fly, so I'm forever picking up fruit to bury it in compost so fruit fly can't get to it, or grow in it. By removing fallen fruit I'm not keeping fruit fly around to get into my orchard and ruin 50-70k of fruit. It's only a little orchard but we value add it by dehydration and add 75% margin on top. It adds up!
We're in Australia with a very, very productive Meyer lemon tree. Any use in those? We had the fruit fly people around weekly at one point and were paying our kids to bin fruit that dropped so we didn't look too irresponsible.
You can grow gourmet or medicinal mushrooms with a handmade flow hood, a pressure cooker and two grow tents.