Food Business Consultant

Who is a food business consultant? A food business consultant is an advisor who give professional advice to his or her clients who owns or work within the food industry. These clients could actually be owners of restaurants, cafeterias, hotels, food joints or even professionals that own or work where public food is cooked and served. Food business consultants work for a specific period of time with their clients on mutual terms and conditions agreed by both parties. Food business consultancy can actually be in a specific or general area, for instance the consulting could be in specific areas such as nutrition, food safety, kitchen design and layout, culinary development, revenue generation etc. Sometimes the profession may involve a lot of travelling because as a consultant, you may get clients from far and near places or regions. Food consultancy is one of the most fun-filled profession because it involves getting to know a lot about not just food, but what these foods does to the body, the importance of having a clean environment and all.

What Does A Food Business Consultant Do?

A food consultant is trained to offer advice or services on the various varieties within the aspect of the food industry. Like I said earlier, a food consultant can be trained in a particular aspect within the food industry or on all areas generally. Before embarking on a search for a food business consultant, always know what they specialize on and how they go about it.

1. Food And Nutrition Consultants

This kind of food business consultant is also known as a dietary consultant. The major job of a food and nutrition consultant is to give advice to most companies, hotels, restaurants and so on how to build a healthy food menu and also the importance of having a healthy food menu. A food and nutrition consultant is usually one who has a good background I health and fitness, degree in food and nutrition, degree in health education. The consultant reviews the clients existing food menu then makes adjustments as to the right food and the food that may not be good for the body will be removed from the menu. This class of consultant is more of a consultant that works from an office or maybe a small geographical area.

2. Food Service Consultants

The food service consultant is very much different from the food and nutritionist consultant. The food service consultant focuses more on the business and profit making of their clients than the nutritional aspect of the food. The services a food service consultant provide is more of food menu, kitchen design, employee training, business plan and budget organization purchasing of food equipment and audits. A food service consultant does not necessarily need to work from an office as his or her job may require supervision and can work from anywhere and in any area thus requiring a lot of travelling which is unlike the food and nutrition consultants.

Starting A Food Consulting Career

Before becoming a qualified food business consultant, you would have probably gone through one or two trainings, get a certificate, intern and so on. As someone who wants to start a career in food business, you might be wondering how to start a career, the things you need to do and how important it is to do this things. For a food business consultant who has a flare in starting a food consultancy business, these are the things you would need to have or consider.

1. Getting A Degree In Food Business Consulting

There are lots of schools, universities, colleges that offer food business consulting courses (BS.C and Diploma) both online and on-campus. Find out which school best suits you and the course on food business consultancy you wish to study. Getting a degree in food consulting is the first step that needs to be taken because without a degree you might not be taken seriously by clients. The truth is no client would want to do business with someone who has no level of training or degree in the field which they are working. Getting a degree sets a platform to start up a career in food consulting.

2. Gain Enough Experience By Working In The Food Sector

Being a successful food consultant, you should have good experience of how the food industry works. What this means is that you should work with another food consultant who you should learn all the tactics and strategies in running a food business consultancy firm. Gaining experience in the food business consultancy means working in all the aspects of food industry areas such as restaurants, hotels, food cafeterias etc. with the experience gained from the number of years or month from working in all these areas gives an edge in knowing how to manage a food business consultancy firm

3. Join Professional Bodies Within The Aspects Of Food Business Consultancy

One way to start a career and also build up a career in the food industry is joining a professional body. Joining a professional body gives you an edge and opportunity to meet other professionals and also gives you an access to high profile consultants and sometimes joining these professional bodies can link you and a customer up.

Growing Your Food Business Consultancy

Owning a food consultancy business is a different ball game from growing your consultancy. It is not enough to have a food business consultancy firm but also growing your firm. I takes a lot of effort and skill to grow a food business consultancy firm such as knowing who the real target market is, marketing skills, charges etc.

a. Knowing the real target market: for a career like food business consultancy, you should be able to know who the real target market is and work out a way to attract your target market. Your target market doesn’t just end with hotels, restaurant, cafeterias but also individuals who might be planning a wedding, birthday party, graduation party and so on because guests needs to be fed so they would definitely need consulting in the type of menu and nutritional advice.
b. Have good marketing skills: the success of every business is also the kind of marketing skills that is been employed. Never use marketing skills or strategies that are outdated. What this means is making researches on the latest trends and work with the growing trend.
c. Charges: as a growing food business consultant, never start your firm with high charges. However this does not mean you should undercharge. Let your charges be very reasonable so as not to scare potential clients away.

Conclusion

Food business consultancy is something that is really profitable because food s an aspect that people cannot do without so building a career within the food business is very resourceful and engaging. Building a successful career in food industry takes a lot of time, learning and patience to be able to do well in food business. Hope this article was helpful enough in outlining some certain things about food business consultancy.