Food entrepreneurs on the ecstasy of following their culinary dreams - and the 16-hour days necessary to be successful
For a keen cook, there’s nothing quite like a lavish compliment about the food you have made. Dangerously, for the passionate foodie, the admirer may go on to say you should be doing it for a living. That seed sown, they will go back to their sensible job while you are left with lingering thoughts of winning MasterChef, successfully pitching your amazing food product on Dragon’s Den, being stocked in Waitrose, and your cookbook outselling A Pinch of Nom. A hobby has morphed into a dream.
This happened to me seven years ago. After a decade of writing about food, interviewing chefs and working as a restaurant critic, a few people suggested I start cooking for a living. I launched One Mile Bakery, a microbakery based in my house, delivering bread, soup and preserves by bike within a mile of my kitchen, and teaching baking classes there. I did my research – which included reading several times that nine out of 10 food businesses fail – and did lots of the right things: keeping my day job for the first few months; paying for business mentoring; offering subscriptions for deliveries so there was no waste; delivering at teatime so I didn’t have to bake all night; and working at home to minimise overheads.
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