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Thinking Of Starting A Meal Prep Business? 4 Key Tips To Get Going

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start a meal prep business|Thinking Of Starting A Meal Prep Business? 4 Key Tips To Get GoingWith every generation that passes, we become more and more conscious of what we are putting into our bodies. The science of food, in particular, has led to more focus on ever-more diverse diets, superfoods and eating plans. As we gain more awareness of what the benefits and disadvantages of certain foods are, we’re also seeing this expertise gaining coverage in terms of the foods that hit our supermarket shelves. And for people with an interest in food, this is creating business opportunities – which include the possibility of starting a ready-made meal-prep business.

One of the major ways in which a line of business changes over time is the addition of choice – once upon a time, the vast bulk of ready meals in a supermarket would be from a few basic choices. Now, the range of choice is increasingly wide. So if you fancy taking your nutritional and culinary expertise to market, it’s worth knowing what you need to get right before going into business with a line of ready meals.

Pick your niche

As we’ve noted, the range of choice for ready meals has exploded in recent years, and if your business line is simply “ready meals”, it’s hard to attract the kind of attention you want. You need to have something more identifiable going for you. What about keto meals? This is a field where easy food is hard to come by, so if you can launch a decent line of carb-free convenience food, you could have a marketable business. Or you could be looking at a specific type of cuisine. It’s not hard to find pre-prepped Italian cuisine, but there are other national styles that are less well-served. Why not try Korean or Moroccan dishes?

Think from field to fork

Convenient food is popular because people, at the end of a long day of work, don’t want to have to put in too much hard graft or time in the kitchen. That means that you’re the one taking on this effort, so you need to break down every step of the process. You’ve got to source ingredients; blend them to make a meal that will survive cold storage & logistics; package them in a way that makes them stand out in a supermarket; figure out and communicate cooking instructions. You’ve got to do all of this without overspending, so break the steps down and then look for ways to make it cost-efficient in every one of those steps.

Plan how you will sell your meals

One major advantage a meal prep business has these days is that you can sell your dishes in more ways than were available even ten years ago. You used to have to persuade supermarkets and convenience stores to carry your brands. Then you had to hope they displayed them prominently. Now, while brick and mortar stores are useful to have on your side, you can sell directly to the public. An ecommerce site with a decent design and SEO can allow you to reach a considerably-sized customer base. From there, you can build a substantial brand.

Find a facility

You may well be great at crafting delicious, nutritious and healthy dishes in your own kitchen, but if you want to sell to a wide market, you’re not going to be working in your own kitchen. That’s because first of all, you won’t have the industrial-sized ovens and cooking facilities needed for mass production, and second of all you won’t want health inspectors coming in and out of your house as and when they want. So you will need to find a place to work out of.

You’re also going to need the equipment to package and vacuum-seal your meals as well as storing them before distribution – and there is the question of distribution itself. Will you be sending meals to stores and markets, in which case you’ll need to send them en masse? Or, if you’re going e-commerce and sending directly to homes, you’ll need space to store the meals and to find a way of sending them securely – usually in a thermally-controlled box with ice packs.

Selling pre-prepared meals can be a way to make a decent buck or two in the business world, but you need to be conscious of the scale of job it takes to get up and running. There’s a lot to stay on top of, but if you put the thinking in then there’s no reason you can’t make a success and even a household name out of your culinary expertise.

Making Money Through Leasing

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Make money through leasing|Making Money Through LeasingIf you’re looking for different ways to invest or grow your money, or if you’re looking at focusing on a new way of making money, you may be considering the property market. Now, there are countless ways to invest in this area, but one particularly enjoyable and potentially prosperous method is leasing. Of course, this is complex ground when you first wade into it, but with the right information, you could find yourself on track to make a lot of money and generate an impressive property portfolio. Here are some of the basics of leasing, as well as a few challenges to expect, should you decide to pursue this venture!

What Is a Lease?

Let’s start out by defining what leasing actually is. A lease is a contract that outlines the terms under which one party agrees to rent an asset owned by another party. In regards to property, a lease involves the person who owns the property allowing another person to use that property for an agreed sum of money and an agreed period of time. Of course, there are finances involved in this. Generally, the lessor will attach a price to their property and the lessee will agree to pay this sum, usually in monthly installments. The contract between these two parties will have terms and conditions, detailing responsibilities on both sides. It will also detail the consequences of either the lessee or the lessor breaching the terms of the contract.

Residential vs. Commercial

When you choose to get involved in property for financial gain, you have two key areas that you can get involved in. You can lease residential properties or commercial properties. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from engaging in both, but often, people like to stick to one or the other, either through personal preference or simply to organize things more easily. There are different rules and laws applying to these different types of property, so generally, it’s better to specialize in one or the other. Whether residential or commercial leasing will best benefit you is dependent on your individual preferences.

  • Residential leases – these are leases intended to provide property rights for daily living. When you lease a residential property, the leasees will actually live in the property, making it their home for the contracted time.
  • Commercial leasing – commercial leases are intended for business use. This means that the lessee will run a business from the property, rather than living in it. Usually, you will create a contract that outlines the specific business types and practices that can operate from your property.

Organization

Now, the majority of people will start out by leasing one property. However, if you get a hang of it and find that this is a way that you enjoy generating money, you may start to invest in more properties to lease out, creating an impressive portfolio. Of course, this can be difficult to manage. You need to keep in-depth records about each property, the finances tied to it, the contracts associated with it, contact details of those leasing it and more. Sure, paper files can work. But these are easily prone to loss and damage and, in the wrong hands, could lead to data breaches. Instead, you may want to use lease management software. This can help organize your portfolio and ensure that you are managing everything properly in a way that you can safely store and recover the data and documents that are vital to your investments.

Management

Of course, if you have people in your properties, you need to make sure that you’re managing the properties properly. As the leaseholder, you have a number of responsibilities that can revolve around the health and safety of those in the spaces you’re leasing out. You may be responsible for the maintenance of certain elements of the building or certain systems within the building. You also need to make sure that the tenants, or lessees, are treating the property properly. Sure, most people will take some sort of deposit to cover any potential damage, but it’s still good to check in so that you can resolve any minor issues that could lead to more costly and serious damage down the line. If you don’t have time to manage all of this yourself, you may want to entail the help of a property management company.

Sure, leasing is going to be a steep learning curve for anyone taking their first forays into the area. But at the end of the day, it can prove more than worth the investment of your time, effort and money. Leasing can help you to generate a high, passive income. Give it a go and see how you get on!

What Every Start-up Needs to Know Before Going Online

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Going online with your start-up|What Every Start-up Needs to Know Before Going OnlineWhether or not you intend to actually do business online or are simply going to be using your business website to build brand, there are a few important things you should know before going online. Make no mistake about it. Business websites are important on several levels even if you aren’t going to be engaging in eCommerce but first take the time to understand how to make your website work for you and not the other way around!

Time Is Money

One of the things that altogether too many startups fail to realise is that managing a business website, even a bare-bones WordPress theme, takes an ungodly amount of time to develop and maintain. Instead of spreading yourself too thin once the site is developed, have you considered the benefits of using IT managed services?

Just keeping a business site up and running securely takes an enormous amount of time and effort and that’s something you probably don’t have to spare – especially in the early days. To borrow an old cliché, time is money, and this is why you would be better spending your time developing and running your business. Let IT managed services do what they do best for you while you do what you do best for your company. It’s a simple formula for success.

A Look at Important Elements of IT Management

One of the leading concerns within the private sector as well as the public sector is theft of intellectual property. Even if you aren’t going to be selling anything online, a website can open back doors to your business’s mainframe where all your proprietary information is stored. IT managed services that focus on safety and security can help protect the backbone of your business and that would be your products, current or in development. You could also leave company and client data vulnerable to breaches without managed IT security.

Uptime, Downtime and No Time

If you find IT managed services as part of a provider package, all the better. One of the things which frustrates customers and potential customers most is when they have found your company in a Google search but are unable to click through because your site is down. Uptime is important but downtime leads to no time, for your business that is, and no pun intended. Downtime for your audience leads to no time for you as they simply move on to the next link on the SERPs.

Your Key Takeaway in All This

There is no denying the importance of creating a business website but only to the extent that you can ensure it will be well maintained. Sometimes it’s better to have no website at all than one which frustrates potential clientele. If you are going to go online with your startup, make every effort to ensure it will be an enjoyable (engaging) experience for your customers. Customer experience, UX, is the main path to success and the roadmap for their journey is your website. That’s what you need to take with you to the bank.

5 Simple Ways You Can Improve Your Operational Efficiency Right Now

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Operational Efficiency|5 Simple Ways You Can Improve Your Operational Efficiency Right NowYou’ve heard this popular phrase more times than you can count: time is money. Of course, time isn’t literally money – but it’s pretty close.

Many managers throw money into marketing when trying to increase profits. While marketing is undoubtedly an essential part of a successful business, if you’re overlooking operational efficiency, you’re going to miss out on a portion of the returns that come from a great marketing campaign.

To improve your operational efficiency, consider these five simple tips that you can implement today.

Improve and increase your analytics tracking

First thing’s first: if you don’t know where your operational efficiency is lacking, you can’t fix it. To improve efficiency, you’ll first need to make sure you’re able to see your data and analytics in real-time.

This means that if you’re still using Excel spreadsheets to track data, it’s time to make an upgrade. There are many different types of analytics software on the market today, including SAS Business Analytics (SAS BA) and Tableau Big Data Analytics.

Take some time to research your options, and invest in a software program that fits your company’s needs and goals.

Increase automation

If your IT and administrative staff are filling their time with tasks that could easily be automated, you’re wasting both their potential and your company’s operational efficiency potential.

Any task that has a repetitive nature can easily be automated. Using your data analytics, pinpoint tasks that are taking up a lot of your employees’ time and automate these. Automation will allow your staff to spend more time on the non-repetitive tasks, which is where they really shine.

Emphasize training

Poorly managed companies don’t just hurt their employees; they hurt themselves too. If you’re not putting your employees first, your business will never flourish as much as it could.

One important way to put your employees first is to make sure they receive substantial training. Don’t just do the bare minimum; make sure they don’t just know how to complete their job duties, but they have the tools they need to excel at them.

Proper training also prevents workplace injuries, thereby keeping your employees at work.

Use load boards

If your business regularly ships supplies or products, you may be able to increase operational efficiency by using a load board. Load boards are similar to a job board in that they are a resource for both shippers looking for carriers, as well as carriers looking for loads.

Load boards are mutually beneficial, as they help shippers quickly find a carrier without spending time calling and emailing. Additionally, carriers benefit by maximizing their earnings by filling their trucks to the maximum load.

Improve cross-department communication

Though your department may be communicating effectively top-down and vice versa, if there are communication issues between departments, your operational efficiency is being sacrificed.

Improving your communication software doesn’t have to be costly; it just has to work for your company’s unique needs. Set up a meeting with departmental heads and come up with a strategy to improve communication between yourselves.

This will save all departments substantial time, which at the end of the day is what operational efficiency is all about.

How to Choose the Right Proxy Server for Canada

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Proxy Server for Canada|How to Choose the Right Proxy Server for CanadaThere may be a situation when you need to check a certain site to see how it looks in Canada. Maybe it’s because in your country it’s banned, and any other location will do. Maybe you specifically need a Canadian mock location to see how the Canadians see a certain page. If you cannot visit Canada in person, you may use a proxy. This is how to choose the right one among popular Canada proxy servers for your activity.

Right Proxies and How to Choose Them

The first question many of us ask when searching for a proxy: free or commercial? If you need to pretend to be a Canadian resident just once, you may be good with one of those free proxies or VPNs that offer their browser extensions and lots of ads. But if it’s a systematic part of your activity, you better choose a commercial service with defined terms and responsibilities. After all, you share your sensitive data with these services: your actual IP address and system data, the sites you visit, and so on.

There are other important details about proxies you should consider:

  • Legal aspects. If your relations are not regulated, it may be risky.
  • Connection speed.
  • Simultaneous connections. A number of them may be necessary for certain jobs, like logging in through multiple test accounts or checking the functioning of your website.
  • Data volumes they offer under various plans.
  • Uptime (which should be at least 99.99%)
  • Setup ease. Usually, you don’t need any extra software to use a proxy on your computer. You just receive the IP address, login and password you enter in your browser or in your network settings. Some providers, though, may offer it a different way.
  • Precise location selection. This is one of the aspects that matter in Canada for website managers and admins, and here is why.

What to Know About Canada When Choosing a Proxy

The main thing everybody knows about Canada is its bilingual status. Two languages are official in Canada, namely English and French. They are both widely spoken but spread unevenly: most French speakers dwell in the Quebec province.

If you are making a multilingual website, and you are concerned about displaying it in the right default language for potential viewers, you should not settle for just checking how it opens in Canada. You better check it from various Canada proxies, at least one in Montreal (or other location where French prevails) and one in Ottawa, Toronto, or any other English-speaking place. Catering to your clients this way will show your attitude.

This is one more reason to use commercial proxies. Free ones usually don’t let you adjust your location that precisely, only offering you to choose the country. With Canada, your business may require more.

The Conclusion

If you appreciate your privacy, security, time, and correctness of the results, a proxy is not a thing to save on. Especially if you run an ecommerce project that requires correct and precise feedback. Accessing sites under a Canadian disguise without the necessity to leave home or hire a Canadian resident is a great advantage provided by proxies. So if your business or everyday activity has something to do with this country, Canadian proxy will ease your life.