Kiddie Gourmet gets going!

Family and friends who have followed my blog over the past couple of months will know that we are in the process of starting our own business. My entrepreneurial idea is make and sell baby and toddler food. There hasn’t been much movement in the baby food arena in SA and we have very little competition in George! Over the past month or so, Dieter and I have made sample meals and packaged them to help us calculate the cost price of our meals. Why? To help us determine our selling price! We then gave away the samples to friends with little ones, who in turn shared them with other moms, and we’ve had wonderfully positive feedback! Our menu ranges from fruit and veg purees for babies who are being introduced to solid fod to more chunky food for toddlers. We're using the best possible fruit, veg and meat and including a delightful variety of herbs and spices as we convey the message that baby food doesn't need to be bland and boring. In fact, Dieter and I have been suprised by the yummy meals we've turned out. Our favourite meal is chicken and apricot curry which is made with coconut milk and has led us to discovering how to make our own coconut milk that we intend to use in a new product line later in the year. Babies and toddlers have been enjoying our lentil vegetarian pie, beef casserole, baby bolognaise, hake-mash and mushy peas, to name just a few. Next week we plan to try out a mediteranean fish pot, a tomato and onion based fish dish served with rice, hmmmm, yummy! Our motto is 'yummy, healthy baby food'!

3 months ago I visited SEDA, a government organisation set up to assist and support new businesses in SA. Unfortunately I didn’t get the business help I would like to have gotten, the man who has dealt with us knows they can assist financially with marketing and has only gone that route.

We decided that we would wait until this holiday period was over and we’d seen our friends from abroad before we start up and plant our feet firmly in George for the next while. Once we’ve started it will be very difficult to go on leave and because the holiday periods are the busiest and the time we’d make our most profit we’ll have to go away out of season.

SEDA have dragged their feet and we decided to approach the branch manager to see if we could get more expertise and advice. Unfortunately that still hasn’t happened, even after a second business advisor was brought in, but it did speed up the process of getting some marketing sponsored. We’d been told they could ‘help us lauch’ and could pay a huge portion of the ‘initial marketing costs’ and that is now in the process of happening.

In the week before we left on holiday Dieter and I had to meet with 3 service providers to get quotes for their assistance in branding and marketing. The process introduced us to an amazingly creative designer who helped us to the point that we decided to change our business name to reflect a 'designer product'. We'll be known from hereon out at 'Kiddie Gourmet'. We also paid for a stall at the upcoming George Agricultural Show where will introduce ourselves to the community and launch our products. It became very stressful when all 3 people who’ve been helping us at SEDA (including the branch manager) were out of the office and our packaging company had no packaging in stock!

It took a full week for the quotations to all come in and we made sure from the start that all 3 quotes were for exactly the same stuff. SEDA always takes the cheapest quote, which in this case is from a mass-printing firm and not from the branding specialists. The printers have a designer who is working on our branding and we’ll see what he comes up with! We postponed leaving on holiday for 2 days while we finalised the paperwork to get the ball rolling and hopefully that is happening in our absence now. We’d like the product labels to be completed by the time we get home so we can start cooking up a storm.

Because I am a woman, SEDA pays up to 90% of the project costs and we’re responsible for only 10% of the R24 000 bill! That is a real blessing! When this is over we’ll have our own web domain, product stickers, flyers, posters, car signage, business cards, gift vouchers and display extras for the upcoming show! Its VERY exciting!

Another exciting thing is experiencing the enthusiasm of our fellow ‘homegroupies’ who have offered to help us set us the stall at the show – something we have NO experience in! People have offered to lend us freezers, a gazebo, backdrop material and one guy has offered to make us a colourful plastic frontdrop for our stall walls from recycled fibre-optic cable. Its been very overwhelming to experience their support and enthusiasm as they have prayed for, encouraged us and will help us practically.

We’re on leave for one last week and will begin production in earnest when we are back, hopefully being able to make as much as we think we could sell at the show which runs over 3 days from 8am – 9am. We’re hoping to be able to take orders, get feedback and use the opportunity to market ourselves. How we’ll get the product out there afterwards is the next big thing we have to get working on in the meantime!